JINAN, China -- On a smoggy afternoon, huge log carriers and oil tankers thundered down a highway and hurtled around a curve at the bottom of a hill. Only a single, unreinforced guardrail stood between the traffic and a ravine.
The route could make for tough driving under any conditions. But experts are watching it for one feature in particular: The highway curve is paved with solar panels.
"If it can pass this test, it can fit all conditions," said Li Wu, chairman of Shandong Pavenergy, the company that made the plastic-covered solar panels that carpet the road.
Generating electricity from highways and streets, rather than in fields and deserts packed with solar panels, could conserve a lot of land. Those advantages are particularly important in a place like China, where demand for energy has risen rapidly.
Because roads run through and around cities, the electricity could be used practically next door to where it is generated. That means virtually no power would be lost in transmission, as can happen with projects in outlying locations. And the land is essentially free, because roads are needed anyway. Roads must be resurfaced every few years at great cost, so the installation of durable solar panels could reduce the price of maintenance.
Solar roads could also change the driving experience. Electric heating strips can melt snow that falls on them. Light-emitting diodes embedded in the surface can provide illuminated signage to direct drivers to exits and alert them to traffic hazards.
Now, such roads are finally becoming viable. Prices have fallen drastically in recent years -- thanks in large part to soaring Chinese production, a solar panel costs a tenth of what it did a decade ago.
China's leaders in solar road development are Pavenergy and Qilu Transportation. The two companies are working together in Jinan, in Shandong province, with Pavenergy making panels for Qilu, a large, state-owned highway construction and management company that operates the highway.
Still, a litany of outstanding challenges means the wide deployment of solar roads is a long way off.
For one, they are less efficient than rooftop solar panels at converting the sun's light into electricity. They lie flat, and are intermittently covered by vehicles, so solar panels on a road produce only around half the power that rooftop ones tilted toward the sun do.
Solar roads are also more expensive than asphalt. It costs about $120 a square meter, or about $11 a square foot, to resurface and repair an asphalt road each decade. By comparison, Pavenergy and Colas hope to be able to bring the cost of a solar road to $310 to $460 a square meter with mass production.
Business on 06/12/2018