SolaRoad: energy of the street

Clean and safe

The idea behind SolaRoad is simple. If you’re already laying a road anyway, make the road surface transparent and place solar cells that generate energy underneath it. As is often the case, this is more difficult in practice. For example, do you keep the road surface clean and safe to cross and how do you transport the generated energy to the power grid?

SolaRoad cycle path

TNO has found a solution to all of these problems and SolaRoad is now ready for practical use. The province of Noord-Holland already has a bicycle path that successfully generates electricity. Bear in mind that in the Netherlands alone there are hundreds of square kilometers of road surface and it is therefore clear that commercial applications are possible on a large scale. SolaRoad – in which the province of Noord-Holland, road builder Strukton and technical service provider Dunniq participate alongside TNO – is working hard to achieve this.

California

In the meantime, further thought is being given to the possibility of supplying energy directly to vehicles driving on a SolaRoad, among other things. The American state of California has already shown interest. CalTrans, comparable to the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat (Department of Public Works and Water Management), is working there on an experiment with a SolaRoad.