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World's First Solar Panel Road Opens in Normandy Village

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the checking-the-cost-benefit-numbers dept.

mrpg writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:35PM

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:35PM (#446724) Homepage
    The only thing that's going for it is that it's probably more cost efficient, due to reduced overheads, than 2m of panels on 500 family's rooftops in the village.
    Unfortunately, being flat, 2m of panels only collect 1-1.5m of light, whereas if they were on south-facing sloped roofs, they could collect up to 2m of light.

    I think research into better ways of collecting solar energy, new PV tech, is more important than experiments in deploying practically useless tech.
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