Photovoltaic Motorways

In 2006, an American engineer Scott Bruso from Idaho and his wife Julie set up a company Solar roadways. Having collected the necessary amount of money through crowdfunding, the company began to produce modular road blocks with integrated solar panels and LED insertscoated with laminated glass, not inferior to concrete in strength. The idea was so brilliant that it instantly found many supporters around the world.

Since 2014, the invention began to be introduced. For the first time it was installed in a parking lot near a supermarket. Car parking literally converted the energy of the sun into electricity, which was then used both to illuminate the interactive parking road signs and to melt the snow. Soon, the intention of the inventor became interested outside the United States.

In 2014, the idea of ​​electricity-generating pavement was scaled up. in the city of Kromen in the Netherlands. Initially, it was just a bicycle path, each square meter of which began to produce an average of 70 kWh of electric energy per year. Yet 140 square meters solar bike path generated about 10 MWh of electricity each year. But before this square was not used in any other way, except as a road.

Even then, the developers of SolaRoad foresaw the broad prospect of introducing such systems into the infrastructure of various roads and sidewalks. Solar cells are installed directly on the road and generate electricity for various needs, by the way for cyclists the path remains as convenient as before. Payback on the first solar bike path - 15 years. At the same time, the cost of street lighting is reduced, in addition, electric vehicles can, in principle, be charged from solar road surfaces.

The implementation of the idea of ​​a solar road for cars was not long in coming. So, already at the end of 2016 in a French village Tourouvre-au-perche was commissioned the first road on the planet entirely made of solar cells. The working kilometer of the motorway with a total area of ​​2800 square meters was personally opened by French Minister of the Environment Segolene Royal.

The project worth 5 million euros is a section of the road, capable of passing about 2,000 cars daily. And the electricity generated by the solar cells built into the roadway is supplied to the street lighting network of the village with a population of about 3400 people.

Solar Panels for Wattway (so called project) company Colas first tested in four French car parks and got a satisfactory result. The coating of the panels is resin with silicon, which provides sufficient strength even for trucks traveling on Wattway. The minister said that she would like every thousandth of a million kilometers of French roads in the future to be equipped in this way.

Finally, in 2018, China opened the world's largest solar motorway. It happened in the capital of Shandong province, in the city Jinan. A 2-kilometer-long expressway here consists of three layers: “transparent concrete”, a photovoltaic layer and an insulating base.

The total area of ​​the generating pavement is 5875 square meters, this is enough to produce 1000 MWh of electricity per year. Each square meter of the road cost China $ 462. The road is able to serve not only cars, but also trucks and even buses.