Solar roads have already appeared in the United States, the Netherlands and France, but it is time to reconsider attitude to them, because all the previous projects are not as large as the solar road in Jinan (China).
According to China Daily, this road is 2 kilometers long (1.24 miles) and consists of a canvas of three layers: an insulating layer at the bottom, photovoltaic in the middle, and a plate of “transparent concrete” on top.
According to the research by Echo Huang in Quartz, the area of solar energy collection on the road is 5,875 square meters (63,200 square Feet) and during the year — about million kWh will be generated. The cost of road construction was about 3,000 yuan per square meter, or about 42.6 dollars US per square foot.
Commenting on innovations in China, Scott Brusau who is the inventor of the original American solar road, notes that the road is the best area to get clean energy.
He says, that when it comes to the solar panel, it doesn’t matter where you locate it. In fact, the biggest obstacle to the spread of solar energy today is the wrong logistics, which we face if we want to get energy. Solar roads solve this problem by providing electronic energy with the ability to transfer it to the place where it is required.