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posted by martyb on Friday August 23 2019, @01:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the summoning-thunderf00t dept.

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/49241-french-solar-road-was-a-failure

A one kilometre "solar road" project paved with photovoltaic panels in France is "too noisy, falling apart, and doesn't even collect enough solar energy".

Le Monde describes the road as "pale with its ragged joints", with "solar panels that peel off the road and the many splinters [from] that enamel resin protecting photovoltaic cells".

It's a poor sign for a project the French government invested €5 million, or $5,546,750. The noise and poor upkeep aren't the only problems facing the Wattway. Through shoddy engineering, the Wattway isn't even generating the electricity it promised to deliver...

Normandy is not historically known as a sunny area. At the time, the region's capital city of Caen only got 44 days of strong sunshine a year, and not much has changed since.

Storms have wreaked havoc with the systems, blowing circuits. But even if the weather was OK it appears the panels weren't built to capture them efficiently... Solar panels are most efficient when pointed toward the sun. Because the project needed to be a road as well as a solar generator, however, all of its solar panels are flat. So even within the limited sun of the region, the Wattway was further limiting itself.

Also: Turns out a Road Made of Solar Panels Was, in Fact, a Bad Idea


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday August 23 2019, @03:02AM (1 child)

    by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday August 23 2019, @03:02AM (#883902) Journal

    This article [sciencealert.com] has a photo of what looks like the damage at the bottom. It says tractors caused unplanned damage. Glass is no match for heavy vehicles with big rocks stuck in the treads.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 23 2019, @09:11AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday August 23 2019, @09:11AM (#884001) Journal

    If it's only the tractors, then the solution is easy: Just use it only on roads where tractors don't drive.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.