The SBB has a great many roof areas, be they on platforms, railway engineering buildings or railway stations. Therefore, in future, SBB will examine every new construction project to see whether it is suitable for the installation of photovoltaic (PV) systems. But that's not all; SBB is also checking all existing buildings to see whether they are suitable for PV systems.

Of SBB's current total of around 300 railway engineering buildings, around twenty percent are suitable for installing photovoltaics and they will be retrofitted with PV systems in the next few years. In addition, around 10 new railway engineering buildings will be built every year and PV systems will be installed on them as standard. At the same time, a high degree of standardisation will ensure that planning and installation costs can be kept low.

In addition to self-financing the installation of these photovoltaic systems, SBB is making targeted use of PV contracting. This means that an external company plans, builds and operates the PV systems on SBB roofs and supplies SBB with the electricity produced. In these instances, SBB benefits from an electricity price that is more favourable than if it had to purchase the electricity on the open market.

The concept of new renewable energies being fed from local sites directly into the traction power grid offers great potential for the sustainable and economic production of photovoltaic energy and wind energy.

Switzerland's first photovoltaic system (132 kWp) has been producing traction current (16.7 Hz) from the roof of the frequency converter plant in Zurich Seebach since February 2020 and feeding this energy into the traction current network via an existing transformer. This innovative direct feed concept can reduce conversion and transformer losses by ten percent.

Now that the pilot plant has confirmed the feasibility of the concept, other possible locations along railway lines are now being examined, including on noise barriers and embankments.

The concept of new renewable energies being fed from local sites directly into the traction power grid offers great potential for the sustainable and economic production of photovoltaic energy and wind energy.

SBB is making efforts to analyse its wind power potential in greater detail and is examining how this may be achieved at suitable locations. The focus here is on high-performance small wind power, which has significantly higher chances of being implemented in Switzerland than large wind power.