The Dutch are famous for their love of cycling. As a result, there are more than 35,000 kilometers (56,000 miles) of cycle paths snaking through the Netherlands. The provinces of Noord-Holland and Noord-Brabant are planning cycle paths as a way of producing renewable energy. Two of the bike lanes are now topped with photovoltaic cells that generate renewable energy while pointing toward the sky.
Construction company BAM Royal Group and ColasGroup's Wattway subsidiary have joined forces to install the latter's WattwayPack solar panels on 1,000 square meters of cycle paths in Noord-Holland and 1,000 square meters of cycle paths in Noord Brabant.
Unlike the Netherlands' ambitious solar road project or earlier bike lane installations, the Wattway's "passable, renewable energy-producing photovoltaic panels" are installed on top of existing bike lanes without damaging the pavement and gluing them in place.
The photovoltaic cells in each panel are encased in multiple layers of resin to protect them from the wear and tear of daily bicycle traffic.
The WattwayPack concept was originally launched in 2015 and has since been rolled out to more than 50 pilot sites around the world, including a stretch of road through a Normandy village in 2016, and will be launched commercially in 2019. The company reports that efficiency has improved significantly since then, from 119Wp/m2 to 148Wp/m2.
Dubbed "the first domestic project of this scale", the latest installation aims to produce 160 megawatt hours of renewable energy in its first year and beyond. While this is nothing in the grand scheme of things, every bit helps provinces achieve their ecological goals. The sites will be monitored and maintained for five years.