A general view during the inauguration of the first solar road in the world in the small Norman village of Tourouvre au Perche. Photo / Getty Images
It may be situated in a small French village that doesn't see that much sun, but the Normandy town of Tourouvre has opened the world's first solar roadway, bringing the hugely popular idea into reality.
The notion of paving roadways with solar panels to meet our energy needs is very appealing, but for the longest time it has remained largely a theoretical one.
The newly launched French roadway is just one kilometre long but that works out to be 2800 square metres of photovoltaic cells - enough, theoretically, to power the village's street lights.
The resin-coated solar panels were hooked up to the local power grid just in time for Christmas as France's Environment Minister Segolene Royal looked on last week.
"This new use of solar energy takes advantage of large swathes of road infrastructure already in use ... to produce electricity without taking up new real estate," she said in a statement.
The one kilometre road is set to pave the way for to construction of much bigger solar highways in the future.
The minister announced a four-year "plan for the national deployment of solar highways" with initial projects in western Brittany and southern Marseille.
The idea, which is also under exploration in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, is that roadways are occupied by cars only around 20 per cent of the time, providing vast expanses of surface to soak up the sun's rays.
The simple idea bestowes and secondary - and equally important - purpose for roads by allowing them to double as an energy source.
But critics are still waiting to see how practical and cost-effective solar roads can be.
Andrew Thomson, a solar researcher at the Australian National University, admits the idea is attractive but has some serious reservations about the practicality of the idea at this stage.
"It's a really attractive looking idea," Dr Thomson told news.com.au in July.
"[While] it's technically feasible, it's very expensive. I don't really think there's a market for it, the opportunity cost is very much against it," he said.
One day such technology could revolutionise roadways, energy infrastructure and even how cars work and interact with the road. However there are plenty of kinks to be worked out before solar roadways will be genuinely embraced around the world.
Such roadblocks include the high cost of building and maintaining sturdy solar roadways able to be driven on by heavy trucks, safety concerns with the surface of the solar panels potentially becoming slippery as they wear down, and the poorer performance of placing solar panels flat as opposed to tilting them towards the sun.
A similar project in the Netherlands which saw a 70-metre stretch of solar panels installed on a cycling lane north of Amsterdam in 2014 experienced some damage in the city's recent Winter but the problem has since been resolved, according to the company carrying out the project.
But the smart tech used in solar roads holds a number of potential benefits. The panels contain LED lights to create lines and signage without paint, allowing for more flexibility with road signs and can warn drivers when animals are crossing the road ahead.
They contain heating elements to prevent snow and ice accumulation, making roads safer in freezing conditions. And the panels have microprocessors, which allows them to communicate with each other, a central control station, and vehicles.
One person who is an optimistic proponent of the idea for solar roads is Australia's favourite scientist, Dr Karl.
"It's an interesting concept. I like the idea," he told news.com.au.
He has been ruminating on the notion of solar roads for the past 25 years and believes it could be used to make up a "small portion" of Australia's renewable energy.
"The advantage of using roads as solar cells is that it's not a part of the world that people are in love with, so they're happy for you to put stuff there, like solar cells," he said.
Dr Karl believes projects like the one in France could help pave the way for solar roads to be built in Australia.
"I see solar roads as a small part of the overall package of renewable beautifulness. I don't see it as the only solution," he said.
- With AFP