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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
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 23 2019, @04:12PM (2 children)
I posted the parent. "People" can put them on roofs. Whose roof, and how much are you compensating them for using that space? If this was meant to be a public project (no idea if it was but why else would you use a roadway?), then why not use public right of access that's going unused?
Then again, unlike TFA I'm looking for solutions and not to laugh at the problems that bleeding edge research engineering can create.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @10:17PM
Their own roof, no need for compensation. Consumer solar panels are advertised as budget-neutral, in the sense that their lifetime production value exceeds their installation cost. For example, in NL, with tax rebates, the expected break-even time is 6-10 years, less than a third of the typical panel lifetime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:32AM
For starters, their own. For example, my state's DOT has 18 stations that they own or lease. Even if they can't negotiate panels on top of the leased spaces, that leaves 6 stations that they own outright, and 4 that are space in other state facilities. Then there are over 20 other facilities for their regional offices, plow shelters, main office, etc. On top of that, we are dealing with state money, so its not that hard to use facilities and buildings used for other subdivisions of the state.
Now I don't live in France, but I'm sure there are plenty of public buildings they could put solar arrays on.