Ségolène royal has opened the first highway solar in the world – The Point

The minister of the Environment Ségolène Royal was inaugurated Thursday at Tourouvre, a village normand (Orne), the first sun route in the world, and has announced a national deployment of this technology. After starting work in October, the first kilometre in the operation of this prototype road surface pv has been connected to the electrical grid, has found the Agency France-Presse.

The 2,000 motorists who travel on average each day the RD5 to get out of Tourouvre, now go ride for a kilometre on the solar panels glued to the floor. These 2 800 square metres of tiles like floor tiles laminated must be able to produce the equivalent of the public lighting of a city of 5 000 inhabitants or the cosommation electricity (excluding heating) of 140 houses, according to the direction of Wattway, the project co-invented by Colas and the CEA Tech. They are made by the Scop SNA Tourouvre.

” This new use of solar energy can take advantage of the large areas of road infrastructure, already used by transport, cars, bicycles, pedestrians, to produce electricity without the mobilization of additional land, ” said the ministry in a press release. Confident in this technology, Ségolène Royal has announced a ” deployment plan national roads solar “. This plan will result in the launch of a ” tender innovation to encourage the development of solar technologies innovative “. This tender will set out ” the objectives of solar energy production from these innovations “.

” An experiment plan of road solar will be conducted by the State on the national road network in 2017 “. This “first step of a deployment program over the next 4 years” will take the form of arrangements new, especially in Brittany and in the big port of Marseille. “It is a prototype that begins to interest at the international level “, stated the minister, reached by telephone by the Agence France-Presse, noting that the Chinese, the Africans, and especially Moroccans, have expressed their interest in the COP22 in November in Marrakech. “It’s a genius idea, it uses a space that is used to something else and does not consume agricultural land in the heavily populated countries “, she pleaded.

sceptics, however, are many. In fact, for a planned investment of 5 million euros, the road solar produces enough power (heating included this time) fifty houses, when the same sum would have enabled to equip at least 10 times more photovoltaic panels installed on their roofs.