Yahoo – AFP,
Chloé Coupeau, December 22, 2016
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| Segolene Royal and other officials walk on a solar panel road at its inauguration in Tourouvre, on December 22, 2016 (AFP Photo/Carly Triballeau) |
Tourouvre
(France) (AFP) - France on Thursday inaugurated the world's first "solar
highway", a road paved with solar panels providing enough energy to power
the street lights of the small Normandy town of Tourouvre.
The
one-kilometre (half-mile) "Wattway" covered with 2,800 square metres
(30,000 square feet) of resin-coated solar panels was hooked up to the local
power grid as Environment Minister Segolene Royal looked on.
"This
new use of solar energy takes advantage of large swathes of road infrastructure
already in use... to produce electricity without taking up new real
estate," Royal said in a statement.
The
minister announced a four-year "plan for the national deployment of solar
highways" with initial projects in western Brittany and southern
Marseille.
An average
of 2,000 cars use the road in Tourouvre each day, testing the resistance of the
panels for the project carried out by French civil engineering firm Colas, a
subsidiary of construction giant Bouygues.
The idea,
which is also under exploration in Germany, the Netherlands and the United
States, is that roadways are occupied by cars only around 20 percent of the
time, providing vast expanses of surface to soak up the sun's rays.
Colas says
that in theory France could become energy independent by paving only a quarter
of its million kilometres of roads with solar panels.
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The world's
first solar road (AFP Photo/Simon MALFATTO, Sophie RAMIS)
|
Sceptics
are waiting to see whether the panels can withstand the ravages of time and
weather, as well as the beating they will take from big trucks.
Solar
panels installed on a 70-metre stretch of a cycling lane north of Amsterdam
experienced some damage last winter but the problem has been resolved, the
project's company TNO said.
The Wattway
project, which has received a state subsidy of five million euros (dollars),
began with four pilot sites around France, in parking lots or in front of
public buildings, on much smaller surfaces of between 50 and 100 square metres
each.
One
drawback of the system is that solar panels are more effective when angled
towards the sun, typically on slanted rooftops, than when they are laid flat.
And the
cost question is far from being resolved. Each kilowatt-peak -- the unit of
measure for solar energy -- generated by Wattway currently costs 17 euros,
compared with 1.30 euros for a major rooftop installation.
But Colas
hopes to make the cost competitive by 2020, noting that the cost of producing
solar energy decreased by 60 percent between 2009 and 2015 according to a
French renewable energy association, SER.
Related Article:
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SolaRoad in
Krommenie, the Netherlands, will be the world’s first cycle path
with
embedded solar panels. Photograph: SolaRoad
|
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