Solar Transportation of the Future

In Jinan, China a single, unreinforced guardrail stood between the traffic and a ravine is where solar panels are being assessed on the highway. “If it can pass this test, it can fit all conditions,” said Li Wu, the chairman of Shandong Pavenergy, the firm that evaluated the plastic-covered panels that carpet the road.

The experiment is the latest sign of China’s goal to innovate in, and dominate, the increasingly lucrative and strategically vital market for clean energy. The country already creates three-quarters of the solar panels sold globally. The potential for solar roads, are installed substituting for solar panels for asphalt.

Harvesting electricity from highways and streets, rather than in fields could save a significant amount of land. This is especially crucial in China since a its heavily populated where demand for solar energy has increased.

More Viable

This equates to no power lost in transmission, that could happen with projects in outlying locations. The land is essentially free since roads are needed anyway. Roads must be resurfaced every few years that’s costly, so the installation of solar panels may reduce the price of maintenance. Solar roads are going to be viable since costs have reduce to Chinese production.

Road builders in China want to customize solar roads that can wirelessly recharge electric cars running on them. Their leaders in solar road development are Pavenergy and Qilu Transportation. They’re working together in Jinan, in Shandong Province, making panels a state-owned highway construction and management company that operates the highway.

The surface of these solar panels, made of a complex polymer that looks like plastic, has more friction than a traditional road surface. The friction could be altered as needed during the manufacturing process to ensure a level of tire grip equal to asphalt.

Solar panels would likely be substituted less often than asphalt roads. But it remains uncertain whether they could take the pounding of millions of tires yearly for over a decade.

Broader Perspective

Solar road panels are less efficient than rooftop panels at converting the sun’s light into electricity since they lie flat. They’re intermittently covered by vehicles, so they create only around half the power that rooftop ones tilted toward the sun do.

Solar roads are also more costly than asphalt. At about $120 a square meter, or about $11 a square foot, to resurface and repair an asphalt road every 10 years. Solar panels on a highway would likely need to be substituted less often than asphalt. A solar road harvests about $15 a year worth of electricity from each square meter of panels. It could pay for itself after about 15 years.

Less clear is whether the panels could handle the pressure of millions of tires yearly for more than a decade or theft may occur. A few square feet of solar panels disappeared less than a week after being installed. Clean power is here to stay, and the sooner you explore how much you can save, the sooner you can reap the perks of renewable energy.

Go to HahaSmart.com and try our price checker tool. It tells you how much clean power you need, and how much you can save. Please visit our blog to find out more about the benefits of going solar.

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