This road was destroyed after less than 10 years, yet it cost 5 million euros

This futuristic road built in France is a fiasco, yet it cost a lot of money. Dear.

5 million euros for a single kilometer of road built, this small portion had everything to enter the record books but it will soon disappear for good… This road is located in France, in Normandy, in a town, Tourouvre-au-Perche, which had received a sacred award. spotlight about ten years ago. In 2016, departmental 5 which crossed it was closed. chosen to serve as an experiment for the open sky for a whole new kind of roads: the solar road. It is at this small town in Orne d'à barely more than 3,000 inhabitants than 1,000 meters of bitumen had been destroyed. covered with photovoltaic panels, which made this departmental road the largest solar road in the world.

The objective & At the time it was simple: convert sunlight into electrical energy and show that ; Ultimately this new model could replace power plants. After eight years of testing, the experimentation of the project, focused on &agrav; era by S&gol&egrave Royal, then Minister of the Environment, will end in the coming weeks with the dismantling of the solar road. And the results are not good, and even rather bad. Only two and a half years after the opening of this futuristic road, paved with 2,800m2 of solar slabs, a hundred meters too steep. Hererc;més for repairés had beené amputee. In 2024, the photography of the places is unequivocal: certain panels, although protected by a special protective resin, are clearly visible. very resistant, comes loose from the road surface and the joints become tattered.

The coating – which today only runs a few hundred meters – is certainly not made to withstand the daily passage of 2,000' nbsp;vehicles including trucks and tractors. Not to mention that it generates a lot of noise to the point that the speed limit has been increased. lowered é 70km/h on this portion of departmental road 5 to relieve the ears of local residents. Above all, the investment for the construction of this solar road is not profitable. The state had spent 5 million euros for this little stretch of road, and that's nothing compared to what's going on here. the amount spent by the Wattway company, & the project initiative.

Electricity production The energy generated by the solar route was far too low to make the cost of the experiment profitable. This road of the future therefore has no future and will be completely destroyed soon, as it recently was. oacute; the concrete wall that bordered it to hide electrical equipment. In 2016, Ségol&egrave Royal wanted the creation of 1 000 kilometers of solar roads in France  The horizon is 2020. Four years after the deadline, there will soon not be a single one left. ;tre.