The first solar roadway in the U.S. debuted on an 18-mile stretch of I-85 in southwestern Georgia. It’s called the Ray C. Anderson Memorial Highway, and the asphalt is a living laboratory now known as The Ray — it offers a vision of how highways could look and function in the future. A small section of the roadway leading to the Visitor’s Center is paved with solar panels and serves as a testing ground for solar roadway technology. It also houses the state’s first solar-powered PV4EV (photovoltaic for electric vehicle) charging station, and that opens up the length of I-85 between the Alabama border and Atlanta to electric vehicles. In addition, this fall thousands of solar panels will line the roadside of the interstate, and Georgia will become the third state in the nation to pilot a so-called “right of way” solar farm. Highways generate 5 million tons of CO2 emissions nationally each year and there were 35,000 fatalities on them in 2015 alone.
