600 MILES OF SOLAR ROADS FOR FRANCE
France Is Paving More Than 600 Miles of Road With Solar Panels; In five years, France hopes the panels will supply power to 5 million people
Danny Lewis, February 4, 2016 (Smithsonian)
“…[France’s 621 mile Wattway…will be built in collaboration with the French road-building company Colas and the National Institute of Solar Energy. The company spent the last five years developing solar panels that are only about a quarter of an inch thick and are hardy enough to stand up to heavy highway traffic without breaking or making the roads more slippery…The panels are also designed so that they can be installed directly on top of existing roadways, making them relatively cheap and easy to install without having to tear up any infrastructure…The panels are made out of a thin polycrystalline silicon film and coated in a layer of resin to strengthen them and make them less slippery. Because the panels are so thin, they can adapt to small changes in the surface of pavement due to temperature shifts and are sealed tightly against the weather…[They] are even snowplow-proof, although plows need to be a little more cautious so as not to rip the panels off the ground…[French authorities] will start laying down segments of Wattway this coming spring.” click here for more
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