The cleanliness of the panels isn’t actually as big a deal as it’s made out to be. Like yeah, they can’t be completely obscured, but you’d be surprised at how fucking filthy they can be and still make juice. Or half-or more- covered with trees, or other shade.
Right now, my panels are covered in enough crap I really should hose them off, and they’re still kicking 20 amps. So ahhh… fuck it. Maybe it’ll rain and I won’t have to.
Same with cloudy days-sometimes I get more power on cloudy days because the panels don’t get at hot. Hell, some streetlights put out enough light to harvest energy from-but they’re largely getting replaced with LED’s. Sad face?
I expect with the type of traffic going on between rails, these will need vanishingly little maintenance. I hope it goes well
So I have a solar setup-older panels, like 15 years old. They can be 3/4 obscured by a building or whatever, and still make 85% of what they’re rated to.
Which is fucking awesome. Right now, they’re covered in so much dust I can see the ‘clean’ spots where the morning dew condensed on them, and they’re still kicking 20 amps, about 15 more than I actually need.
Daily cleaning? Way excessive. Monthly? Maybe, probably less. Not a whole lot going on in between rails.
I’d be way more worried about tweakers trying to steal the wiring