Roads get hot in the sun. The French have realised that Energy solutions are beneath our cars! Les rues de soleil!
Fossil fuels are clearly causing a serious environmental disaster. The evidence is overwhelming. Even if you disagree, the use of renewable energy has to be preferable.
Have you ever walked along a road at 2pm … mid-summer … barefoot? It can hurt if you are in a half-decent summer!
Our roads are increasingly occupied and equally congested at times. They do, however, have a new job. Multi-tasking may well be beyond us males but thankfully La Rue is feminine. The French have built a stretch of prototype road which doubles up as a solar energy producer.
Similar projects are planned in the USA.
Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France has the world's first solar road, nicknamed Wattway. It is a one kilometre stretch of road covered with 2,800-square-meters of resin-encased panels.
The French Ministry of the Environment invested €5 million (just over $5million) to build the project, which opened in December 2016.
The French are conducting a test period of two years to see if the project can generate a sustainable energy source. The panels consist of extremely thin yet durable panels of polycrystalline silicon which transform solar energy into electricity.
The panels are designed to withstand all types of traffic, including heavy-duty vehicles and in terms of efficiency, are only slightly lower in yield to conventional photovoltaic panels.
The French government plans to eventually pave 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) of its roads with solar panels. If the project is a success, I see no reason why this should not increase.
"The maximum effect of the program, if successful, could be to furnish 5 million people with electricity, or about 8 percent of the French population," claims the government.
Critics, however, have concerns over the high price of the project. The first solar panels were equally exorbitant and far less efficient.
"It's without doubt a technical advance, but in order to develop renewables there are other priorities than a gadget of which we are more certain that it's very expensive than the fact it works," is the cynical riposte.
Jean-Louis Bal, president of renewable energy union SER, added, "We have to look at the cost, the production [of electricity] and the economic lifespan of the installation. For now I don't have the answers." How very ... enlightening!
Colas, the company responsible for the project, said that expenses will eventually lessen as the technology is adopted elsewhere in the world, including an experimental site that launched earlier this month in the U.S. The site consists of of 50 square metres of Wattway solar panels installed at the Georgia Visitor Information Center in West Point, Georgia.
Colas CEO Hervé Le Bouc also explained that the installation of Wattway panels is relatively non-disruptive. "There is no need to rebuild infrastructure," Le Bouc said. "At Chambéry and Grenoble, Wattway tested successfully on a cycle of 1 million vehicles, or 20 years of normal traffic. The surface did not move."
While solar roads have its detractors, the technology has been touted as an efficient way to harness the sun's energy while taking advantage of the world's expansive roadway network. Bitumen has also risen enormously in terms of installed cost.
"Roads spend 90 percent of their time just looking up into the sky. When the sun shines, they are of course exposed to its rays," Jean-Lic Gautier, manager of the Center for Expertise at the Colas Campus for Science and Techniques, said in a statement last year. "It's an ideal surface area for energy applications."
Solar Roadways video:
Witnesses on steemit are your assurance of confidence in the system.
When you vote for witnesses, think about someone less obvious:
Listed at No. 53 is @timcliff, not even appearing on the list because you can only see to number 50. You have to write his name in the box! One for the scrutineers. @timcliff is a really good steemmate of mine, a very trustworthy and dependable guy who thinks for himself and for you.
Gandalf is No.17, the person who gave me a realisation that despite all the fake names, we have humans; he is a techy looking after security. He is listed as @gtg but he is known by his Mum and on Steemit Chat as Gandalf!
So, go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses - you need your authorisation password
And be sure to include 17 @gtg & 53 @timcliff
Meantime follow @ebryans
Namaste!
Hello @ebryans,
It gives us pleasure to inform you that you have been chosen as a featured author by the @robinhoodwhale initiative.
Learn more about the Robinhood Whale here!
If you wish to support this initiative, join the Robinhood Whale voting trail on Streemian. Every vote counts!
We hope to see you continuing to post some great stuff on Steemit!
Good luck!
~RHW~
I am equally extremely grateful and honoured by such recognition! Thank you so much! I am not sure as to what this means though having read your post. Does this refer to this (Solar energy from French roads) post or another yet to be published? This one has struggled to $0.19 so I hope it is the next.
If that sounds ungrateful, please be assured I am not! I take great care and pride in my posts and your initiative is fantastic in a sea of C&P and dross. One man's meat etc.
So, thank you again, most sincerely!
Always a good idea to find multiple uses for anything. I am amazed that they can produce a material strong enough to withstand heavy traffic. Aussie road builders cannot even build roads to withstand truck traffic.
One does not have to be so extreme in durability - use this for suburban roads that do not carry heavy traffic
Thank you so much for replying! These panels can withstand heavy trucks so they are pretty strong but my two concerns were extreme heat and cold for the fixing system and then theft - there is bound to be a problem to get around there.
I lived in Melbourne and then Sydney and the roads were not too bad but when you get that Summer deluge, they do tend to get a bit smashed up - I noticed that there was not a lot maintenance going on with the country roads
I didn't know they were doing this in France too. Thanks a lot for sharing this information.
Just a small comment: Maybe would you consider adding some references to your post, with links pointing towards the place where you get this information (so that we could learn more about it)? Is it ecowatch.com? Thanks in advance!
Yes, some of it was from ecowatch but I always cross check to elsewhere as sometimes one can get tripped up by being slack so I looked at a few others:
http://theantimedia.org/sorry-coal-age-solar-power-arrived/ - I actually wrote the basics of this post a few weeks ago - I keep a repository going and some of them just come right out and others get a few revisits
Thanks for providing this to me ^^
Very interesting. Believe it or not I've been mulling that idea over in my mind for years! Thanks for sharing!
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
Great minds clearly think alike!
Thank you very much for your comments!
up! that's the spirit!
I already knew it but it's a great post idea we all should have done long time ago! and this is being a played in many forms in many places in fact already!
Thank you @eliowilson - it makes so much sense doesn't it - we will soon see tennis courts etc like this!
Thank you for your support. Appreciated very much.
There was a hoax around a year or more ago on the solar freaking roadways, but if it really lasts for so long with no support or renewals it might be a ok investment if the country's budget allows for it. Have you seen the Tesla House , the solar roof, I had a similar idea a few years back , but Tesla made one already :D , might work in the same way for many other venues , you can make so much out of roof tiles :D
Thanks @j3dy, there are many things which have a function but can double up - not necessarily for themselves. Tiles, as you suggested but car panels could store energy in a removable cell which then could be supplementary power for the car or removed to power a cordless drill .
Tesla is amazing. Battery tech is going to be interesting. Berkshire Hathaway has made big investments here.
Thanks again for yr comments. Appreciated!
Had to share this on twitter. Always reassuring to see the answers are right under our noses. Just a matter of getting that 100th monkey in the industry wilderness to push things into happening.
The best solutions are invariably simple - we just cannot see them!
Thank you for commenting - appreciated.