humanspiral

I like the idea. Free land use. I wonder if the rails can be used as electric conductors. A special train can deploy tons per day, and could clean them regularly in a highly automated way.

Unlike roadways, they don't carry any load.

this would call for the use of phase changing material to absorb the heat from the back of the solar panels

There are quite a few "better" technologies for cooling solar panels, which happens to also improve their efficiency/production.

Thermoelectric devices would boost production a little, and keep production a bit past end of day. This might not yet be cost effective, but massive production scale could change that. Circulating water behind the panels, transfers the most heat, and hot water is useful to everyone. A simpler, leak proof, technology is to suck in air behind/under the panels that creates a flow that will cool them, and use that hotter air to feed a heat pump.

I'm not sure of the validity of model, though I appreciate the effect of cooling at night.

Without solar, ground, usually fairly dark, absorbs solar heat at 100%. Solar panels cover 75%-80% of this heat to electricity, and while they get hotter than lighter shaded ground, the heat capacity of dirt is much higher, and the heat is lost quicker from air/wind contact. Similarly a building that has a solar cover with a slight airgap, will be cooler during the day than without solar, and using less AC, produce less warming surrounding the building.

For cold areas, snow cover actually retains warmth in soil. With bifacial panels, increases winter production significantly. No airgap over buildings, is path to keeping more heat for building, but using an airgap to help preheat air or water pipes for heat pump is just another path of using environmental heat to focus on useful heat. Heat pumps for heating (vs cooling) in general reduce outside temperatures.

Exponential

Battery prices plummetting, and V2G from EVs, is a path for near tropical regions to get to 90% solar energy. Robotics based manufacturing shifting to those regions is also a likely shift. Northern lattitude quality of life from global warming, is still a nice source of population attractiveness. Hydrogen made from solar is the path to 100% renewables and solar everywhere. Canada is a decent place for solar because of extremely long summer days. Canada can both make H2 in summer, and use H2 in winter. Even near tropical locations would have large spring and fall surpluses to cover near full summer demand from solar. They also need to make H2 from those surpluses.

Trump and so many of his zionist first supporters have backed Trump specifically because of "rising anti semitism" in US. University protests against genocide should have been handled like Kent State, to them. Biden/Blinken have been ineffective in getting ceasefires, possibly intentionally ineffective. But that is partly because Netanyahu prefers Trump, and Trump promises to fully support "finishing the job of genocide". It's unfair to critizide Dems for Israel, when US is bipartisanly Israel first political/state rule.

There was no evidence of election irregeluarities in 2020, and Trump's "deny everything, and always claim victory" has included admissions by him that there was no evidence, but the philosophy was more important. Generals supporting sending an army to assist insurection, or other unconstitutional acts such as rounding up all Haitians in a city, because a neighbour reported their cat missing, with suspicion of one neighbour (cat came back next day).

This is as serious of a concern as his promise to provide absolute immunity to all police abuse. Israel's token concession to ICJ to prosecute rape torture of prisoners, would turn out the same in USA, if Trump supremacists destroy everything with immunity, and those not happy about Trump fascism get fascisted.