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Sunday, February 25th, 2018

Solar pavers create car-charging green sidewalks

Author:     Lauren Ro
Source:     curbed
Publication Date:     Feb 14, 2018, 5:21pm EST
 Link: Solar pavers create car-charging green sidewalks
Stephan:   If the transition out of the carbon-energy era were a horse race, the United States would be standing at the starting gate smelling a road apple it just dropped, while the other horses were going around the track. Here is the latest, and this from Budapest, Hungary. By 2040 Most of Europe, China, and several other nations in Asia will have no carbon powered vehicles on their roads. In the U.S. what will we be driving?

Budapest solar parking lot
Credit: Platio

Solar roadways are quickly becoming the way of the future, with photovoltaic pavers popping up everywhere, from Georgia to France to the Netherlands. Now Hungary has gotten in on the action, thanks to energy startup Platio, which recently installed a swath of solar panels into a sidewalk in Budapest.

Measuring 4.7 square meters, or about 50 square feet, the 720 Wp system of Platio Solar Pavers is made up of 40 units and is located at a charging station for electric vehicles on the campus of real estate company Prologis. The solar sidewalk supplies green energy to the charging station during the day, but when the station is empty, the power is rerouted to a nearby building.

The solar pavers are nearly completely integrated into the environment, causing no disruptions to the way people use sidewalks. In a statement, Platio developers said that they hoped “to demonstrate that by turning energy absorbing paved areas into huge walkable solar arrays, energy production can be achieved at a large scale without […]

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