Evaluation of technical and economic effect from setup of distributed photovoltaic generation on the Right-of-Way land of the North Caucasus Railway

In this work, we consider the concept of using a distributed solar power plant, setup on the right-of-way of the railroad. The proposed solution allows to shave peaks of electricity consumption without additional land alienation, using the existing power grids. The concept includes the setup of solar panels on the alienated land of the railroad. PV can be placed directly on the cross ties using damping elements, on the embankment slopes and on the right-of-way land. This solution allows minimizing the cost of solar panels installation along the railway tracks. The North Caucasus railway was considered to assess the gross, technical and economic potential of the proposed solution. The operational length of the railroad there is 6,472 km. The railway consists of large non-electrified sections, segments powered with 25 kV AC and 3 kV DC. The railroad is used not only for cargo transport, but also for long-distance and suburban passenger traffic. We have considered different scenarios for right-of-way land use rate and have shown that possible project costs could be reduced by ca. 25% by double land use only. This does not include shared electric grid infrastructure use that also should benefit considerably, but is hard to be estimated. While the potential nameplate capacity of such power plants within one region is 10s-100s of MW.