Solar energy project in France perhaps ineffective

solar panelled roads in france

Building our own resources of energy is becoming quite interesting today. With the little concern about high-damaged power plants, such as what was happened in Chernobyl, green energy from green technology has invited many scientists and engineers to build. However, the problem lies on the efficiency and effectiveness of the energy resources, which one of them is the Solar Energy.

In November 2017, the France has published their project in harvesting energy from solar cell. Well, this thing is common for many people in the world today, so what is the difference between France on the others? It looks like, the France has built and opened the world’s first solar powered road! Located in the village of Tourovre-au-Perche in Normandy Region, called Wattway. Interestingly, according to the report of advfn website, this project costed over five million euros to build this road which many people consider as ineffective for only a single lane one-kilometer of road.

Although the road is in trial, the Wattway project is only one-kilometer-long covered by almost 3,000 photovoltaic panels. This implies to the high expectancy of the officials in generating electricity in high amount. To be informed well, this road will be used by the vehicles approximately 2,000 daily for two-year test period.

What makes this idea ineffective?
One of the biggest problem on harvesting energy from solar cell is the ability of the cell to convert the sunlight and the intensity of the light per day. So, it will be inefficient when the solar radiation that comes to the cell is small because of the amount of daylight per day in certain countries is less than 12 hours. On the other hand, the solar cells are installed in the road indicating the vehicles block the solar radiation from the atmosphere, giving lack of efficiency. With budget over five million Euros, this idea could be unprecedented given the weather condition.

However, the ministry of France which is responsible to this project believes this project in generating electricity for 280 megawatt hours (MWh) so that the 5,000 population in the village, Tourouvre-au-Perches, will be lighted. Nevertheless, the prediction is still unbelievable because the electricity probably will be able to light the streetlight.

Given the weather dependency, pointing the costs of production, the solar panels are installed in all houses in the village are more effective and efficient. The residence will be able to consume and organize the source of electricity properly.

1,000 kilometers on the next four years
Solar road concepts could be a good idea “if” the efficiency of the solar radiation might have been solved. However, the project leader sees this as one of big opportunity to do. As the rooftop solar cell panels depends on the angle or it is depended on the position of the roof. The solar road concept which has flat angle probably are more efficient than the rooftop. This trial and error will lead to the another project, installing 1,000 kilometers of solar-panelled roads. If this two-years of trial is succeeded, then it will trigger another countries in the world to build the same project.