“The world’s first walkable photovoltaic layer” is removed. The Tourouvre (Orne) solar road, the first inaugurated in France by Ségolone Royal, then Minister of the Environment in 2016, will be dismantled. The photovoltaic panels installed on a small fragment of a departmental road will disappear in the coming weeks, according to Western France.
Born from a government will To launch an experiment in solar energy on the roads, the project was built by the company Wattways, a subsidiary of Colas. The State injected five million euros before the company takes over. His director did not want to reveal the total amount of the operation.
The result of this experiment is mixed. The first phase, which took place between 2016 and 2019, It is considered disappointing. The solar road provided less power than expected and the equipment quickly broke down. New panels were installed in 2020 and then in 2021 with, again, performance below expectations.
Although the device did not produce electricity from sustainable materials in Tourouvre, it turned out to be a real open-air laboratory for photovoltaic panels.
“The goal was to mature a product by testing it under difficult conditions,” underlines Simon Raoult, director of large projects at the Orne departmental council in Western France. The plates were subjected to an aggressive traffic climate: passenger cars, heavy vehicles, tractors… This allowed the Wattways company to reach a conclusion: its equipment is not suitable for a standard road.”
Wattways has therefore decided to abandon projects installed on road networks to concentrate on less traveled routes, such as cycle paths. Since then, the company has secured several contracts and won tenders in Europe, Japan and the United States.
“We have learned a lot in Tourouvre,” said Étienne Gaudin, director of Wattways in Ouest-France. In the world competition, we are the most advanced in this matter. Orne contributed to this success: the solution installed in 2020 in Tourouvre was marketed in about fifty sites.”
For Wattways, all that remains is to restore the road on the Tourouvre side. The company, which undertakes to take care of the uninstallation of photovoltaic panels.
Source: BFM TV
