The world’s first solar panel road has officially opened in a small village in Normandy, France.

Built in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche, the 1 kilometer route, dubbed the “Wattway,” is covered in 2,800 square meters of photovoltaic panels. It is designed to be used by up to 2,000 motorists per day, while providing an average of 767 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day, enough energy to power all of the street lighting in the 3,400-resident village.

france has unveiled ‘wattway’, the world’s first solar panel road set in tourouvre-au-perche, a small village in normandy. announced by ségolène royal — french minister of ecology — the one-kilometer road is covered in 2,880 photovoltaic panels protected by a silicon-based resin that makes them resistant to the heavy weight of passing vehicles. the solar path is expected to generate 280MWh per year, divided between an average of 767 kWg per day, with peaks of up to 1,500 kWh during the summer. an information panel near the solar road will indicate in real time the energy that has been produced as well as the accumulated one since its installation.

images by benoit tessier / reuters

wattway CEO jean-charles broizat comments: ‘this project is an important step in the development of the wattway solar road and we will keep on experimenting and testing. building an application site of this magnitude is a real opportunity for our innovation. this application site has enabled us to improve our process of installing photovoltaic panels as well as their manufacture, in order to optimize our solution as best as possible.’

Très bien: The French government plans to pave 621 miles of its roads with solar panels in the next five years — providing power to about 5 million people. 

Significant Solar Road order for Wattway

Wattway by Colas. Image: Joachim Bertrand / COLAS Over the next five years, France will install some 1 000km of solar roadway using Colas’ Wattway solar pavement. Wattway is a photovoltaic road surfacing concept, the first of its kind in the world. Wattway panels are comprised of photovoltaic cells embedded in a multilayer substrate. These cells collect solar energy via a very thin film of…

#Wattway : la société Colas (Groupe Bouygues) invente une route solaire ! #IoT #objetsconnectés

La société spécialisée dans l’entretien des infrastructures routières Colas, filiale de Bouygues, ambitionne de produire de l’électricité grâce à des cellules photovoltaïques installées au sein même de la chaussée de nos routes. Suffisamment robustes pour résister au passage des camions et suffisamment efficaces pour produire de l’électricité propre, Colas a présenté Wattway hier. En partenariat…