Road energy collection involves capturing energy from vehicles or road environment such as vibration, heat, or sunlight.
Electric road systems charge vehicles while driving, using overhead lines or direct road transmission.
MI opened a quarter-mile long wireless charging street in 2023, and IN is building a quarter-mile for completion in 2025.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are projected to increase electricity demand by nearly 721 terrawatt-hours by 2035 (International Energy Agency 2024). In addition to increased energy demands, current charging systems can create demand surges which strain the grid and accelerate damage to infrastructure (Jenn & Highleymann 2022). New technologies to collect energy from roads are being developed to combat or mitigate these issues (Table 1).
Table 1. Major energy harvesting technologies. Advantages and disadvantages of major road energy collecting technologies. Taken from Warsi & Kumar 2024, Gholikhani et al. 2020, Zabihi & Saffi 2020.
For road energy collection, which involves capturing energy from vehicles or road environment like vibration, heat, or sunlight, the French town of Tourouvre opened about half a mile of roadway covered with solar panels, replacing asphalt in December 2016 (Pultarova 2017). In the Netherlands, a bike path integrated solar panels into the road surface (Shekar et al. 2019). It produced 16% less energy than expected, but matched predictions achieving an annual energy yield of approx. 85–90 kWh/m². Issues like weather forecasts, equipment limits, and downtime caused the shortfall. In the U.S., CA is developing a project to collect energy from roads using piezoelectric materials (Sun et al. 2023).
Electric road systems (ERS) refer to technology that charges vehicles while driving, either through overhead lines, which use suspended wires above the road to transmit electricity, or directly from the road in the form of rails or wireless systems (Shoman et al. 2022, Taljegard et al. 2019). Overhead lines are limited to trucks and heavy vehicles because they operate on fixed long-distance routes, while electrified rails and wireless charging can be used by all vehicle types (Pei et al. 2024, Taljegard et al. 2019).
ERS technology has been tested on short stretches of road but has not yet been deployed on a large scale. Sweden, Germany, France, the UK, China, Finland, and Norway have tested ERS (Coban et al. 2022). Sweden’s tests have shown that it is possible to charge vehicles while driving, and ERS could cut road transport emissions by 20% (Gustavson & Lindgren 2020). A study explored the impact of deploying ERS across Norway and Sweden using transport data from these two countries (Taljegard et al. 2019). It found that electrifying 25% of major roads could allow 70% of traffic on those routes to operate on electricity. It also found that ERS is more effective on high-traffic roads.
In the U.S., MI opened a one quarter mile long wireless-charging street in November 2023 (MI Department of Transportation (DOT) 2023). Since 2018, IN has explored building a wireless charging infrastructure to charge moving electric vehicles (INDOT n.d.). In Spring 2024, IN started building a quarter-mile stretch to power heavy-duty trucks on U.S. 231/52. The project is set to be completed in 2025.
Coban HH, Rehman A, Mohamed A (2022) Analyzing the societal cost of electric roads compared to batteries and oil for all forms of road transport. Energies, 15(5):1925. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/5/1925
Gholikhani M, Roshani H, Dessouky S, Papagiannakis AT (2020) A critical review of roadway energy harvesting technologies. Applied Energy, 261:114388.https://lan-inc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Hossein-Roshani-Paper.pdf.
Gustavsson MG, Lindgren M (2020) Maturity of power transfer technologies for electric road systems. InTransport Research Arena 2020, Helsinki, 27-30 April 2020 (Conference canceled). Finnish Transport and Communications Agency. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1414333&dswid=9291.
Indiana Department of Transportation (n.d.) INDOT, Purdue to Develop Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging Solution for Highway Infrastructure. Link
International Energy Agency (IEA) (2024) Global EV Data Explorer. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/global-ev-data-explorer.
Jenn A., Highleyman J (2022) Distribution grid impacts of electric vehicles: a California case study. iScience, 25:103686. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103686.
Michigan Department of Transportation (2023) MDOT, City of Detroit and Electreon unveil the nation’s first public EV-charging roadway at Michigan Central. Link
Pei Y, Chen F, Ma T, Gu GA (2024) Comparative review study on the electrified road structures: Performances, sustainability, and prospects. Structures, 62: 106185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2024.106185.
Pultarova T (2017). News Briefing: Energy - Welcome to the world’s first solar road. Engineering & Technology, 12(1):10–10. doi:10.1049/et.2017.0114
Shekhar A, Kumaravel VK, Klerks S, de Wit S, Venugopal P, Narayan N, Bauer P, Isabella O, Zeman M (2018) Harvesting roadway solar energy—performance of the installed infrastructure integrated PV bike path. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 8(4):1066-73. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8338400.
Shoman W, Karlsson S, Yeh S (2022) Benefits of an electric road system for battery electric vehicles. World Electric Vehicle Journal, 13(11):197. https://doi.org/10.3390/wevj13110197.
Sun JQ, Xu TB, Yazdani A (2023) Ultra-High Power Density Roadway Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting System. Energy Research and Development Division, Final Project Report. CA Energy Commission. https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/CEC-500-2023-036.pdf.
Taljegard M, Thorson L, Odenberger M, Johnsson F (2020) Large-scale implementation of electric road systems: Associated costs and the impact on CO2 emissions. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 14(8):606-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15568318.2019.1595227.
Warsi MH, Nandha Kumar T (2024) Advances in energy harnessing techniques for smart highways: a review. Electrical Engineering, 106(5): 6389-6408. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00202-024-02379-8.
Zabihi N, Saafi M (2020) Recent developments in the energy harvesting systems from road infrastructures. Sustainability,12(17): 6738. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/6738.
