World’s first ‘solar panel road’ opens in France: VIDEO

World’s first ‘solar panel road’ opens in France

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/Getty Images

by Jordan Golson@jlgolson  Dec 22, 2016

Forget solar roofs. The world’s first solar road is here, in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France. The 1 kilometer road was opened yesterday by French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal and could generate enough electricity to power the street lights.

That might not sound very impressive for 30,000 square feet of solar panels — and it kind of isn’t, especially for its $5.2 million price tag. The panels have been covered in a silicon-based resin that allows them to withstand the weight of passing big rigs, and if the road performs as expected, Royal wants to see solar panels installed across 1,000 kilometers of French highway.

There are numerous issues, however. For one, flat solar panels are less effective than the angled panels that are installed on roofs, and they’re also massively more expensive than traditional panels. Colas, the company that installed the road, hopes to reduce the cost of the panels going forward and it has around 100 solar panel road projects in progress around the world.

Solar Roadway is another company looking at building roads with solar panels, and it installed a small number of panels at the Route 66 Welcome Center in Conway, Missouri earlier this year. Still, they’re facing the same seemingly insurmountable cost problems as Colas and the French.

Maybe those solar roofs from Tesla are the better way to go after all.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14055756/solar-panel-road-electricity-france-normandy

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