First Solar Bike Path in Germany Is Now Live

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/05/16/1st-solar-bike-path-in-germany-is-now-live/

by imartin2k • 3 years ago

28 54 3 years ago

cleantechnica.com

realPubkey• 3 years ago

Cost was about 1 million € [1]

[1] https://efahrer.chip.de/news/geniales-pilotprojekt-ist-ferti...

jbullock35• 3 years ago

Is that a lot, relative to what the solar panels provide?

ta12435• 3 years ago

Yes, about 3 times the price of a rooftop install, which aren't exactly the cheapest way to do solar

senko• 3 years ago

300m long, 287kW, or 1 kW/m.

At ~€1m total price, it's about 3500€/kW, which is roughly 2-3 times the equivalent rooftop solar price (but this likely includes paving the bike path, frame structure, etc).

stefncb3• 3 years ago

And this doesn't count the fact that you're providing shade for cyclists as well. I wonder how expensive it would've been to make a simple roof just for shade; I imagine your value per meter goes up significantly considering that.

ta12435• 3 years ago

Providing shade for 45 seconds of your journey...

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

It may help (or hinder) snow removal too.

usrusr4• 3 years ago

Given Freiburg weather that's a definitive "help". It's not like they get huge snowdrifts accumulating over months that need to get cut away or anything like that.

Baxxter• 3 years ago

Whew - that is ugly.

I am a bike commuter and one of the great things about riding a bike is having the sky above my head. This is kind of a vibe killer.

I can see the benefits but I think a little more thought in the design could help us understand if this is something we really want.

How long is this stretch anyway?

stefncb3• 3 years ago

300 meters.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/28/germanys-first-photov...

ianpurton2• 3 years ago

I can already imagine people lining up to get the best time on strava.

cinntaile• 3 years ago

I agree. They really need to consider the design aspect here, driving under what looks like scaffolding doesn't feel very nice.

tuukkah• 3 years ago

having the sky above my head

Like they say, get a little relief from the sun. The elements will become harsher and harsher with the climate crisis.

larrydag• 3 years ago

When structures like this is built is a lifetime cost taken into account? I'm wondering if after a while it's going to fail or prove too expensive to maintain.

pxmpxm2• 3 years ago

Does this make any economic sense versus a dedicated solar farm in low cost of land / high sun density area?

JoeAltmaier5• 3 years ago

Absolutely not. It's a terrible idea, solar roads.

pxmpxm2• 3 years ago

Solar roadways was the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the headline.

DemocracyFTW2• 3 years ago

I must criticize this on the grounds that it is ugly, but then almost everything that is built these days is ugly.

Secondly, what genius decided to make it a flat roof? Flat surfaces are the absolute worst both in capturing the most sunlight in temperate latitudes and in terms of dirt and snow removal. Even a 45° angle would mean a lot of the dust, leaves and snow will just tumble down or get washed down by the next rain, whereas flat surfaces are literally encrusted within months.

high_priest• 3 years ago

Welcome to publicly funded projects, where the biggest factor is, who can build it cheapest.

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

I think they just never really thought that through and were looking for a nice headline, not a technical review.

ta12435• 3 years ago

Unlike privately funded projects, where the biggest factor is who can build it the cheapest?

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

Seconded. I have a bunch of panels at a very low angle (12 degrees) due to siting constraints and they foul up pretty quickly. And that's already much better than what's in TFA.

usrusr4• 3 years ago

I wonder how much a few simple maintenance bots could help, basically a solar roomba that opportunistically travels along the roof, zig-zagging as far in a day as much or little in a day as it's energy supply allows. Something like that clearly can't work for a small installation, but when a city has a network of roofed bike paths, you'd expect first glimpses of economy of scale. Could nicely hit a sweet spot between doable, futuristic, real-life utility and not served by commercial offerings for a university project.

JoeAltmaier5• 3 years ago

'Solar roads' are uniformely a miserable idea. They are eco-theatre.

You want solar, put it in an uninhabited ground-level unobstructed serviceable cheap location near the grid outside of town. Because, wires can transmit electricity anywhere it's needed.

Elaborate structures for solar cost more than the panels these days. Never build them. At most, tilt them to the local lattitude. If tempted to do more, instead buy more panels. Power per dollar works out better.

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

Yes, definitely. In the early 00's I put up an elaborate system with two axis trackers, it was very nice but fragile, not nearly as sturdy as a regular rack would have been and the extra money spent on the trackers would have been better spent on more panels, even at the prices back then. So today this is a complete no brainer (assuming you have the space, but tracking panels use more space than stationary ones so even then it probably won't work to your advantage).

ta12435• 3 years ago

Putting solar on the ground uses land. Land is valuable.

This method adds no land use. It also provides a roof for the users of the path.

Solar above car parks is great too -- it provides shade, means you don't get wet getting out of the car, and it provides energy.

pjc50• 3 years ago

Yeah, the solar road is a bad idea. The solar roof or solar car park, on the other hand, is a more appealing idea. Many places are running out of "cheap" locations, that's why housing is so expensive.

wires can transmit electricity anywhere it's needed.

Well .. yes, if you build the wires. A surprising amount of projects are getting held up on grid connection grounds. Whereas embedding the panels near urban demand reduces that problem.

kibwen• 3 years ago

The "solar roadways" nonsense from a few years ago was about putting solar panels in the road surface itself, which is a terrible idea for many reasons. Putting solar panels above the road is only a bad idea if the cost is prohibitive relative to putting them elsewhere.

ianpurton2• 3 years ago

Don't worry all the panels will be stolen soon anyway.

juujian• 3 years ago

It looks super jank. Nice to get some shade though, for sure. Are solar panels so cheap now that they just didn't bother designing something that would hold them at a 45 degree angle while still offering the same amount of shade?

usrusr4• 3 years ago

Think of this as a cheap-ish roof first, and a solar generator second. If all your cycle commuters switch mode when the weather isn't super nice they don't reduce the capacity needs for driving or public transit at all. Keeping bike commuters on bikes in inconvenient weather can be very valuable, compared to the cost of keeping all that idle-unless-rainy capacity. The success threshold of this project is recouping the premium over a corrugated sheet roof. And once you start considering north-south connections an angled roof stops looking that obviously superior, it might well not be worth the effort. You can't just do south-facing rows like a standalone installation of your primary goal is keeping the rain and snow out.

tbe-stream2• 3 years ago

Interesting, but...

Apart from the fact that this prototype is very ugly, some limitations come to mind.

- Maintenance without blocking the bike lane. Does this require a separate access road?

- Will this work when any trees are nearby? Falling branches are likely to cause damage and block the sun.

- How does this work when buildings are nearby? You will block all the light? I'm having trouble imaging how this will look good in a more dense area - not the mention the extra width required on the sides of the bike path will be hard to get where space is at a premium (cities).

All this seems to point to a rather limited use case: bike lanes in places with few buildings and few trees, and sufficient spacing around the structure to facilitate maintenance access. That presumably means: in sparse industrial zones near edges of cities (as pictured, I suppose).

Which leads to another question: how many sparse industrial zones in Germany actually have bike 4m wide bike paths?

dzogchen• 3 years ago

Which leads to another question: how many sparse industrial zones in Germany actually have bike 4m wide bike paths?

The answer is: no where.

You are spot on and this is just a gimmick.

https://goo.gl/maps/Pj2mQM5CvsrPFGFx6?coh=178572&entry=tt

tbe-stream2• 3 years ago

I had to chuckle at the huge surface parking lot right next to it.

avereveard• 3 years ago

It's because this project has a completely different use case with very different requirement:

Design with almost no actual research budget

Buildable with contractors and off the shelf components

Aligned with local research grants

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

Funny, this looks just like the covered area I built outside my home in the last couple of months (though obviously, it is much larger).

https://imgur.com/a/ImWKbLo (no idea where the idiotic warning comes from it is definitely SFW).

xg15• 3 years ago

There was also a news report about a swimming solar field on the surface of a lake a few days ago. Interesting that one of the major "innovations" in solar tech now seems to be political - i.e. finding spaces where PV can be installed without bothering anyone.

Still, it paints an interesting picture that no government would care about angry residents or potential alternative uses when building a road or prospecting for oil or coal (remember the Hambach and Lützerath events in Germany where entire villages were cleared because there was coal to strip mine).

Meanwhile, for wind we're still debating whether the safety zone to the next inhabitated building should be 1km or 2km...

throwaway3b03• 3 years ago

This is much smarter than what they did in the Netherlands, where the panels are literally underneath the bike path, so bikes ride on them. They are constantly covered in filth and are not running anywhere close to their full capacity, irrespective of weather.

qxfys2• 3 years ago

One of the reasons why I bike to work every day is to get some DIRECT light from the sun. Many kinds of research have shown the positive sides of it.

If I live in a hotter (and humid?) place, i.e., middle-east or SEA, I would love the idea. But, to have that in a colder place, i.e., nordic, I'll make sure to pick other routes without the shades. :-)

Valgrim• 3 years ago

If the top image of the article is real, then I guess illumination would'nt be a major problem, especially in the morning and evening when the sun is low.

qxfys2• 3 years ago

As the summer period is finally here, the sun rises super early in the morning and sets late, around 8/9 pm. That is already outside my commuting schedule, if I may argue. :-)

LittleNemoInS• 3 years ago

They are building something similar in Geneva (Switzerland), but it's a little bit nicer : https://ww2.sig-ge.ch/actualites/un-projet-innovant-de-piste...

The result is quite similar to the CGI, but not finished yet. The length is 200m, as it is a PoC.

jkmcf• 3 years ago

I live on the Front Range in Colorado where we have the Santa Fe trail, almost entirely without tree cover.

The sun is brutal here at 6500+ feet, and I would use this every day if it were available since there aren't many bike paths with protection from the sun.

First Solar Bike Path in Germany Is Now Live

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