Belgian solar tunnel to power high speed rail running from Paris to Amsterdam

June 9th, 2011 - 11:27 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

Paris, June 9 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Belgian rail operator Infrabel and Enfinity, a company which specializes in renewable energy sources have collaborated together to make a solar tunnel. This solar tunnel would power high speed rail running from Paris to Amsterdam.

This Belgian solar tunnel is 2 miles long and it has been powered with more than 15,000 solar panels. These solar panels would help to provide energy to the high speed rail, which would run from Paris to the Holland capital. The solar panels have a combined area of more than 50,000 square meters, which averagely is the area of 8 football pitches.

Europe hasn’t seen such use of solar panel for powering trains and this is the first time that such a solar tunnel has been conceptualized and built. The other function of the tunnel is to shelter the trains from the trees.

According to reports, 3.3 MWh of power would be generated from the solar tunnel on an annual basis. The magnitude of 3.3 MWh can be gauged from the fact that this is the amount of energy which can provide power to more than 1000 residential units in a year.

Related Stories

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Sci-Tech |

Subscribe