Introducing the bike lane that might power the world

Imagine if part of your daily ride helped power somebody’s home. And no, we’re not talking about rigging your bike up to a massive generator and forcing you to crank it. You’re not generating the power at all, in fact. It’s the ground your tires are kissing that does the work.

If what Dutch engineers have been up to recently is any indication, that might not be so far-fetched for much longer. In 2014, they constructed a 70-metre “solar road” along a bike path in the town of Krommenie, Netherlands, just outside Amsterdam. More accurately, the solar road was laid across the bike path’s surface, its photovoltaic panels sandwiched between layers of glass, silicon rubber and concrete. It’s not just safe to ride on, it can withstand the weight of a 12-tonne truck—and with its recent success in the testing phase, the implications of the technology are enormous.

Only in use for six months, the solar road’s panels have already generated in excess of 3,000 kilowatt hours of energy. To put it in perspective, it’s enough power to provide for the electricity needs of a single-person household for a full year—and it’s only been active for half that time.

“If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than 70 kilowatt hours per square metre per year,” said spokesman Stan de Wit on behalf of SolaRoad, the organization behind the innovative technology. “We predicted [this] as an upper limit in the laboratory stage. We can therefore conclude that it was a successful first half year,” he added.

The Netherlands, it goes without saying, is a country with more bikes on the road than cars, making bike paths the solar road’s infrastructure of choice. In the six-month testing phase, 15,000 cyclists have already made use of it. Capable of withstanding the force of a firetruck riding over it, though, plans are afoot to have the technology applied to other roads, too—even to the sides of buses and large vehicles themselves.

With plans to introduce the technology in other provinces of the bike-friendly Netherlands, plans are afoot to export it to other cycling havens, too—namely California.

[vimeo height=”350″ width=”620″]https://vimeo.com/111570431[/vimeo]