France To Pave 1000km of Road With Solar Panels (solarcrunch.org)

An anonymous reader writes: France is planning on a project to build 1000 kilometers of road with specially designed solar panels. This project will supply 5 million people in France with electricity if it is successful. Though many solar experts are skeptical of this project, the French government has given the go-ahead to this venture. According to France's minister of ecology and energy, Ségolène Royal, the tender for this project is already issued under the "Positive Energy" initiative and the test for the solar panels will begin by this spring.The photo voltaic solar panels called "Wattway" which will be used in the project are jointly developed by the French infrastructure firm "Colas" and the National Institute for Solar Energy. The specialty of "Wattway" is that its very sturdy and can let heavy trucks pass over it, also offering a good grip to avoid an accident. Interestingly, this project will not remove road surfaces but instead, the solar panels will be glued to the existing pavement.

Comments

That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[SuperKendall]

Meh, there's a solar bike path in the Netherlands and they don't seem to have excessive problems with dirt. Because rain exists.

So there's no difference between "dirt" and rubber from much broader contact area of tires with lots of weight on top of them from cars?

Do you know what DOESN'T wash away well in the rain, pretty much a material that is made to resist water? Rubber.

solar panels don't require good "optical quality", only transmission; the light is free to scatter on its way in. It's the same thing that applies to greenhouses - you may have noticed that many greenhouses use "fogged" plastic

This is so mind-bogglingly stupid and wrong and displays such a complete lack of comprehension of solar energy that I had to stop reading anything else you wrote, so I can't respond to whatever else you may consider "points".

A solar panel is in fact an EXACT OPPOSITE of a greenhouse - the greenhouse relies on IR alone, so it doesn't care if photons are reflected. Meanwhile a solar panel doesn't care a whit about IR transmission, ONLY about photons that make it through - any scattering or glossing of the surface dramatically cuts down on light that can reach the solar cells inside, because many of the photons end up either being reflected or scattered to the sides away from the cells.

I like solar power for many applications but put in roads is a really bad idea except for limited uses (like bye paths). It's really depressing to me how other people claiming to be solar advocates are killing the technology through completely moronic uses of solar that are obviously nothing but giant tools for government graft that will fail utterly and sour the general populace on solar as a whole.