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World's First 'Solar Panel Road' Opens In France (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the soak-up-the-sun dept.

The world's first solar road has officially opened in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France. The road is 1 kilometer long and can generate enough electricity to power the street lights. The Verge reports: 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. Earlier this year, Solar Roadways partnered with the Missouri Department of Transportation to upgrade a small stretch of the historic Route 66 roadway with solar-powered panels. They too are facing the same seemingly insurmountable cost problems as Colas and the French.

3 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. NOT the same "insurmountable problems" at all. by denzacar · · Score: 4, Informative

    French project actually works and it doesn't try to heat the snow away or light up that deer while it's crossing the road.

    French have just made a highly durable and highly expensive type of solar panels. And they've covered a kilometer of road with those panels, for test purposes.
    Solar FREAKING Highways crowd haven't made shit but a small section of sidewalk.
    Consisting of 30 panels. And they missed their deadline on that cause their panel manufacturing process burned out their panels.

    Both projects ARE going the wrong way about generating electricity from solar power.
    But French might actually get there some day.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
    1. Re: NOT the same "insurmountable problems" at all. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      There seem to be a lot of Dave Jones fans jumping on this one, after he tried to debunk other solar paving projects. Colas have a workable system here, which promises to be cheaper than normal road surfaces in the long run.

      Their system involves placing a layer of durable solar PV over the top of a road bed. This is relatively cheap to do because the panels are pre-fabricated. If they get damaged, say by an accident, it is easy to remove and replace them.

      Obviously the prototype is going to be very expensive. That is not unexpected for a prototype. Once they start mass production the cost will fall. When considering the cost, you have to factor in labour costs and the cost of closing the road for the time required to resurface it too, and how long the road surface will last, and what the on-going maintenance costs are.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. And now for some math (duh!) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    $5.2 million for 30k square feet is roughly $175/sq. ft.

    A quick search shows that PV solar panels generate roughly 8-10 watts/sq. ft.

    Since the average price of electricity in the US is roughly $0.12/kwh, $175 would buy about 1500 kwh (1.5Mwh) of electricity.

    So a sq. ft. of PV solar panel would generate $175 of electricity in about...
        150000 hours -- or 6250 days -- or roughly 17 years (assuming you have optimal conditions 24/7/365).