Railroad Primer

Photovoltaic Railroad Power Installations
… Morningstar’s Controllers Are Delivering Solar Success
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The TriStar MPPT Controller has helped make pole line maintenance safer. As pictured in the triple
tower PV system installation below, the solar modules are now mounted using a retractable tower
system. As such, the maintenance crew no longer has to risk a high climb –they can simply service
the modules at ground level. To facilitate
this safety innovation, these new
retractable towers can no longer use the
large and bulky copper wire bundles of
‘yester-year’. Instead, they require small
gauge wire loops, which expand and
contract as the PV array is raised and
lowered. Morningstar’s TriStar MPPT
Controllers help to efficiently enable these
systems’ to work without voltage losses,
using a more cost-effective lower gauge
wiring solution.
Traditionally, the railroad has built its track
following river bed bottoms, as
geographically that creates a track path
that is easier follow and more cost-effective to install. But these installations can traverse many
cliffs and bluffs and thusly require the PV array to not always be co-located with the wayside power
system’s battery bank. Morningstar’s TriStar MPPT Controllers are also perfectly suited for this
installation scenario. Using our innovative TrakStar MPPT technology, the TriStar MPPT Controller
makes greater distance (long wire
run) installations possible—no
longer does the solar array need to
be located near the battery storage
(system bungalows). In fact, in
Montana, our controllers are helping
to regulate a PV system, where the
array is installed 600ft from the
wayside installation’s battery
system.