【法国建成第一条太阳能公路】近日，法国的小镇上铺设了一段太阳能公路，路面因铺设了一层多晶硅树脂薄膜，防水耐用，经得起大量汽车碾压。另外，法国计划未来5年兴建总长度达1000公里的“太阳能公路”，预计每公里路段产生的电力，足够为一条容纳1000名居民的村庄提供照明用电。
The tiny town of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France no longer has to worry about how it will power its street lights. The Sun will handle that.
French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal (above) officially opened the kilometer-long road on Wednesday. It took five years to develop and cost $5.2 million to produce and install the 30,000 square feet of solar panels. They're coated with a clear silicon resin that enables them to withstand the impact of passing traffic.
Being the first of its kind, the panels are still prohibitively expensive to produce en masse (they're also less efficient than conventional panels because they're laid flat rather than angled). But should Colas, the road's manufacturer, figure out how to get costs down and efficiency up, France may install them along another 1,000 kilometers of its roads.
