Most gaps between train tracks sit there doing nothing. In Buttes, Switzerland, that strip of space is now producing electricity.

In April 2025, Swiss startup Sun-Ways installed 48 solar panels along a 330-foot stretch of active railway in Buttes. It is the first removable solar power plant on a working rail line anywhere in the world.

The patented panels sit between the rails and can be easily removed when crews need to carry out track maintenance. Just over a year into the company’s three-year pilot project, more than 11,000 trains have rolled over the panels at speeds of up to 55 mph, and the installation has remained stable, safe and productive.

“We have achieved our objectives, both in terms of railway safety and electricity production,” Joseph Scuderi, founder of Sun-Ways, told Swissinfo.

Since May 2025, the 330-foot installation has produced more than 16,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, despite a month-long pause for snow and planned technical work. Sun-Ways said that is enough to cover the average annual consumption of three to four Swiss households.

Scuderi said the early results support using small, otherwise unused spaces to produce renewable energy, without buying land or cutting down trees. The company also says the railway solar panels do not interfere with trains or maintenance crews working on the tracks.

The Buttes pilot is scheduled to run through 2028, but Scuderi said he hopes the early results will accelerate approval.

“We have demonstrated that the solar plant between the rails is safe,” he said. “The sooner we obtain final approval, the sooner our partners abroad will also be able to move forwards.”

According to Sun-Ways, Switzerland’s roughly 3,300-mile rail network, excluding tunnels and poorly lit stretches, could generate up to 2 percent of the country’s electricity, enough to power about 300,000 households.

Interest is already coming from outside Switzerland. “Last week there was a company from the Indonesian railway sector that came to see the pilot project to convince themselves it was real and not a fake video,” Scuderi told PV Magazine in July 2025.

Scuderi also told PV Magazine there has been some interest from Japan and South Korea, where trains travel at more than 186 mph. In February, France’s national railway company SNCF signed a deal with Sun-Ways. Scuderi said he is also in contact with an Italian railway infrastructure company about organizing a pilot in Italy by the end of the year.

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