Smart Tech for a Greener Life

Smart Roads

Roads. To an environmentally minded person, they’re something of a menace. Too often, they require bulldozing through natural habitat and laying down black asphalt that absorbs sunlight and further warms the planet. But smart highways of the future might make roads a bit better.

They could harness solar power:

In late December, China launched its first solar road, to test whether its roadway system could do double duty
by generating power from the sun.

The 1-km stretch of expressway near the city of Jinan is lined with photovoltaic tiles, sandwiched between a layer of insulation on the bottom and transparent concrete on top.

While the country’s state-run CCTV boasts that it’s the world’s first solar-panel highway, the French village of Tourouvre-au-Perche opened 1-km solar road in late 2016, with the aim of testing its energy-generating capabilities over two years.

In the US, Solar Roadways has an ongoing IndieGoGo campaign to fund its company’s research and development for domestic solar roads, plus grants from the US Department of Transportation. The company installed its solar road in an Idaho parking lot in 2011 and is currently assessing viability for a larger solar roadway system. Its roads are made of solar panels under textured, fire-and shatterproof glass, with a heating element to melt snow and ice, and LED lights for road markings.

Outlook:

Critics point out that solar roads aren’t very efficient — flat tiles mean they can’t harness the sun as well as the angled panels you see on the…

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