Any structure being upgraded or built today has to have green credentials. At a minimum it needs to be designed in such a way as to minimize power use, but a lot of companies are going further and trying to cut their energy bills by producing green electricity.

In London, the Blackfriars Railway Bridge is being updated, and will see 4,400 solar panels installed as a roof above the railway tracks. Once completed, it is expected to produce 900,000kWh of green electricity every year. In turn, that will provide half the power requirements of Blackfriars station. Not only will that cut the energy bill of the station, it also means 500 tons less carbon pumped into the atmosphere every year.

The work is being carried out by Solar Century who will install 100 solar leaves provided by Sanyo across the bridge at a cost of £7 million ($11 million). The work is scheduled to be completed at some point next summer. It’s expected to create quite a contrast of old and new as the bridge was first opened in 1886.

While solar panels form one of the best solutions for generating green power at the moment, there’s always the issue of where to put them. Houses and buildings can use their roof space for panels, but if you want to produce energy on a bigger scale it means finding and using large areas of valuable land space.

Placing panels above railway tracks therefore makes a lot of sense. It forms a better use of land that is already utilized, and has no impact on passengers traveling below them. If the Blackfriars Bridge project proves successful, we could hopefully see these solar roofs expanded to other railway bridges and sections of track around the UK.

More at Solar Century, via CNN