Solar roads in Tokyo for 2020 Olympics

Posted on June 13, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

The Tokyo metropolitan government have announced that they’ll build solar roads in Tokyo which will help Japan promote itself as an eco-friendly nation ahead of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. Let’s take a closer look at solar road technology and see how it’s working in other countries as well.

Solar roads in Tokyo

The country has already made some inroads with regards to trialling the solar road technology – in May a car park at a 7-11 in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. It consists of solar panels installed on the road, with a covering of a special resin which enhances durability and allows cars/bikes to drive over the panels without damaging them.

A manager at the 7-11 store was quoted in the Independent as saying: “The solar road system can generate 16,145 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, covering about nine per cent of the entire electricity that the store consumes.”

Tokyo’s government has set a goal for 2030 – that renewable energy should represent at least 30% of power consumption in the city (up from 12% in 2016). We’re not sure where the solar roads in Tokyo will go, but we’ll let you know as soon as we have any information.

Business Times reports that it cost around 5 million euro per KM of solar road for the roads already installed in France – so it’s still very expensive and we have a ways to go before solar roads are everywhere.

We reported last year on solar roads in China, which are strong enough for medium-sized trucks to drive over. No news yet on how that is going but we’ve got trials in the Netherlands on cycling roads and also on French motorways so there should be more information on solar road performance soon.

More Solar Roads

Solar roads in Tokyo (artist’s impression) (source: news.com.au)

If you’re interested in reading more about solar highways, here are some other articles which may be of interest – the tech is still very much so in its nascent stages so keep your eyes posted and we’ll keep you updated on everything solar road related!

SONOB Installation on Dutch Highways (IIPV) – solar panel sound barriers (SONOB) as part of a project replacing currently installed sound barriers.

The ACT has a ‘solar highway’ which isn’t exactly a solar road per se, but a step in the right direction.

A recent report by US firm IDTechEX advises that they think “electrically smart roads” can be a $23 billion industry in 10 years, according to an article from news.com.au.

Renovagen commercial-scale portable solar power

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Mike — No Comments ↓

UK-based Renovagen has been doing some exciting work in the field of portable solar, with commercial-scale portable solar power systems utilising their ‘rapid roll’ technology recently deployed at Flat Holm, in the UK. They’re also working on rolling out (sorry) this technology on a much larger scale – their “Rapid Roll I” will fit in ISO shipping containers and could be a complete game changer in terms of commercial-scale portable solar power.

Renovagen’s ‘Solar Carpet’ and Flat Holm

Flat Holm is a small island in the Bristol Channel, five miles off the south Wales coast. Traditionally, providing electricity for it has been a ‘challenge’, according to Flat Holm team leader Natalie Taylor. It has no mains supply and the island has been using old solar panels and diesel generators.

Gareth Harcombe, energy and sustainability manager at Cardiff Council said: “We were looking at solar and hydro, but that takes up a lot of land and land in cities is expensive. But there is a lot of land that we have that’s available whilst it waits for other opportunities. So this was a question about how we could generate electricity in a way that was portable, so once the site is needed for something else it can be moved on.”

That’s where Renovagen came in – their “rapid roll” roll-up solar panels are providing an average of 11KW of power – enough for four residents and visits from tourists. The system includes batteries capable of storing 24KW/h of power, which is about a day’s worth of the island’s energy requirements. This is a fantastic and cost-effective interim solution until they decide what the optimal choice for Flat Holm’s electricity generation will be.

Renovagen Solar Carpet — Renovagen Rapid Roll “Solar Carpet” deployed at Flat Holm, UK (source: renovagen.com)

About Renovagen

John Hingley, Renovagen Managing Director, started work on this scaled-up mobile solar technology in 2012. It’s now the leading UK startup in commercial-scale portable solar power systems. They fully funded a £1,000,000 equity investment pitch via the UK crowdfunding platform, Crowdcube, in April last year – to help the speed up the development and go-to-market costs of their “Roll-Away” rapid roll portable solar systems. The company had hoped to raise £600,000 in equity funding so this was a great result.

Currently based in Milton Keynes, their technology has been growing in leaps and bounds – take a look at the video below to learn more about how it works:

Rapid Roll Overview Video Presentation Sept 2016 from John Hingley on Vimeo.

Renovagen Rapid Roll “I”

The Renovagen Rapid Roll “I” is one of the most exciting of their products – currently under development, this portable solar power solution will come in an ISO (International Standards Organization or intermodal, i.e. a standardised size) shipping container and can provide enough power (depending on how technology goes, this could be up to 600kWp, according to Renovagen) for a small city.

The idea of mobile and portable industrial size scale solar power one is extremely exciting and it has a lot of potential uses. The Rapid Roll “I” will fit in 20ft ISO or 40ft ISO containers and will be able to deploy 5x200m and 10x200m of solar panels respectively.

It comes complete with inverters and a large battery bank (specifics not available yet).

Commercial-Scale Portable Solar Power

There are many uses for commercial-scale portable solar – off grid power in remote locations is extremely expensive and complicated to set up. Military, disaster relief, mining, construction, events, film production, and telecommunications are all situations where this ‘container solar’ idea could provide a huge help at a cost-effective price.

If they’re able to scale this technology quickly, imagine how useful it’d be in situations like Puerto Rico where Hurricane Maria has left their ravaged state-owned utility PREPA trying frantically to restore power to the island’s 3.4 million residents. Elon Musk and Tesla has stepped in – they’ve been shipping their Powerpack and Powerwall batteries over there and there’s talk of installing a Tesla microgrid in Puerto Rico, but it’ll still be months before grid power is restored to anywhere but places that need it the most urgently (hospitals, authorities, etc.)

This is one of the biggest breakthroughs in portable solar of the past 10 years – so we’ll see what happens in the wake of Flat Holm and keep you updated. Very exciting stuff for solar!

Brewongle Solar Farm faces NIMBY opposition.

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Mike — No Comments ↓

The Brewongle solar farm, set to be constructed on a 203 hectare parcel of land at Brewongle, is facing staunch opposition from local residents who are concerned they will have to look at it. It’s expected to result in almost 200,000 tonnes of co2 savings and will produce 240GWh of renewable energy per year. The proposed farm has also raised the ire of Brewongle locals who object to its installation on ‘prime agricultural land’.

Brewongle Solar Farm

Photon Energy are proposing to build the 146MW solar farm which will finish construction at the end of 2018. Photon have set up a community engagement page to interact with the residents of Brewongle while they try to get development approval for the project. In the meantime, around 80 residents attended a public meeting on Wednesday night to discuss their concerns. Journalist Nadine Morton was at the event and you can click here to view a video of it.

The Western Advocate quotes a number of residents who ostensibly don’t want ‘prime agricultural land being used for a solar farm’ but seem more concerned with its aesthetic sensibilities (or lack thereof?) – with one saying ‘you will see it from the house’, and another ‘I’m going to see it, I have a vested interest in not seeing it’. No word on what that vested interest is, but presumably the implicit ignominy of renewable energy is particularly galling to Brewongle, given that new solar panels reflect as little as 2% of incoming sunlight and are okay to put on top of airports.

Another resident thought it worth noting that ‘…people coming into Bathurst will see it from the railway line’ – perhaps they host the BHP Billiton Bathurst Birthday Bash and are concerned that this brazen display of the future may put off their open-cut coal mine overlords as they gaze out of the train window?

Lastly, the Western Advocate quotes another Brewongle resident who, in classic NIMBY fashion, ‘(doesn’t) think anyone opposes it, it just shouldn’t be on prime land’. Although the video above has poor audio and is a bit difficult to understand, there also appear to be some concerns about subdividing agricultural (rural) land and using it for commercial purposes – so we’ll see how this factors into their argument over the coming weeks and months.

The residents have called on the Bathurst Regional Council to support them in their noble crusade, despite the fact that final approval will actually come from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment given that it is a ‘project of state significance’.

Conversely, a more heartening letter to the editor has been published on the Western Advocate website where a Raglan local calls the rationale behind the opposition ‘bizarre’ and described the behaviour at the aforementioned public meeting as ‘somewhat embarrassing’ – which is putting it somewhat mildly.

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Solar roads in Tokyo for 2020 Olympics