In 2014 there was the first 70 metre solar bikeway in Amsterdam length and then American company Solar Roadways raised $2.2m of funding via the Indiegogo entrepreneur launchpad.
In November 2016 the first public installation of Solar Roadways is finally being constructed at a Route 66 welcome centre in Missouri.
The Missouri department of transport (MoDOT), the small 12ft-by-20ft patch of solar road will cost $100,000 to install. That works out at $416 per square foot—about $4,500 per square metre,
Now the French have built a one kilometre solar road in Normandy in Northern France.
The project was funded by the Ministry of the Environment and was opened by Ségolène Royal, French Ecology Minister this week. The solar road is the first step to test the behavior of the technology, before expansion on a large scale.
The French Ecology Minister stated that the government target for the installation of solar panels in the future is one in every 1,000 km of French highways.
The road took 5 years to complete with an estimated expenditure of about $5.2 million. On the test road the traffic is about 2,000 cars drive each day.
The road was built by Colas, a large Anglo-French construction company. One of the key advantages is that each panel is just a few millimetres thick, and can thus be installed on top of an existing road, which will reduce construction costs.
The approximate electrical output for the road is 280,000 kWh per year with an average of 800 kWh per day.
The main question concerning Solar roads is their efficiency because:
- The panels are not angled to the sun but laid flat
- Possible traffic damage
- The effect of weather particularily snow, mud or heavy rain
The French system is a lot thinner than other solar road panels being developed, and they have generated a lot of interest in the media and in the solar industry.
We will be watching the next developments and tests with interest.
BHW are specialist solar farm solicitors and renewable energy solicitors.
from bhwsolicitors blog https://bhwsolicitorsblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/24/solar-roads-are-they-the-new-way-forward/
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