Three Central European research institutes are developing a ‘solar highway’ concept, this time in the form of a canopy structure over the road. This ‘PV-SUD Strassenueberdachung’ project is being designed by Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE, Austria’s Forster Industrietechnik, and the Austrian Institute of Technology. It is still in concept stage, but a demonstration project is planned to run from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022. In some ways this would be similar to carport installations, but this canopy will need to be an affordable, 30-year lifespan structure with higher requirements. It needs to prevent any car crash from damaging the panels, without making such crashes more dangerous to passengers – perhaps a weak and redundant structure which can…