Solar array feeds railway route in the UK

How well is the UK doing to seal a future of solar powered trains? Will connecting solar power directly to rail networks help meet a good enough share of electricity needs? Eyes are on a pilot scheme going on now and it is designed to plug into the track near Aldershot.

A solar farm set up to power a railway line directly is making news. It's a 30kW pilot scheme, said The Guardian, on Network Rail's Wessex route. As of Friday, about 100 solar panels at a trackside site were to supply electricity for signaling and lights on that route. This was a first in that it running trains on electricity generated specifically for the job, being solar energy, sourced from a trackside installation of panels—cutting out the electricity grid entirely.

Network Rail's resolve to adopt a greener railway is ambitious; plans are to involve spending "billions of pounds electrifying rail lines to avoid running trains on diesel," said Jillian Ambrose, The Guardian. Stuart Kistruck, a director for Network Rail's Wessex route, was quoted: "We have ambitions to roll this technology out further across the network should this demonstrator project prove successful." Riding Sunbeams estimates solar could power around 20 percent of the Merseyrail network in Liverpool and 15 percent of commuter routes in Kent, Sussex and Wessex.

Read more at Phys.org

Image Credit: Jose Gabriel Ortega Castro/Unsplash

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