France has opened what it claims to be the world's first solar panel road in a Normandy village.
A 1km (0.6-mile) route in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche covered with 2,800 sq m of electricity-generating panels, was inaugurated on Thursday by the ecology minister, Ségolène Royal.
It cost €5m (£4.2m) to construct and will be used by about 2,000 motorists a day during a two-year test period to establish if it can generate enough energy to power street lighting in the village of 3,400 residents.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @12:38PM
Probably makes sense only as a real-world testbed that gets accelerated wear compared to a parking lot or cycle lane so that they can make an educated guess if it would work 20-30 years (which I'm told is the average
service life of streetlamps) there. Also the solar cells are probably just a small fraction of the 5 million total - modern road construction is expensive although (or because) you usually do not see more than five guys and a
couple of strange steel beasts on site at any time.