Solar Highway paved in France

TOUROUVRE, December 23 : World s first "solar highway", a road paved with solar panels providing enough energy to power the street lights of the small Normandy town of Tourouvre which was inagurated on Thursday.The one-kilometre (half-mile) "Wattway" covered with 2,800 square metres (30,000 square feet) of resin-coated solar panels was hooked up to the local power grid as environment minister Segolene Royal looked on.The minister announced a four-year "plan for the national deployment of solar highways" with initial projects in western Brittany and southern Marseille.An average of 2,000 cars use the road in Tourouvre each day, testing the resistance of the panels for the project carried out by French civil engineering firm Colas, a subsidiary of construction giant Bouygues.The idea, which is also under exploration in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, is that roadways are occupied by cars only around 20 per cent of the time, providing vast expanses of surface to soak up the sun s rays.Colas says that in theory France could become energy independent by paving only a quarter of its million kilometres of roads with solar panels .Solar panels installed on a 70-metre stretch of a cycling lane north of Amsterdam experienced some damage last winter but the problem has been resolved, the project s company TNO said.