Wattway in France is world's first solar highway
24 Dec 2016
The world's first solar highway has opened in France, in the Normandy village of Tourouvre au Perche, which is not a very sunny place. The roadway is only 1 km long, but is paved with 2,800 square metres of photovoltaic cells, which is enough to power the village's street lights.
The road was built by Colas, a large Anglo-French construction company, which says it has been working on its own solar road tech, called Wattway, for at least five years.
Wattway had been tested in car parks, and this is not the first time it has been used on an active road. It will now undergo a two-year test to check if Wattway could withstand the traffic of thousands of cars and trucks per day, and whether it could actually provide a useful amount of electricity.
According to commentators, apart from utility, the main problem with constructing solar roads is their staggering cost.
Among the main selling points of Wattway, according to Colas, is that each panel is just a few millimetres thick, and could therefore be installed on top of an existing road, which in turn cuts construction costs. The 1km road in Normandy cost €5 million to build, for a single lane of a two-lane highway.
The Wattway was hooked up to the local power grid in the presence of French environment minister Segolene Royal.
"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.
Royal announced a four-year "plan for the national deployment of solar highways" with initial projects in western Brittany and southern Marseille.
The idea which is being tested is that roads were occupied by cars only around 20 per cent of the time, providing vast expanses of surface to soak up the sun's rays. The idea is also being tested in Germany, the Netherlands and the US.
According to Colas, in theory, France could become energy independent by paving only a quarter of its million kilometres of roads with solar panels.