A small Normandy village spent $5.2 million to build a solar panel road that will help power the streetlights. The solar panel road will be used by 2,000 motorists a day (via Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA)
Every year different towns and cities work to incorporate solar power into their transportation systems, like Santiago, Chile wanting to power its Metro system on solar energy. Now, a town in France is claiming to have the world’s first solar panel road. Tourovre-au-Perche, a small Normandy village, now has a 1km route covered with 2,800 square miles of solar panels that will help power the street lights. The new road, made by Colas, was officially opened by French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal.
The power generating road, which looks like a gothic version of the Yellow Brick Road, is comprised of 30,000 square feet of solar panels covered with a clear silicon resin making sure they can handle the impact of vehicle traffic. It took five years to develop and it wasn’t cheap: it took about $5.2 million to produce and install.
It’s exciting to think of street lights incorporating solar energy to help create a cleaner planet, but the new road is still in the testing phase. For two years it will be used by about 2,000 motorists a day to see if it can create enough energy to power the street lights in this village, which consists of 3,4000 residents. It’s a fairly small town, but if the road proves to be successful, perhaps it won’t be long until we see larger towns and cities using the same methods.
The solar powered road, dubbed Wattway, will face some limitations the biggest one being Normandy doesn’t see a whole lot of sunshine. The region’s political capital, Caen, gets about 44 days of sunshine a year when compared to 170 days a year in Marseilles. Another issue is the position of the panels. Since the panels sit flat on the surface, there’s a chance they’ll be less efficient than those set at an angle.
And while you can commend France for wanting to promote clean energy, you have to think of the cost. Critics are already pointing out how it’s not necessarily the most cost effective use of the public’s money. The panels themselves are expensive to produce on a massive scale and the upkeep may prove to be costly as well. Still, Royal remains hopeful and wants to install more of these solar roads all over the city.
Colas, in the meantime, has plans for other solar paneled roads. They want to install more of these roads in France and half of them aboard. For now, we have to wait and see how efficient the new road actually is. It does make you question whether solar panel streetlights would be better and cheaper than these roads.
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