Wireless EV Charging Would Go Perfectly With Solar Highways
A modest-looking, road-embedded wireless EV charging demonstration project could vault Indiana into the EV charging history books.
A modest-looking, road-embedded wireless EV charging demonstration project could vault Indiana into the EV charging history books.
A trio of technology leaders in Europe — the Austrian Institute of Technology, Fraunhofer ISE in Germany, and Forster Industrietechnik in Switzerland — is working to develop a solar canopy system for highways in order to tap into the vast, under-utilized road network for clean electricity generation.
We tend to think of Minnesota for its fishing, snow, and progressive politicians, but solar? Well if Minnesota has its way, solar arrays could soon be seen along the public rights-of-way that line the state’s highways. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has released a request for proposal (RFP) accepting … [continued]
Solar roads have been a dream of countless cleantech lovers for awhile now. And there’s actually a company with the name Solar Roadways. We’ve written about the potential of solar roads and solar bike lanes a number of times over the years, but there’s news out now that Solar Roadways has received a $750,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration to build a parking lot in Idaho paved with solar panels, the most practical application of the idea I’ve heard of in the U.S.
One of the great things about photovoltaics is that all they need is an unobstructed piece of ground, and some basic maintenance, and they pump out electricity all day long. But finding a piece of ground that can be devoted solely to solar collectors can be a challenge, especially in the populated areas that need the power the most, so you will often find solar panels perched atop some structure, where they are exposed to higher winds, and are more difficult to maintain. But the solution to this problem might be on your way to work every day; in the unused spaces that surround our national grid of highways.