Detectors & Imaging

China nearing completion of photovoltaic highway

Dec. 31, 2017

The special section of Jinan's southern ring road will be the first photovoltaic highway in the world.

Workers are installing photovoltaic devices on the southern ring road of Jinan, East China's Shandong province.

Workers are paving photovoltaic (PV) devices on a ring road in Jinan, East China's Shandong province, to build a solar system providing power for charging poles. The 2 km long special section of Jinan's southern ring road will be the first PV highway in the world, and will be put into use by the end of December 2017.

The special section will have three layers. The bottom will be an insulating layer to prevent moisture from getting to the PV devices in the middle layer, and the top will be the protection layer built by transparent concrete.

NOTE: Multiple news sources other than China Daily say that the section of PV highway in Jinan is 1 km long and that a mini-bus traveled at the speed of 100 km (62 miles) per hour over the tested road, with the driver praising the braking distance of the new surface as almost identical to that of a traditional asphalt surface.

SOURCE:China Daily; http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201712/15/WS5a33346da3108bc8c6734df4.html

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.