VIDEO: France to pave 1000km of roads with solar panels
Pioneering solar road panels said to offer same grip as a typical road will provide clean energy for street lights, homes and businessFrance’s environment agency has announced it will embark an ambitious road building program that will see almost 1000km of roads resurfaced with new solar panels.
The panels, called Wattway, are the creation of road building specialist Colas.
Just 7mm thick, the Wattway tiles can be lined on any typical road because they’ve been engineered to offer similar levels of grip to a normal road’s surface.
Able to withstand the weight of even the heaviest of trucks, it’s claimed that just four metres of a panel-lined road can provide all the electricity the typical French home needs (if you exclude heating).
Colas says it hopes that, following the successful trial, Wattway panels could be relied on as a serious source of green energy to power street lamps, road signs, homes, businesses and shops, and go on to become a source of power to remote, off the grid parts of the country.
Final trials of the tiles are currently going ahead before the 1000km tiles are laid in the next few months.
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