With highway solarisation, it will be like Christmas every day of the year for RDA

Christmas Day revenue

There was a news item online that the Road Development Authority recorded revenue of Rs. 18.185 million from the Southern Expressway on 25 December and another Rs. 9.55 million from Katunayake Expressway on 23 December.

RDA Director S. Opanayake is very happy about the collections and he comments that this is the highest revenue in the last five years. He mentions that the daily traffic is about 43,000 vehicles on the Southern Expressway, bringing in Rs. 11.5 million, while on the Katunayake Expressway it is 24,000 vehicles bringing in Rs. 6.5 million revenue. He is happy about both the increase in vehicles patronising the highways and reduction in accidents due to more disciplined driving. 

When reading this, my mind goes to early days of motorcycle usage in Sri Lanka, when we had Honda and Yamaha wards in our major hospitals. Today with more disciplined motorcycle usage, such wards are not required.

He would be much happier if these highways were solarised, i.e. photovoltaic solar panels installed above and along the highway to generate electricity either for the main grid or to charge battery electric vehicles plying on the expressway itself or elsewhere. 

If we implemented highway solarisation on this Southern Expressway, we could have installed a setup of 300MW power and every sunny day it would have collected Rs. 34.5 million revenue from the electricity sold. Would it be like Christmas every day then? This is exactly what I explained as published in a newspaper on 12 May 2010 and what I again wrote to a newspaper on 25 October 2011. So we have already lost five years and revenue of Rs. 50 billion which could have helped us to pay back 60% of the loan taken for the Expressway or at least 40% after recovering a part of investment on highway solarisation.

If this highway solarisation was done at a cost of Rs. 80 billion, the entire energy used to power battery electric vehicles, we will be saving Rs. 12.7 billion in foreign exchange (at today’s price levels) every year and in 15 years we would have paid back the loan on the expressway and recovered the investment on the highway solarisation. Do we want to go on like this and leave all this debt burden to the future generations who will blame the politicians without knowing the technocrats’ resistance to these moves?

Revenue from highway solarisation

Accoding to the website of RDA sometime back, the total cost of the Southern Expressway was about Rs. 80 billion with funding coming from ADB, JBIC and China Exim Bank. According to Opanayaka, RDA would be getting a revenue of Rs. 11.5 million per day. If we add about 10 days of Christmas Day type revenue, the total annual revenue will be Rs. 4.3 billion. So, with reasonable amount of maintenance expenses – say Rs. 300 million per year – they could recover the cost of the highway construction in about 20 years.

If we look at the new extension of 96km of the Southern Expressway from Matara to Hambantota, it was mentioned in the papers that this roadway will cost Sri Lanka $ 1.7 billion (i.e. Rs. 255 billion) out of which $97 million will be spent on design, review, etc. If we assume this extension brings in the same level of revenue, as the current stretch of the Southern Expressway i.e. Rs. 4.3 billion per year, from day one, it will take 60 years to generate enough funds to settle the debt. Even if we take the reduction in foreign exchange cost of fuel due to the expressway it will add up only another Rs.1.8 billion per year. 

Going by the enhancements in provincial GDP as given in Central Bank Report for 2015, that for the Southern Province from 2012 to 2014 was only 36.2% while the same increase for other provinces excepting Western, Eastern and Northern Provinces were all more than this 36.2%.

The loan is at an interest rate of 2%, and so the revenue from toll fees will be sufficient to pay the interest and it will be a never-ending loan.

How highway solarisation makes the extension sunnier

In case we solarise this new highway extension, we may be able to install 300MW of power and generate 500GWhrs of electricity per year. If we supply power to the main grid, at Rs. 23 per kWhr we will have a revenue of Rs. 11.5 billion per annum, and along with the toll revenue of Rs. 4.3 billion it could make a significant contribution to the loan repayment. 

Then we need to look at the cost of this highway solarisation. At Rs. 270 million per MW, total 300MW would cost Rs. 81 billion for the project. So after settling the cost of the highway solarisation project in eight years, there would be Rs. 135 billion revenue from electricity to subsidise the settlement of the highway construction cost. 

How can we make it more attractive?

There are two ways to make this more attractive – by reducing the cost and by increasing the revenue. To our knowledge there is no other project in the world where they have installed PV solar panels above and along a highway – not because of any shortcomings in the arrangement, but because nobody had thought about it.

When an asphalt roadway is built, it absorbs anything from 88% to 94% of solar radiation falling on the highway. This solar radiation absorbed – ultra violet and short wave – heats up the highway which will emit this extra heat as longwave, infrared radiation only to be absorbed by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – CO2, H2O, CH4, etc. and reemitted back, leading to global warming. 

But the real onslaught begins when those 43,000 vehicles start using the highway burning 300,000 litres of oil every day. This will amount to about 792 tons of CO2, 324 tons of water vapour and 2,408 MW hours of waste heat been emitted by the vehicles in addition to the9,720 MW hours of solar radiation absorbed by the highway every day and all this in the absence of whatever vegetation we have cleared. Can Rs. 11.5 million collected every day compensate for this damage?

So the final equation amounts to our sacrificing Rs. 12,000,000 in foreign exchange (economic aspect), incurring an environmental damage of 792 tons of CO2, 324 tons of water vapour (please include greenhouse gas effect of this, cyclones, etc., due to this as well as landslides, earth slips, flooding due to this) and total of 12,128 MWhrs of heat contributing to global warming (environmental aspect) for the sake of obtaining energy for 4.3 million vehicle kilometres every day.

We at Somaratna Consultants, hate to pronounce and publicise a problem without doing something about it or providing a solution and our solution – highway solarisation – does exactly that. It negates the economic damage and the environmental damage while ensuring the energy load is successfully met. That is the beauty of highway solarisation. 

The total load of 4.3 million vehicle kilometres a day (requirement is 645,000 kWhrs of electricity) could be easily met by the 1.5 million kWhrs generated per day (averaged over the year) if all vehicles on the road are battery electric vehicles. As this solar energy, is received free of charge we will be saving Rs. 12,000,000 in foreign exchange every day.

Since all the vehicles could be driven using electricity generated by highway solarisation if required number of BEVs are available, those 792 tons of CO2, 324 tons of water vapour and 2408MWhrs of waste energy generated by the fuel oil driven vehicles could be eliminated. Furthermore, out of that 9,720MWhrs of solar energy absorbed by the highway and reemitted leading to global warming, 1500MWhrs would be converted into electricity and another similar quantity (2100Mwhrs) would be reflected in a dispersed fashion as shortwave radiation.

So one could see that with highway solarisation, we generate energy for the sake of the economy and the environment rather than other way round – sacrificing economy and environment for the sake of energy – as is being done today. This interesting, unique, background which could be established beyond any doubt with quantitatively verifiable data, would qualify the project for a Green Climate Fund Grant which will reduce its cost significantly. If the request is properly formulated with all relevant data, estimates, etc., we may be able to obtain a substantial Green Climate Fund Grant, say up to about 50%. So, this is how we could bring down the cost.

How could we increase the revenue? It is very unlikely that CEB would pay anything more than Rs. 23 per kWhr; or rather they would demand power at a lower price. If we want to sell electricity at a higher price, we need to identify the application where energy fetches the highest price per actual kWhr used and there is such an application. 

When we buy petrol/diesel to be used in an internal combustion engine driven vehicle, we will be wasting about 80% of the energy in the fuel. The comparison will be like this: A petrol driven Toyota Camry uses about 2.85MJ/km while the battery driven Toyota Camry uses only 0.58 MJ/kM.So when you pay Rs. 117 and buy a litre of petrol you will be using only 1.6 kWhrs. So the motorists willing to spend Rs. 73.12 per kWhr of energy used may be willing to pay Rs. 50 per kWhr. So, selling electricity to battery electric vehicles at Rs. 30 per kWhr would not be difficult and unfair and this will enhance the revenue by about 30%.

With this enhanced revenue and reduced cost, we could settle the cost of the roadway and the highway solarisation in less than 20 years and the future generations would have a better environment to live in and a better economy to manage. It is our responsibility to make it happen, especially when it is already perceived and presented.

Other significant benefits

It is not only this extraordinary loan repayment capability which should drive the case for highway solarisation. It has many other significant advantages as follows:

a)    It would prevent water and rain water falling on the highway which leads to cracking and significant maintenance costs. So a significant cost of maintenance could be saved.

b)    This prevention of water falling on the highway will also have a significant reduction in number of accidents. In fact, in USA, 75% of roadway accidents are due to wet road surfaces; well yes, snowfall plays a major part in this finding.

c)    Rainwater could be harvested in a distributed fashion without being contaminated by chemicals on the ground. According to the Budget speech 2017, the Government needs to spend Rs. 300 billion within the next three years to ensure that those living in water scarce areas do get water. So this arrangement, especially since they would be established in more sunny areas, could assist in reducing this cost.

d)    The motorists will be using less air conditioners as the roadways would be less warm and they will be using less of wipers as well. Reductions in Greenhouse Gases will also result from these.

What would it do to our environmental initiative 

– Paris Accord?

We have signed up the Paris Accord and agreed to make an effort to reduce our CO2 emissions. We are also on a drive towards development based on Megapolis Development, rapid industrialisation and tourism and it will be a tough job to achieve these development objectives alongside a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions. Highway solarisation will definitely support us in this endeavour.

According to a computation carried out in 2005, the Global Tourism GHG Foot Print consists of air traffic 515Mt, car travel 420Mt and accommodation 275Mt, etc., in a total of 1304Mt. So our best opportunity to achieve reduction in GHG Footprint while promoting tourism will be to convert car travel to battery electric mode powered by highway solarisation to the greatest extent possible and move towards eliminating that 32% component.

If we use whatever balance from highway solarisation after usage in transport in the daytime activities in the tourist hotels, we could also reduce another fraction of that 21% component for accommodation. Then we can boast of having the greenest tourism package in the world.

What do we need to do to make all this happen?

We have done a risk assessment on this proposal and we have received a list of possible issues that would be encountered by such an arrangement. The two most significant – in respect of impact and not in respect of probability – were (i) difficulties in recovery operations arising from an accident and (ii) difficulties to be encountered in respect of an accident involving a vehicle carrying a flammable material. 

When I spoke about these to a Sri Lankan friend of mine living in Japan for 26 years, he told me many Sri Lankans – probably in thousands – who have visited Japan mostly for technology transfer purposes would have travelled through tunnels more than 10 kms in length in their highway network. He further said that accidents could occur even in those highways and that possibility would never deter the Japanese from saving energy and man-hours possible to be achieved from these tunnels.

My mind also went back to 1980 December when my Cement Corporation Colleague G.S. Gunasena and I were travelling from Cologne to Siemens in Frankfurt on the autobahn driven by Adolf Walter and there was an announcement over the radio to say that a vehicle carrying a flammable liquid had caught fire at a certain location and motorists should avoid using that roadway. It was a low probability-high impact event and people would not forego a greater benefit because of it. 

It happens in Japan, Germany and elsewhere; and we should not deprive ourselves the benefit of saving (a) billions of dollars of foreign exchange, (b) billions of dollars to settle our foreign debt, (c) our forest cover and our environment from irreparable damage because of possibilities of such once-in-a-life time events.

We read about driverless automobiles on the internet with great enthusiasm – in fact one driverless Tesla automobile has already met with a fatal accident – and yearn for that future almost every day; but would hesitate to solarise our highways because of the fear of an accident. We recommend putting warning boards at the two ends of the stretch regarding the risks involved just like all other warning boards about accident-prone areas. Whatever damage that could be caused to the highway solarisation infrastructure itself would be covered by insurance and will be the lookout of the developer.

Action or inaction today will determine whether we would (i) remain that timid country overburdened with foreign debt of a 10 trillion rupee magnitude only to be spoken of in public fora waiting to be saved by Western powers – powered at least minutely by the products of Sri Lanka’s free education – either directly or through donor agencies, or (ii) forge ahead to be a tech-savvy nation reminiscent of those great eras, symbols of which we show our tourists so proudly, merely to justify our being their cooks, domestic aides, valets and above all bearers of their GHG emissions.

If King Parakramabahu of Polonnaruwa lived today, he may have asked us not to allow a single ray of sunlight to fall on Mother Earth without making the maximum use of it. Let us wait till we all go to the West to show our prowess as the best of technocrats in the world. Sri Lanka is not suitable to receive the benefits of our technical capabilities and ingenuities and education for which even that beggar on the street would have contributed.

(The writer is Managing Director of Somaratna Consultants Ltd.)