Besides serving transportation purposes, road pavements can double as energy harvesting systems. The energy can be sourced from sunlight or from the traffic load of vehicles and pedestrians (Figure 1). Solar energy specifically can be exploited with pavement equipped with photovoltaic cells (PV cells) or systems that capture and repurpose the solar heat. The energy generated by traffic can be converted into electricity by installing kinetic pavements that harness crystal vibrations or surface displacement [1]. But is it possible to efficiently harvest energy from pavements?

In this note, we present the different technologies available, along with case studies demonstrating their efficiency and installation costs. As will be seen, the different ways to generate energy from pavements described in Figure 1 have indeed all been implemented to some extent, and the big differences lie in the technological maturity, energy yield and cost.