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Several sites are running a story on the solar roadway installation in the Netherlands, including phys.org and IFLScience.
However over at EEV Blog is a thorough critical review by Dave Jones which runs through the numbers and finds it doesn't add up as a practical proposal. There's references to Dave's original review of an earlier proposal, for some background on the calculations.
From the associated forum posting:
Dave shows how to go about doing ballpark engineering feasibility calculations for such a project, calculates the expected payback period, and SPOILER, shows why Solar Roadways will never be a viable technology. This time using real measured data from the Netherlands cycleway prototype, and real measured solar insolation data for the Netherlands
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @05:14PM
69,000 euros per 1000 metres is 69 euros per metre.
You don't care about per metre - you care about per square metre. So the "9" figure is actually "about 40%" of the construction cost for Rehabilitation work, which rather generously assumes that the equivalent width holds to TFA figures (which are very generous to start with). In practice the cycle lane won't be as wide, and your cost per square meter is actually pretty high, which actually makes the numbers for the cycle path lightway even worse than those for the road case.
By the time you have added maintenance on top to match Dave's figures
What do you think the MTBF per solar cell is? For the rooftop system the MTBF is high, and the maintenance cost very very low.
Look, you're competing with a total lifetime cost (from TFA) of 150 Euros over about 15 years by slapping a panel install on a roof next to the path. Just fitting the lightway has cost you twice that, your maintenance costs will be higher and can only add to that figure, and you're recovering a quarter of the electricity to offset the initial costs. Practically they need to demonstrate very low maintenance and hit an install cost of less 40 euros per square meter for the baseline install on the path to even get close to rooftop. Not. Going. To. Happen.
Look - if you want to publish a TCO calculation with maintenance offsets over failure rates versus energy harvest then I could be persuaded, but so far by the numbers you're not even close.