Image credit – Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
The idea of integrating solar panels into roads isn’t new and in the past we have seen tests and trials being carried out. Now if you might recall, earlier this year the French government announced their plans for solar panel roads, and it looks like they have successfully deployed it in a Normandy village.
According to a report from The Guardian, a village in Normandy, Tourouvre-au-Perche, is probably the first in the world to have a solar panel road. The road stretches 1km long and is covered by 2,800 sq m of electricity-generating panels. While this is a test, it is probably one of the bigger tests that are being trialed right now and the idea is to see whether or not over the course of the next 2 years, are the panels effective and efficient enough to generate power for the village of 3,400 people.
However this 1km stretch does not come cheap as it was said to have cost around €5 million to construct, so clearly paving all the roads would be a costly endeavor. However according to France’s ecology minister Ségolène Royal, she said that she would like to see solar panels installed on one in every 1,000km of the country’s highway, which we guess is pretty reasonable.
It is a pretty interesting idea and Colas, the company who is manufacturing the panels, is hoping to get the costs down which in turn would mean that it could see higher adoption in the future.
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