Calculating the Possibilities of Solar Roadways

France recently spent a whopping amount of $5.2 million to form one kilometer stretch road using Wattway solar panels. The highway has been formulated in the northern village of Tourouvre-au-Perche, the authorities report that this electric road will be capable of generating power up to 800 kWh of energy in every 24 hours. They believe that this road will help in empowering nearby villages and light up their streets.

The roadway has a photovoltaic array of 420kW that has 2800 square meters of Wattway solar tiles that are made up of polycrystalline PV cells along with highly enduring coating that permits these to face all traffic turbulence. Polycrystalline cells happens to be very less efficient as compared to monocrystalline silicon. The WattWay cells work somewhere close to 15 percent efficiency while the monocrystalline rooftop PV panels have an efficiency of 20 percent. The road has a price tag of $5.2 million while the solar array costs approx. $12 per watt peak power. This is almost four times the costing of ground-mounted PV array or the rooftop. The numbers look at a little lesser than the highway star.

The Colar Group, WattWay developer, is of the opinion that roads have an occupancy of 10 percent. So, it will be safe to assume that the array will lose ten percent of its generated energy. Consider the angle of inclination now. Normally, the PV panels need to face the sun directly for maximum exposure to sunlight. The thumb rule states that for a yearly production the array needs to be turned along the angle of latitude. Since the tiles of the roadway lie flat they wouldn’t be able to gather much energy as compared to inclined position. Therefore, this project is a good start but needs a few more improvements.