A few years ago I posted the above video made by plucky inventors working on a scheme to convert roadways to solar collectors.
They’ve kept at it.
Now there is a crowd sourcing page aimed at helping them take the next step, and a new video, below.
Solar Roadways is a modular paving system of solar panels that can withstand the heaviest of trucks (250,000 pounds). These Solar Road Panels can be installed on roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, bike paths, playgrounds… literally any surface under the sun. They pay for themselves primarily through the generation of electricity, which can power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots. A nationwide system could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole (http://solarroadways.com/numbers.shtml). They have many other features as well, including: heating elements to stay snow/ice free, LEDs to make road lines and signage, and attached Cable Corridor to store and treat stormwater and provide a “home” for power and data cables. EVs will be able to charge with energy from the sun (instead of fossil fuels) from parking lots and driveways and after a roadway system is in place, mutual induction technology will allow for charging while driving.
- Solar Roadways has received two phases of funding from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration for research and development of a paving system that will pay for itself over its lifespan. We are about to wrap up our Phase II contract (to build a prototype parking lot) and now need to raise funding for production.
- Our glass surface has been tested for traction, load testing, and impact resistance testing in civil engineering laboratories around the country, and exceeded all requirements.
- Solar Roadways is a modular system that will modernize our aging infrastructure with an intelligent system that can become the new Smart Grid. We won the Community Award of $50,000 by getting the most votes in GE’s Ecomagination Challenge for “Powering the Grid” in 2010. We had the most votes again in their 2011 Ecomagination Challenge for “Powering the Home”.
- On August 21, 2013, Solar Roadways was selected by their peers as a Finalist in the World Technology Award For Energy, presented in association with TIME, Fortune, CNN, and Science.
- Solar Roadways was chosen by Google to be one of their Moonshots in May of 2013.
- Solar Roadways was chosen as a finalist in the IEEE Ace Awards in 2009 and 2010.
- Solar Roadways has given presentations around the country including: TEDx Sacramento, Google’s Solve for X at Google’s NYC Headquarters, NASA, Keynote Speaker for the International Parking Institute’s Conference and much more…
- Solar Roadways is tackling more than solar energy: The FHWA tasked us with addressing the problem of stormwater. Currently, over 50% of the pollutions in U.S. waterways comes from stormwater. We have created a section in our Cable Corridors for storing, treating, and moving stormwater.
- The implementation of our concept on a grand scale could create thousands of jobs in the U.S. and around the world. It could allow us all the ability to manufacture our way out of our current economic crisis.
Global warming and climate change are no longer valid term s.
The White House now uses “climate disruption” as the new descriptor.
The Obama administration has also awarded billions of taxpayer dollars to politically connected green energy companies , many of which have failed.
The fossil fuel companies get 2 trillion dollars of subsidies world wide and are failing our climate which is no longer stable but changing to a warmer state. A road that can pay for itself is the conservative mantra being met. I had my doubts a few years ago, but these people persisted and have made it work. Its worth carrying out to either adaptation on a wide scale or a small scale. Its made it.
This is mind-boggling in its scope—-like a Swiss Army Knife. It may violate the KISS principle, though.
They have “made it work”? Maybe in the lab, but I’ll believe it when I see it “work” not in a parking lot (their next step), but on a stretch of nasty road like Routes 1 or 22 in NJ and in states with weather extremes like MN and AZ.
And I wonder how big a sledgehammer will be needed to shatter the tempered glass? I’m sure some evil teenagers will do some experimentation on that.
Just one thing falling off a truck will do that.
The upside I can see is that the panels look to be replaceable without any great effect on their neighbors. Bye-bye, potholes.
Keep in mind current roads also require repair. I recommend the ‘Tesla strategy’: pitch these roads to wealthy communities first (to recharge their Tesla roadsters, naturally), to gain market-share and experience. Then to other suburban communities. Town and city roads. Last would be major highways.
Now that I give it some more thought, I suspect that this particular application will go exactly nowhere. The reason: road noise. The strongly-textured surface will generate a great deal of noise as tires roll across it, and nobody will want it in their neighborhood.
Roofing and siding are still good possibilities.
ROAD NOISE is going to kill the Solar Roadway? Nope, that’s easy to solve. Even 18-wheelers whose tires “scream” at 65-70 mph make very little road noise at 25 mph. So—-we just reduce the speed limit on all Solar Roadways to 25 mph and viola—problem solved! That also helps mitigate the skidding problem on that slippery glass and will help conserve fuel. Vehicles can now have THREE mpg sticker ratings, city, highway, and Solar Highway.
Maybe we can also use some of that excess silica gel in an innovative way here by spraying it on the glass? Does silica gel have sound-deadening qualities? Will it stick to the glass as well as it will to the ice on the underside of the glaciers in Antarctica?
I know you’re just being silly, but road noise forced the resurfacing of a textured section of I-275 in Oakland county, Michigan. It was very plain to drivers when you crossed onto the grooved concrete, and residents’ complaints eventually got the authorities to cover it with blacktop.
I”M the one who’s being being silly?!? LMAO—-I’m not the one saying that ROAD NOISE will kill the Solar Highway or suggesting we should spray silica gel on the underside of glaciers (BTW, have you checked Chemistry for Dummies out of the library yet?).
Where do you live anyway? Out on a one lane dirt road somewhere? I live about 1-1/2 miles away from I-66 in northern VA, and can hear the steady hum of road noise even at that distance. It is especially loud during the many hours that the road is at rush hour status, and at quiet times in the middle of the night you can follow the progress of a single 18-wheeler as it traverses the nearest two or three miles of the interstate. It’s loud enough that you could probably drop mortar rounds close to it using just the sound to aim.
We just live with it here, as we do with the noise of the planes from Dulles and the horns on the many trains passing nearby as well. Such are the benefits of modern society. (Although having the Concorde pass by so close overhead that you could make out the windows was no fun).
Get serious, E-Pot. There are MANY better reasons why the Solar Highway is a silly idea, and I’m surprised that you haven’t thought of them (or looked them up for us). I gave you some clues, particularly the idea that solar insolation varies greatly with latitude, season, and time of the day. Someone as smart as you should be able to do the calculations (check out Trig for Dummies if you can’t) and show us how a solar panel flat on the ground in Washington DC will generate only ~1/4 the electricity in winter that it will in summer. There’s a reason solar panels are mounted at an angle to the ground, you know. (And it’s even less practical in the Netherlands, where some fools are supporting the idea).
And in deriding the notion, you turn away from the fact that local quality-of-life issues are major factors in politics, and nuisances such as noise get prompt action in the form of lawsuits. Once one neighborhood sues over noise from a textured glass road surface, the stuff will be poison.
Here are minutes from a Livonia (MI) city council meeting, mentioning the noise issue from the textured concrete on I-275. Here is a Michigan Senate document detailing the problem and how it was corrected.
You’re absolutely right about the insolation issue and how it makes solar roadways more or less useless in the winter. If you had half a brain, you’d also realize that it’s irrelevant. People do not have standing to sue over boondoggles, and some will make money from the project itself. But if you threaten someone’s peaceful enjoyment of the home whose value they’re counting on to finance their children’s college education… the personal injury lawyers will find THEM.
You say I’m the one with half a brain? LOL
I don’t know why you are grasping at the straw of road noise (and making gratuitous insults along the way), but I haven’t got the time to waste on that dead-before -it-was-born horse.
I’ve spoken my piece about what will REALLY kill Solar Roadways, and would rather spend my energies on substantial issues, like the wondrous properties of silica gel that you now seem to want to avoid.
PS I forgot to mention that I don’t recall seeing anything at all about road noise in the slick FAQ horsepucky on the website. Don’t you think it’s a bit premature to PFTA the question of road noise when these things have yet to be put in an actual road or tested for “road noise”?
Because I know from nuisance suits. Technical failure will get a solar roadway project abandoned. Road noise will halt it before begins construction.
You sound like a guy who drives without his hearing aids in. Anyone with a functioning pair of ears and a brain (from which group you seem to except yourself) knows that tires generate more noise on rough pavement. It sets up vibrations in the tires and provides routes for air to jet through gaps rhythmically. If you need a scientific paper to believe this, it just means that you are so wedded to dogma that you can’t accept anything until it is officially approved—which explains so much about you.
E-Pot has graduated from simple gratuitous insults to outright and extended ad hominem attacks and name-calling. A sure sign that he can’t refute either my facts or my logic.
Thrash around in impotence, E-Pot, and continue to regale us with the looked-up science of road noise, which you apparently do not have enough science knowledge to really understand. Have you forgotten that I once taught physics to fools like you?
What you said here is generally true as far as it goes—roughness of pavement does affect sound levels, but it is way more complex than that. Asphalt is “quieter” than concrete, and other countries are doing research on porous road surfaces to reduce road noise, but the main problem is with the tires, not the surface. Traffic speed, tire tread design, and the characteristics of the rubber used are far more significant in generating road noise than the character of the road surface.
You really ought to stop trying to get by with this stuff you quickly look up on the web and misinterpret. Although you are not as far off here as you were with desmids, bacterial genetics, and silica gel, you ARE embarrassing yourself here, at least among those of us who understand the science that you do not.
Go away, troll, and take your list of “talking points for idiots to parrot” with you. You waste our time.
Gee, you are about 5 years behind the conversation with this comment. if you wish to actually contribute, and not just provide embarrassing examples of denier ignorance – (which has value, don’t get me wrong) suggest you watch the videos.
playlist here
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=029130BFDC78FA33
start with this one
What is this fetish people have to put solar panels where they are least well suited?
A highway made of solar panels. Why, man, why???????
Or a parking lot in the northeast U.S. – lets put solar panels on its roof! Yeah, what a great idea!
Enough solar panels to run our entire world could be placed in the American SW, where the sun shines intensely virtually every day. And we wouldn’t have to displace anyone. And we could have a huge economy of scale, which would save us trillions of dollars.
But nooooooooo. Let’s make highways made of solar panels. Sigh.
The stupidity is colossal.
Colossal optimism and inventiveness along with that colossal stupidity. And R-Pot’s comment about potholes and “replaceability” makes me wonder if the kids with sledgehammers will have company out there in the dark of night. Crews pulling them up for sale on the black market—-just like entrepreneurs stripping copper from empty houses and lifting airbag units from cars?
I would like to see covered parking lots with solar arrays here in Texas,where in summer,late spring and early fall,your car can reach astoundingly high temps.The cover helps to prevent that,while also generating energy for the businesses or for electric car charging.
I know I have seen stories about places where they do this already,but I have never seen it here where we need it the most.Maybe Wal-Mart might get on board with it since they show signs of moving toward more energy self sufficiency.
Look no further. All over California.
http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-exposed-to-rising-sea-levels-2014-4
It’s not stupid, it’s unusual, which means it’s creative. I think it remains to be seen whether an idea like this will work or not. Why not use the space to generate electricity if we can? It’s more likely to be paid for by cities and states than putting solar on our rooftops, and individuals have a hard time forking over the amount of money needed, and the hassle, to put solar panels on their roofs.
I’m all for people being entrepreneurs.
Personally, I think this idea is brilliant. What did people use before asphalt? Clay tiling. The Roman’s tiled entire highways in it. Europe is filled with old tiled streets. This is no different. And a road is already a natural landscape that’s been marred for other reasons. Environmentally, its basically free real-estate. Look down on L.A. from Space and what are you looking at? 60% is asphalt. No, I couldn’t disagree with you more. This is a very smart idea.
The core thinking behind many of these “solar in odd spots” ideas is that putting the panels there is ‘free’. It’s a spot we’ve already paved over, (so they don’t impact the ecology the way putting them in undeveloped locations would), and the panels don’t interfere with our other uses of the space[1].
Now, one of the things we want to do is to spread out solar generation. What you don’t want is one massive facility and the huge amount of hydro lines that would have to be built to distribute it. Instead, have every city powered locally with the connections just there to cover local shortfalls[2].
Making the roads into solar collectors also solves one of the issues solar can have in northern locations: Keeping the snow off in winter. Given that we _already_ have everything set up to mostly clear the roads within hours of a major fall we wouldn’t see much of an interruption from them being covered in snow[3].
[1] Or in the case of roofing a parking lot with them, it actually improves it by keeping the sun off your car and the rain off you.
[2] Combined with storage you might not even need to be able to power the city on long-distance imports. Just enough to recharge things and enough backup to survive until everything is running again.
[3] And i
The problem of using an external editor is that sometimes you miss something in the final copy:
[3] And if it has a heating system: NO MORE BLACK ICE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Btw, let’s hope that these ingenious solar highways become so popular that they get incredibly popular. Let’s cross our fingers, in fact, hope for the best, and envision them absolutely covered with cars!
[Foghorn Leghorn voice] Transparent cars, that is – son I say, son, that’s transparent cars!
Gingerbaker
Don’t block my sun!
That just made me think about how clever it is to make parking lots out of these things. During the day when the sun is shining and the parking lot is full, the cars will shade over 50% of the panels. At night when everyone drives home and the panels are uncovered, the sun don’t shine! DUH.
Am I the only person that looks for a tree to park under in the parking lot when it’s sunny?
Obviously, solar panels should cover the cars like laterally extended trees to shade as well as charge them, as well as provide power for the stores.
Car parks are huge solar real estates just begging to be used.
Read on.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/the-parking-lot-as-solar-grove/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
This is why we are not going to see “solar roadways” go very far. There are far better ideas out there—-like this one.
At 60km/h a 2 second separation is over 16 meters.
Even with ‘bumper to bumper’ traffic the cars are going to cover less than half.
In the DC Metro area, “bumper to bumper” traffic means just that, and people follow so closely that those bumpers often “touch”, with resulting “parking lots” and slowdowns due to rubbernecking until it is cleaned up. Then too, our “first responders” love to block off half the lanes while they deal with the accident. Perhaps because too many of them have been hit at accident scenes by people talking on cell phones, eating an Egg McMuffin, or doing their makeup. If one leaves 18 meters of space, someone will jump into it from the adjoining lanes to gain a one-car-length advantage.
Where do you live, in the middle of North Dakota? In the suburbs of Ely, Nevada?
How do they keep these panels clean? (+ efficient) – a whole load of rubber ends up on road surfaces (and oil products from lubricants etc).
“After one of the panels was cleaned,we monitored their performance throughout the day. It was sunny that day, and we learned that the clean panel produced less than 9-percent more power than the dirt covered panel. So even if we find that it’s difficult to keep the panels clean, it may not be the issue many expect.
Most roads with high speed vehicles keep themselves pretty clean, as most small particles are blown off by the passing vehicles, with the exception of spills from oil, transmission fluid etc. There is a very common natural element called titanium dioxide, which turns substances like oil and grease into a powder that would be blown off by wind or washed away by rain. It’s currently used on building facades to keep them clean. Spraying a road surface with titanium dioxide or a similar coating may solve the problem. Once we are able to hire a team (by meeting our goal on Indiegogo or working with an investor) we’ll put some people to work on this very problem. Quite likely other solutions will be found that we haven’t thought about just yet.
There will be some obvious obstacles such as oil spills, sandstorms, storm debris, etc. Here’s the worst case scenario: if all else fails, we can replace snow plows with street sweepers where needed (vehicles with large rotating brushes). They’re used here in Idaho in the spring to clear the roads of the sand that was used for traction during the winter months.”
http://www.solarroadways.com/faq.shtml#faqClean
Thanks for the info and link.
Reminds me of Joseph Tainter.
Holland are also embarking on a modest project known as solaroad, prototyping with a bike track.
http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/revolutionary-road-the-netherlands-is-making-plans-to-introduce-glow-in-the
https://www.tno.nl/content.cfm?context=thema&content=inno_case&laag1=895&laag2=912&item_id=1234&Taal=2
http://inhabitat.com/the-netherlands-to-pave-roads-with-solaroad-solar-panels/
The first link is merely phosphorescent paint—nothing new or special about that. The other two links talk about something so similar to Solar Roadway that I wonder if they’re infringing any patents. A search for Solaroad comes up with some murky stuff about a company in Maryland, including that it is being sued for some reason.
Apparently, silliness about “solar roads” is afoot in Holland also. Although they appear to be nowhere near as far along as Solar Roadway, and their promo material is nowhere near as slick.
Yes – it is a little lame, but as a once keen cyclist, I thought the glow in the dark road was a good idea, even if it is not a carbon replacement, I was forwarded a very good article on Facebook a few months ago, about a European solar lit road that saved on upper street lighting, melted snow and ice and looked very interesting to me at the time (obviously not for major highways – but smaller urban conurbations) . After searching for it over a few days I cannot find it, so posted these lamer efforts instead. A reputable University Professor has lectured that no current method of carbon free energy production is sufficient (and cannot be scaled up) for our worldwide needs (including the nuclear option), while smaller countries like New Zealand and Iceland can succeed with natural resources and nuclear if necessary, but larger countries like U.S.A and China will need to use a currently not yet invented scalable power source to maintain it’s way of life, and he states we have until around 2100 to find it. He seems a realist and praticle scientists to me so I attach a small prt of his lecture for your interest Sir (3mins 55 secs)
http://tinyurl.com/p547oej
PS a truly great application for pedestrian free shopping areas in town centres – providing power and light
Well, kudos to this couple for the creativity and hard work, and this is attractive as an idea for the gee-whiz Jetsons flavor, but it won’t ever be implemented on the grand scale they hope for.
The basic problem are costs and U.S. politics. Assuming they’re correct and that it will pay for itself over its lifetime, there are still massive up-front costs that would be difficult to impossible to pass in today’s political arena. It doesn’t matter how expensive asphalt gets – we’ll find a replacement for asphalt that uses more basic and cheaper materials before we go to a nationwide system of roads made of solar arrays with glass, LED lighting, computer chips, and wiring.
As for actually generating solar power, wouldn’t it be a much wiser use of resources to build arrays that are far more efficient – ones that can track the sun and that aren’t covered with traffic, detritus, and super thick glass? We don’t lack for surface area. Roads seem a very poor choice in the range of options.
One other thought, too. Convincing the public to accept a road made of glass will be very hard sell. The traction capabilities wouldn’t just need to equal asphalt – they’d have to surpass it by a fair stretch. The first accident on a rainy day will immediately be pegged on the glass surface. Tesla got a fair bit of bad publicity from one or two cases of car fires, but that’s the free market. The first fatality on a glass road will make further acceptance in a public arena in this political era very, very dicey.
If they can use glass that has focusing properties, then maybe it would not be necessary or advantageous to use tracking robotics (which is basically what these types of sun-tracking devices are). They require solenoids which are not very reliable, and they would get dirt and grime in them, not to mention the costs. I believe this is the reason they aren’t already in widespread use.
Passive solar tracking would be better if it’s possible.
I’m surprised that they didn’t tackle a much easier application first:
Roofing.
But someone’s bound to figure it out if they don’t.
Uh, E-Pot? Weren’t you among the group that thought we should paint all roofs white? And maybe roads too?
They already exist, and I imagine they’re patented.
Yep, they DO exist, and they are not very efficient or very cheap, although they will likely be in wider use LONG before the “solar roadway”.
You mean this?
http://www.dowpowerhouse.com
My feeling is that they could have one income/marketing stream using these for households, schools, universities or other facilities/businesses that have driveways and hard surface areas but have too small a roof area (or the roof is at the wrong angle) for panels compared to their power needs.
For these purposes, the fact that the product is a bit expensive will be offset by the fact that the only alternative is not to generate power at all. Similar considerations apply to expensive housing estates or for buildings with heritage or other restrictions on additions or alterations. There are plenty of people who pay a lot of money for a house or those who lovingly restore period homes who see panels as an aesthetic or practical problem on the roof. Putting the solar “panels” into a more discreet location at ground level could be a bonus for them.
If not roads, as it seems even here there is significant resistance to the idea, then why not sidewalks and driveways? Self-heated sidewalks that never require shoveling! Sounds awesome to me!
Whoever thumbed my comment down, tell me why self-heated sidewalks that generate electricity are a bad idea.
Got your attention, didn’t I? And I thumbed this one down too, in an attempt to get you to face your confirmation bias and really think about this.
What is “awesome” to me is that you want to believe in this silliness so badly that you forgot that the stuff that will “never need shoveling” will be covering the sidewalks, and thereby keeping the sun from reaching the PV cells and generating the electricity to create the heat needed to melt the snow. And the sun is not shining brightly when it snows either.
And have you considered that there are lots of SHADOWS in cities where the buildings are tall and close together? And that the sun shines for far fewer hours during the day during “shoveling” season? And that it is at a low angle to boot?
Even if “self-shoveling driveways and sidewalks” worked (and they surely won’t), who is going to invest all the $$$$ for this for a home driveway or sidewalk anyway to melt off a few inches of snow a few times a year, when you can buy a snow shovel for a few bucks at Home depot. And in the cities, clearing snow is a “job creator” activity that benefits far more people than this pie-in-the-sky “solar highway” project ever will.
My thumb is cocked and ready. Please do some thinking, listen to gingerbaker and I, and don’t force me to use it again.
LMAO I see my lengthy explanation of “why self-heated sidewalks that NEVER need shoveling is a bad idea” got a thumbs down from someone,
Understandable. A bit of sulking and petulance is an acceptable response when one doesn’t get one’s way. If you’re 5 years old, that is.
I gave at least half a dozen reasons “why”. Care to refute any of therm?
Hate to break it to you but I wasn’t the one who thumbed you down.
I didn’t say that YOU were the “thumber”, did I? You are not the only one visiting Crock that is suffering from cognitive dissonance regarding solar. At this point, there are only two or three people that I feel certain did NOT do it.
And the “thumber” may have objected to the slightly snarky tone of my comment rather than the content. I am still waiting for him/her (or you) to contest the factual validity of what I said.
If the panels melt the snow and ice, how are they going to be covering the photovoltaic panels? Do you think they’re selling snake oil then, making false claims? I don’t know where you live, but I live where there are vast tracts of houses where the sun shines down most of the time. Even in winter. Who might pay for this? Rich people, at first, there are a lot of those living in my state, many of whom are also environmentally conscientious. Or cities where they might want to make a main boulevard out of these things. You’re welcomed to thumb me down again.
I hate to repeat myself, but it’s sometimes necessary when people don’t hear the first time.
1) IF the snow starts falling late enough in the day AND the panels have had enough time to generate some heat before that, they MAY be able to melt some of the snow as it accumulates.
2) Snow falls in WINTER, and is usually preceded by some dense clouds, which will limit the roads capacity to heat up in the daytime before the snow begins.
3) In the Washington DC area where I live, days in the winter are only 9-1/2 to 10 hours long, so there’s better than 60% chance that the snow will fall at night (summer days are 14-15 hours). Night = no sun
4) In the Washington DC area, the sun only rises to a low angle in the sky of ~28 degrees above the horizon in the winter. (78 degrees in summer)
5) During the low sun angle days days of winter, the sun’s effects in the time after sunrise and before dusk are reduced when compared to the high angle days of summer.
6) Some simple math and a bit of trigonometry with 3), 4), and 5) will show that solar insolation is so much reduced in winter, that “self shoveling sidewalks” are impractical.
7) Let’s not forget that snow is frozen water and takes a significant amount of heat to melt so that it will run off. Maybe we can add salt sprayers to the titanium dioxide sprayers to take care of that—get it down to the point that the sun gets through? Two more tools in our Swiss Army Knife—-it will soon need wheels like a suit case.
So, there’s some science for you to digest rather than act from a base of simple emotional belief.
Are they selling snake oil and making false claims? If I had to answer yes or no, I’d have to say “mostly yes”. In actuality, they are just following the great tradition of American entrepreneurship and inventiveness. I’m sorry they are pursuing an idea that isn’t going to change the world, although it may provide them a good living for a while (from OPM, of course).
And where do YOU live? Is it representative of the U.S.?
“It’s not stupid, it’s unusual, which means it’s creative. ‘
Sure, it IS creative. But it is still massively, nay, titanically stupid. Creativity and stupidity are not mutually exclusive.
You know what this is? It is dilettantism. This sort of project is what happens when some fellow with connections, influence, or money gets an idea in his head – his “vision” – for his precious pet invention and has the wherewithall to keep the development jobs afloat.
” Why not use the space to generate electricity if we can?”
Because it is a ridiculously and needlessly expensive way to generate solar power, that is why. Because it is a needlessly complicated ‘solution’ for a problem which doesn’t exist – there is no shortage of space to erect solar panels, and therefore there is no need whatsoever to site solar panels where something else is in use.
Now this boondoggle is breaking its brain trying to figure out how to engineer something (which is not needed in the first place) using two materials which have completely different characteristics and missions and the result of this will almost certainly be some ridiculously expensive design which compromises the engineering perfection of both solar collection and roadway.
And insanely, the more cars and trucks which use this roadway, the less efficient it becomes at generating electricity. Seriously, the inanity is breath-taking.
And you know what really takes the cake?
Electric highways are actually a wonderful idea! Not as a means to generate electricity, but as a means to distribute it. Not a road made of solar panels, but a road with inductive chargers built into it, which will supply the electricity for all the trucks and cars traveling on it.
Enabling them to arrive with more charge in their batteries than when they left. Or reducing or eliminating the need for electric cars to have batteries in them at all. Since batteries are the most expensive, heaviest, and difficult to manufacture component of electric cars, electric roadways – a technology which is ready to be applied today – could completely revolutionize the transportation sector.
And the plain fact is, the electricity to energize those electric roadways need not be generated anywhere near them. It can, in fact, be generated thousands of miles away and then distributed very efficiently.
Gingerbaker states well what I’ve been thinking. Unusual, creative, and brilliant? Are some of us suffering from confirmation bias to the extent that we want to embrace anything with SOLAR in its name?
It’s a freakin’ ROAD, people!—-and gingerbaker gets it exactly right with “it’s a needlessly complicated solution to a problem that doesn’t exist”. I had mentioned KISS and Swiss Army Knives earlier, and piling all these other features on the basic need for a hard surface for vehicles to drive on IS titanically stupid.
They seem like a nice sincere couple (who oh-so-cutely met at the age of four), but it IS dillettantism they are engaged in and a distraction from more serious proposals to utilize solar power.
I can’t stop laughing at the idea of what this would look like if installed on any major road in the DC Metro area, with our all-day-long heavy traffic. We have a small hiatus from rush hour between 10 to 11 AM and 1 to 2 PM anymore—that’s it. One-third to one-half of the panels would be in the shade under the vehicles, thus negating the generating ability of two to three out of every six lanes. Would it not make more sense for them to be working on designs that put collectors on top of the cars?
And we have that old problem of the sun going down at night, just when the
number of cars decreases and finally exposes most of the “solar roadway” to conditions of NO solar. Maybe this couple can join up with those who want to put mirrors in orbit that will reflect sun down on the “dark side”?. That would improve their “numbers” somewhat.
Economies of scale again. Newly developed technologies are always expensive compared to their low-tech analogues. And I still want to hear a response to the thought that governments will be more likely to put money into these kinds of projects than they would be willing to put into rooftop solar. They have to build roads, and sidewaks if you don’t like the road idea, anyway. They don’t have to put solar panels on their citizens’ roofs.