Solar-powered trains could make rail transport greener

COMMUTERS MAY not have paid them much attention, but a small array of solar panels next to the railway line at Aldershot, a town 50km (30 miles) south-west of London, could herald a greener future for train travel. The site is an experiment to supply electricity generated from sunlight directly to a railway line. It is the “directly” bit that is novel. In Britain, as in many places, solar power is already fed into the grid, and it is the grid which train operators plug into. So, in a sense, many electric trains already use some solar power. But by connecting the panels to the line itself, trains can be powered more efficiently.Admittedly, it is not at present a lot of power. At around 37 kilowatts the site could easily top up the battery of a Tesla electric car, but it might not move an electric train very far. That does not matter at this stage, because it is there to test a concept rather than run a railway. And the concept is working, says Stuart Kistruck, director of engineering for the southern region of Network Rail, the government-owned operator of railway infrastructure in Britain.