Solar PV Surprise from France
Who doesn’t love the French? There are dozens of immediately noticeable aspects of the country that quickly capture our hearts: the wine, food, architecture, quaint villages, rolling countrysides, art, cafes, their history of scientific and philosophic innovation, the great writing, the mellifluous language, and all the other parts of the whole joie-de-vivre thing. The people are productive, though they’re anything but workaholics. They also think of themselves as the world’s greatest lovers (though the Italians will have something to say about that). A lot to like, in anyone’s book.
From an electrical energy perspective, they’ve been about 80% nuclear for the last few decades, but now they’re headed in the direction of renewables. That’s why this article comes as only a partial surprise: France is paving more than 600 miles of their roadways with solar PV.
Obviously, they aren’t the first people to consider the idea, but they sure will be first to implement it at a scale like this. Personally, I hadn’t been too keen on the concept, based on my calcs and certain assumptions. To my delight, it looks like I was wrong.
Snow, Road salt, freezing temperatures, blistering hot summer heat, heavy loads …. What more could ruin a perfectly good conceptual idea like roadway photovoltaics? Maybe I am just too focused on the upper Midwest.
Yep, one would think that this would an incredible challenge from a materials science perspective. I’ve read that this isn’t a problem, but that certainly is hard to believe.
The devil, of course, is in the details. The autoblog article: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/wattway-install-600-miles-solar-roads-france/ describes this as one of two competing systems and provides a number of links.
Eventually we may get it right. When that happens battery technology for electric vehicles may be less important as we more seriously consider the option of powering the EV from the roadway wirelessly. http://www.gizmag.com/uk-electric-highways-trial/38897/
Paving more than 600 miles of road with PV cells makes no sense unless the concept has first been tested adequately. Perhaps it has been tested adequately; it is impossible to know from the article. A test using a few hundred feet of road would be reasonable, then larger tests should be conducted.