If the very idea of producing a solar bike path has urged a fair
share of naysayers to see red — as in too many dollars — it has also
sparked a growing positive response. Now, with a little data out, the
news is that the Dutch solar bike path is generating more electricity
than originally planned.
Last November, a solar panel bike path, measuring some 70 meters (230
feet, or over two-thirds the length of an NFL football field), was
inaugurated in the Dutch city of Krommenie by a good number of
enthusiastic bicyclists. The stretch of bike path, near Amsterdam, was
considered a pilot demonstration by SolaRoad, the company that built it.
This particular pilot project is now being hailed as a success
because the solar bike path is generating more renewable electricity
than anticipated. Several months into the pilot now, it’s become clear
that the solar panels are notably outperforming expectations — having
already generated 3,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. All this in
spite of the negatives that go with a project like this, including
solar panels that lie flat instead of being pitched toward sunlight, as
rooftop solar panels are. Add to this list of negatives the shadows cast
by bicyclists, which obscure the delivery of many million protons, and
end your diatribe by pounding the table while calculating the
significant expense, reported by TreeHugger to be near $3.7 million.
On its website, SolaRoad
reports that it is “pioneering innovation in the field of energy
harvesting.” Going on: “It is a unique concept, which converts sunlight
on the road surface into electricity: the road network works as an
inexhaustible source of green power. SolaRoad is sustainable and can be
used in practice in many different ways.”
The
solar bike path was developed with some difficulty, including
temperature fluctuations that reportedly caused some de-lamination, due
to shrinkage of the skid-resistant coating on the panels. To compensate
for this, a coating has been applied over ⅜-inch glass panels that serve
to protect the solar cells. That’s not really the
point here, though. The bottom line is that it does function well in a
space that previously generated no clean electricity, and it brings
pleasing smiles to many visionaries.
If an investment was going to be made in a bike path anyway, money
would have gone into the materials typically used for that, which don’t
produce electricity. In this case, however, the materials produce
electricity.
I applaud innovative renewable energy
projects such as these, even if they come with limitations and come
with a high price tag. Consider what it took to launch the work of the
Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. Also consider how much a
solar bike path might encourage people to go and put solar on their
roofs or carports.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/29/dutch-solar-bike-path-pleases-many/