The Urban Planning Department has installed a portion of solar roadway about fifty metres long on the Avenue des Papalins in Fontvieille. The section of special roadway has been built in cooperation with the company Colas. The electricity produced by the panels is injected into the SMEG network.
Wattway slabs are laid and glued directly onto the road. Only a few millimetres thick, they include photovoltaic cells 15 cm apart, constituting a very thin sheet of “polycrystalline” silicon. Coated in a substrate composed of resins and polymers, they are sufficiently translucent to let in sunlight and strong enough to withstand heavy truck traffic.
These slabs have a yield of 15 percent, similar to that of conventional photovoltaics. Twenty square metres of Wattway roadway is sufficient to supply an average household with sufficient electricity, excluding heating.
“This is a huge increase in the number of solar panels designed to transform the traffic lanes into renewable energy support,” said Jean-Luc Puyo, Director of Urban Planning. He added: “Tomorrow, we can imagine other ways in which the Principality can support our policy in favour of renewable energies”.
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