The installation, located in a downtown Sandpoint, Idaho, a resort community in the northern part of the state, features 150 square feet of hexagon-shaped solar panels that people can walk and even bicycle on.
"Our plan is to replace all the asphalt and concrete [in the US]," company founder Scott Brusaw told the Associated Press recently.
Concrete covers about 48,000 square miles in the US.
Brusaw believes that if one were to simply cover it with solar panels, that nation would easily be able to make three times the energy it needs.
There are similar projects in other parts of the world -- a solar bike path was built in the Netherlands in 2014, and full-blown roadway projects are in the works in France and Germany -- but Solar Roadways, founded in 2006, is the only company currently receiving federal money to pursue its dream in the US.
To date, the company founded by Brusaw and his wife, Julie, after they watched the Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth," has received $1.6 million from the US Federal Highway Administration.
The couple raised another $2.2 million from 50,000 donors through Indiegogo, a crowd-funding website.
Their plan is to open a Solar Roadways manufacturing plant to produce their patented glass panels next year.
In the meantime, they are conducting a series of tests to show the panels are strong enough and provide enough traction to be safely traversed by cars and large vehicles, including tractor trailers.
So far, the tests have been successful, the company said.
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