70 Meter Solar Road Surface Generates Enough Power for a Household

Engineers in Netherland say that solar road surface trial is more successful than expected.

Last year the first road surface with solar cells got installed in a small Dutch town called Krommenie. Fitting to the Netherland the first solar road is a bike lane. The so-called ‘SolaRoad’ bike path is made of concrete modules each measuring 2.5 by 3.5m (eight by 11 feet) with embedded with solar panels covered in tempered glass.

In the six month since the launch of the solar bike path the 70 meter segment has generated 3,000kwh, which is enough to power a single-person household for one year. 

Opbrengst zonnefietspad @SolaRoadNL boven verwachting hoog
http://t.co/dviS4eHdS5 pic.twitter.com/RR0V4JwMVL— Energie Produceren (@zepenexis) /4/9, 2015

“We did not expect a yield as high as this so quickly.” Says Sten de Wit, spokesman of SolaRoad. “The bike road opened half a year ago and already generated over 3,000 kWh. This can provide a single-person household with electricity for a year, or power an electric scooter to drive of 2.5 times around the world. If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than the 70 kWh per square meter per year, which we predicted as an upper limit in the laboratory stage. We can therefore conclude that it was a successful first half year.”

Aljazeera has been on location and published the report below about the success of the solar road surface.

As roads are everywhere, the SoloRoad technology could have huge impact on generating solar energy. It will take the engineers of SolaRoad another 5 years to get the solar road surface ready for mass production.