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How are workers supposed to dig into the roads to install cables, lay need sewer lines/etc?

It's a different basic idea. I'm not sure how wise the idea is, but I can definitively tell you that they have thought about your concerns.

Here's how a solar roadway install would go:

First, dig up the old road, and install a mounting frame for the modular panels. Along one side of the road is a special underground service tunnel, and bundles of heavy cables run along that; this is the electrical bus, which lets multiple solar panels aggregate their output. Also in the special tunnel is the designed drainage, so that when it rains there is some place for the rain to go, and it is possible to install electric pumps to make sure the rain goes where it needs to go. The web site calls this the "Cable Corridor". One of the claimed benefits is this lets electrical transmission wires be conveniently underground by the roadway, instead of up on poles where winds can bring them down.

http://www.solarroadways.com/Home/Specifics

If one of the solar road modules is damaged, or just stops working correctly, that one module is removed and replaced with another off-the-shelf module. The initial install will cost more than an ordinary road, and the modules cost more than an equivalent volume of asphalt or concrete, but the labor of swapping a single module is going to be massively less than repaving a pothole. I reckon that to fix one panel you would just need one or two people and a pickup truck; for fixing a pothole in a normal roadway you would need a digging machine, asphalt machine, steamroller machine, and people to drive all the machines.

The surface of the modules is textured glass: textured to make it less slippery. One of my questions is whether the texture will be ground down and polished away after a few years of heavy use, leaving a horribly slick and dangerous glass surface. Another of my questions is how often the mounting frame under the road will need repair or replacement... it's simple to swap out modules, but not so simple to pull all the modules, dig up the frame, and lay a new one.

If the solar modules last longer than asphalt, this may turn out to be a much better way to go, but that seems like an incredibly big if.

It's also not clear to me why the solar modules should be the road, rather than a roof mounted high over the road, with sloped sides to keep rain and snow from accumulating on the roof. Why melt snow off the road when you can keep it off with a roof?

After I read up on their web site, I did some math, and I determined that according to their numbers, each solar module will make something like $2 worth of electricity per month. I don't imagine the lifetime of the modules will ever be long enough that they would pay for themselves. So this is a good idea only if the reduced labor costs of swapping modules (vs. repaving a conventional road) work out to a net savings. Best to treat the free electricity as a small bonus, rather than gushing about how if 100% of all roadways were replaced with this technology, it could power the entire USA for free. And the part on their web page where they actually propose rewiring everyone's homes to run on DC power makes me wonder if these guys have practical engineering experience or are just pure ivory-tower types in love with a pretty theory.

I guess if massive mass production occurs of these modules, the cost could come down a bit. If the mass-produced panels are cheap enough, if they last long enough, and if the cost of the initial install isn't too horrible, these might be economic. If, if, if.

The heating element i assume is to reduce temperature extreme to reduce the level of expansion and contraction that can cause heavy damage.

This is not a project based on science or engineering.
This is a happy-flower-candy-unicorn project to save the deer and make everything happy-skippy-nice.
They have LED lights in it in order to light up the fucking animals crossing the road.

http://solarroadways.com/faq.s...

Solar Roadways® panels have an integrated heating component. The heating system in Solar Roadways® maintains a temperature above freezing. This keeps the road free of snow and ice. Since more than 70% of the U.S. population lives in snowy regions, this system is crucial to maintain safe road conditions. The implementation of a heated roadway system would also save a significant amount of time in snow removal. The electricity required to run the heating elements will vary from location to location. Every effort has been made to make sure only the minimal amount of energy is expended in keeping snow and ice from accumulating.

For homeowners SR can provide safe and efficient walking and parking surfaces. Shoveling and plowing are time consuming and shoveling can result in injuries. Many homeowners bear the expense of purchasing snow removal equipment or pay others to plow for them. Heated driveways, walkways, paths, patios, etc. would provide safer walking and driving surfaces that require less maintenance. With the implementation of SR, homeowners would be saved from winter inconveniences.

...

Each panel's heating element and LEDs are driven by the grid/storage system, not by the solar cells directly. The solar cells place the harvested energy on the grid/storage system. The systems are independent of one another. This is important because the heaters/LEDs must work at night when the solar cells are incapable of producing power.

I.e. They will be pumping in coal-powered heat and light in order to light up the deer and melt the snow and ice.
Pouring gasoline on the road and setting it on fire would probably be more ecological and "green".

The heating element i assume is to reduce temperature extreme to reduce the level of expansion and contraction that can cause heavy damage.

This is not a project based on science or engineering.
This is a happy-flower-candy-unicorn project to save the deer and make everything happy-skippy-nice.
They have LED lights in it in order to light up the fucking animals crossing the road.

http://solarroadways.com/faq.s...

Solar Roadways® panels have an integrated heating component. The heating system in Solar Roadways® maintains a temperature above freezing. This keeps the road free of snow and ice. Since more than 70% of the U.S. population lives in snowy regions, this system is crucial to maintain safe road conditions. The implementation of a heated roadway system would also save a significant amount of time in snow removal. The electricity required to run the heating elements will vary from location to location. Every effort has been made to make sure only the minimal amount of energy is expended in keeping snow and ice from accumulating.

For homeowners SR can provide safe and efficient walking and parking surfaces. Shoveling and plowing are time consuming and shoveling can result in injuries. Many homeowners bear the expense of purchasing snow removal equipment or pay others to plow for them. Heated driveways, walkways, paths, patios, etc. would provide safer walking and driving surfaces that require less maintenance. With the implementation of SR, homeowners would be saved from winter inconveniences.

...

Each panel's heating element and LEDs are driven by the grid/storage system, not by the solar cells directly. The solar cells place the harvested energy on the grid/storage system. The systems are independent of one another. This is important because the heaters/LEDs must work at night when the solar cells are incapable of producing power.

I.e. They will be pumping in coal-powered heat and light in order to light up the deer and melt the snow and ice.
Pouring gasoline on the road and setting it on fire would probably be more ecological and "green".

Address your lack of units to the "creators" of said "solar roadways".
All the numbers are quoted directly from their site. So they refer "per hexagon".

But who cares - cause their "invention" simply doesn't provide the power needed to melt the snow.
Not even their updated "48 W" version, which still doesn't come close to the power they had to pump into the heaters to melt the snow.
Which is a thing their FAQ no longer mentions. It just talks about how awesome it is to melt snow - by the power drawn from the grid.
I.e. By burning coal to melt ice and snow and heat up air.

They are using the same exact language as back when they listed the fact that they had to use 72 W to melt the snow off of a 36 W producing hexagon - except there's no more talk about any actual numbers.
Measured or projected.
But they still say "the panels will not be heated to the extent of being warm to the touch" - just like back when "72-watts... was an overkill and made the surface warm to the touch on most winter days".
I guess that after their "experiment with different voltages at different temperatures" they came up with the solution.

Which is clearly NOT TO MENTION how much power the whole thing would draw from the grid in order to melt the snow and ice.

This is where it's at: http://www.solarroadways.com/i...

I agree we may well see cheap compact nuclear fission reactors in the 2020s like from Hyperion., Also, it is a sad truth that we could build much safer reactors if engineers had been asked to prioritize safety over other things (Freeman Dyson's TRIGA design being one example) and if the USA has not focused on a Uranium nuclear cycle that intentionally could be easily weaponized (instead of Thorium).

Still I'd expect solar will actually continue to fall in price by the 2020s too. It would not surprise me if PV was in the 15 cent per watt range by 2030 (or even less) other things remaining constant. Consider how "cheap" used "solar collectors" in terms of tree leaves are in the Fall in the USA. Solar panels potentially could be printed as cheaply as aluminum foil using advanced nanomaterials and special inks.

We haven't really seen anything like the amount of research in PV we will probably see when it reaches grid parity everywhere and people really invest in it in a huge way equivalent to previous investments in fossil fuel production and research. Some people (myself included) have been predicting this turning point for a long time, and it has been dismissed and ignored. It is easy to say PV progress will never get to grid parity until it actually happens. That has been true even though the trends for decades show a clear line towards zero cost (no doubt it will go asymptotic at some point to just be dirt cheap though).

Unfortunately, in our short-term-oriented society in the USA, until PV is cheaper than the grid it is only a niche thing for special circumstances or motivated environmentally-minded people. That has been what has been funding it as only a relative trickle of investment. Once PV is cheaper than the grid, assuming a good solution to energy storage exists (fuel cells with nickle-metal hydride storage, Lithium ion batteries, molten salt batteries, compressed air, or something else), it will be economically foolish to use anything else to generate power than PV. And then, sometime after the stampede, we will see enormous sums of money flow into PV research and production. Electric utilities may collapse all over the place as his happens because grid power becomes too pricey once the cost of delivery exceeds the cost of on-site production. Except for the value of their right of ways as internet conduits, and maybe the value of their copper wires, I would guess that most utilities if properly accounted for, given decommissioning costs and outstanding long-term debt in sunk costs, most utilities may well have a negative net worth right now given any forecast that includes these trends.

Personally, I still think it possible that hot fusion or cold fusion will displace PV (as well as nuclear fusion) in the near future. Those could potentially be really really cheap. Even if fission gets cheaper and better (including potentially as small batteries), I don't see it could compete with workable fusion (and probably neither could PV for most applications).

We'll likely also see energy efficiency increase greatly. The current best construction in Europe is to build passive solar superinsulated houses without furnaces; search on "no furnace house".

I'd love to see the solar roadways thing work out... Or even just for parking lots or driveways.
http://www.solarroadways.com/

Still, as I said elsewhere, the same reasons PV s getting cheaper (cheaper computing leading to cheaper collaboration and better designs by cheaper modeling and newer materials and so on) are the same sorts of reasons we will also see much cheaper nuclear power. Of course, there are other trends that all interact with that as well... A post by me from 2000:
"[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...

That is, in fact, their plan.

Read about it on the "Vision" page of their website: http://www.solarroadways.com/v...

Costs: the idea is that this would cost less than building normal solar pannels AND roads; Moreover, they would also replace the need for powerlines as they are inteded to be part of the distrubtion system. Thus price for new developments shouldn't be an issue.

Repair: Most road damage is due to heavy trucking and utilitys digging them up. The solar roads are designed to withstand and excess 250,000 pounds, and the pannels are modular, which means they can be removed and replaced if digging benigh them is required

Wear: there won't be snow plows going across them as they will have a heating element built in, loss of transparancy is currently thought to have a maximum reduction on output of only 9%, see repair (above) for more questions about durablity. Line Display: netherlands failure: used glow

"Keeping old plants online is simply the capitalist thing to do: They're bought and paid for and still work. Why would you shut them down?"

In theory, fission-based nuclear energy is quite workable. In practice so far, within either a Soviet command economy or a Western capitalist economy, the "externalities" of systemic risk of meltdown (like Fukushima) have not been accounted for in up-front costs. So, these plants have never been "paid for". It is just that the general public has been forced to take on a risk, either as individuals or as a society. Fukushima is a tragic example of this. And many people affected by Fukushima are just left to pay many of the disastrous costs on their own, plus taxes go up for everyone, plus there are many other costs (like inspecting Japanese seafood or seaweed for radiation). So, the cost of Fukushima was not paid for up front. If the plants had been shut down sooner, huge future costs would have been avoided. Because capitalistic organizations eventually specialize in internalizing profits while socializing risks and costs and capturing their regulators via revolving doors and (legal) bribes, high risk nuclear power is a particularly difficult thing for such societies to manage. Sure, we could build much safer reactors, including probably thorium ones, but even now plans for new reactors are not fully fail-safe. TRIGA is an example of an alternative that is much more fail-safe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Of course, I could say much the same for coal plants and their environmental affects. as externalities. Oil dependency also has huge costs in military defense of supply lines and pollution risks like the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or recently the US Gulf Coast.

That is why many renewables (as well as energy efficiency) have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s, all things considered. But all things were not considered, so we got coal and oil and bug health costs and big defense costs all paid either on health insurance premiums or taxes, not electric bills or at the gasoline pump. Even PV has externalities (including potentially cadmium runoff from some types of panels, as well as potentially blighting the landscape), although overall they are probably much less than coal and oil, and ideas like "solar roadways" may reduce the blight problem, as well as reduce the need for above ground electrical wires.
http://www.solarroadways.com/i...
"The Solar Roadway is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road Panels that collect energy to be used by our homes and businesses."

With the costs of PV solar falling as predicted decades ago, to now reaching "grid parity" in more and more areas, it is rapidly becoming uneconomical to install anything but solar, especially as battery and fuel cell technology continues to improve for energy storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
"Predictions from the 2006 time-frame expected retail grid parity for solar in the 2016 to 2020 era, but due to rapid downward pricing changes, more recent calculations have forced dramatic reductions in time scale, and the suggestion that solar has already reached grid parity in a wide variety of locations."

Hot fusion or cold (LENR) fusion may change that equation. I don't see fission being more cost effective than solar anytime soon though, although maybe factory-made micro reactors (like Hyperion) will prove me wrong on that.

Inherently safe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
"The TRIGA reactor uses uranium zirconium hydride (UZrH) fuel, which has a large, prompt negative fuel temperature coefficient of reactivity, meaning that as the temperature of the core increases, the reactivity rapidly decreases. It is thus highly unlikely, though not impossible for a nuclear meltdown to occur."

Yeah, so many good ideas have been shelved as you point out because they did not fit with the political or social or economic priorities of the time.

CANDU is somewhat safer than usual:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor#Safety_features

More on why reactors capitalism built were expensive:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

How they could be better by being smaller (like TRIGA):
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter10.html
"Natural circulation can also be used to protect the containment from breaking open due to excess pressure. In present-day power plants, active cooling using water pumps is necessary to control the pressure. But with the smaller reactor, there is less energy to dissipate, making natural circulation a viable alternative."

One intriguing possibility is a central factory that makes small nuclear power units meant to run without significant maintenance for 30 years and which then go back to the factory for reprocessing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_nuclear_reactor

I have a lot of respect for the people who maintain what we have though:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/episodes/nuclear-turbine/
"Sean Riley puts on his hazmat suit and heads into the radiation zone for his next tough fix, replacing a steam turbine in a nuclear power plant to boost its energy-producing capacity. Dismantling an enormous turbine and putting it back together again is tough work at the best of times, but when there's risk of radioactive particles inside, tough is an understatement."

That said, I'm not really a fan of big centralized power plants for social reasons, so I lean towards solar, superinsulated homes, and energy efficiency. Also, while in theory nuclear energy could be run well, in practice, given corporate secrecy and other social dysfunctions, like with TEPCO, I have little confidence current profit-oriented corporations could run big nuclear reactors safely. "Silkwood" is another example, although one can see that with corporations that handle anything dangerous, including chemicals used to make ICs -- at least nuclear releases are easier to monitor than most chemical or biochemical releases.

An example is in the USA with dozens of nuclear plants similar to Fukushima requiring active systems to shut down (and power) that are all at the end of their lives and which should have never been built. They should be shut down as unsafe and replaced with something safer (nuclear, fusion, solar, or otherwise), but likely will just be run longer until the next disaster.

With solar reaching grid parity (cheaper than grid electricity from coal,natural gas, and nuclear), it is hard to argue for nuclear without some huge design breakthroughs. It was hard even ten or twenty years ago when one could point to the solar pricing trends (but people scoffed). Hot or cold fusion maybe would be the next step for "nuclear" though, and one could argue fusion plants would have less environmental impact than covering 1% of the landscape with solar panels. Although "solar roads" is a neat idea.
http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml
"When multiple Solar Road Panels are interconnected, the in

http://solarroadways.com/intro.shtml
"Suppose we made a section of road out of this material and housed solar cells to collect energy, which could pay for the cost of the panel, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. What if we added LEDs to "paint" the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface (like the defrosting wire in the rear window of our cars) to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates? The ideas and possibilities just continued to roll in and the Solar Roadway project was born.
    In 2009, we received a contract from the Federal Highway Administration to build the first ever Solar Road Panel prototype. During the course of its construction, we learned many lessons and discovered new and better ways to approach this project. These methods and discoveries are discussed throughout this website. Please enjoy and send us any questions that you may have. ...
    The Solar Roadway is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road Panels that collect energy to be used by our homes and businesses. Our ultimate goal is to be able to store excess energy in or alongside the Solar Roadways. This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half....
    Each individual panel consists of three basic layers:
    Road Surface Layer - translucent and high-strength, it is rough enough to provide great traction, yet still passes sunlight through to the solar collector cells embedded within, along with LEDs and a heating element. It is capable of handling today's heaviest loads under the worst of conditions. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer beneath it.
    Electronics Layer - Contains a microprocessor board with support circuitry for sensing loads on the surface and controlling a heating element. No more snow/ice removal and no more school/business closings due to inclement weather. The on-board microprocessor controls lighting, communications, monitoring, etc. With a communications device every 12 feet, the Solar Roadway is an intelligent highway system.
    Base Plate Layer - While the electronics layer collects energy from the sun, it is the base plate layer that distributes power (collected from the electronics layer) and data signals (phone, TV, internet, etc.) "downline" to all homes and businesses connected to the Solar Roadway. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer above it. ...
    When multiple Solar Road Panels are interconnected, the intelligent Solar Roadway is formed. These panels replace current driveways, parking lots, and all road systems, be they interstate highways, state routes, downtown streets, residential streets, or even plain dirt or gravel country roads. Panels can also be used in amusement parks, raceways, bike paths, parking garage rooftops, remote military locations, etc. Any home or business connected to the Solar Roadway (via a Solar Road Panel driveway or parking lot) receives the power and data signals that the Solar Roadway provides. The Solar Roadway becomes an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized (secure) power grid. "

This is probably what I was thinking of on efficiency:
http://truecostblog.com/2009/01/04/electric-vs-gasoline/
"On a full life cycle basis including power plants and oil wells, electric vehicles manage about 34% efficiency versus only 14% for gasoline vehicles [1]"

OK, so you want to create a big industry (thorium power) over the next twenty years effectively from scratch, and then when solar panels are dirt cheap, we'll say? :-)

How can it be more trouble to add storage to the grid, including by molten salt, than to build thorium or whatever power plants?

Or perhaps we can have solar thermal mainly for night-time and PV mainly for day time?

Another related item on molten salt:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/brightsource-energy-to-offer-solar-salt-storage-too/

You can look at the trends for yourself on things like PV. They are reaching grid parity. There is non conceivable reason why, once they do, there won't be tons more research on them to further drop their prices. People are talking about solar paints already, and there will be huge profit motives to make that work eventually as fossil fuels and mainstream nuclear go away for cost reasons.

You're right; you did list some storage options, but then you went on to say there was no viable option to fossil fuels and nuclear for baseline loads. Which is it? Here I've pointed to currently (or near currently) cost-effective PV and solar thermal, with a currently commercially viable energy storage solution for nighttime in use in a real location. Why is that mix not as viable as fossil fuels for handling the load for the grid? You said it takes a lot of land, but so does fossil fuel mining and roads and so on.

We could even make solar roadways if we wanted:
http://www.solarroadways.com/

That evnut page collects a bunch of different calculations and figures, and you are right they do not all agree.

A variety of solutions is great, even if mainstream nuclear may be questionable given our social systems being unable to have the required transparancy and accountability.

But 100% solar is not "insane", especially with energy storage. For energy storage, molten salt, compressed air, and lifting weights or water are all currently viable options, with more on the way, but it is still a bit awkward compared to much better batteries or fuel cells. But those are not unmanageable compared to the kind of things civil engineers and industrial engineers already manage. Storing hydrogen in nickel-metal hydrides may be a workable safe solution.
http://www.hydrogencomponents.com/hydride.html

Fossil fuels use a lot of land already for mining and transportation and rights of ways, which could be used for solar. We could have solar roadways, too:
    http://www.solarroadways.com/

Also, about 50% of the US land area is devoted to the production of animal products (mostly growing grain for livestock) so clearly the USA is willing to devote huge amounts of land for questionable endeavors (as animal products and refined grains together ingested in mass quantities are killing many Americans who should be eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans instead).

Going 100% solar would only take 1% or so of the USA, maybe less.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

So, people in the USA could cut back 2% on animal products and be healthier and get cheap sustainable power from that freed up land, as that is as much land as it would take to go all solar. Having lived near working farms sometimes, most of them look like moonscape industrial wastelands a lot of the time anyway, and many are dosed regularly with pesticides, so I'm not sure solar would be that much of a worse thing -- it probably would be better for the groundwater. Maybe more native animals and plants might live between panels than on poisoned farms?

New York City just did a study that it could supply half its electricity by solar roofs, so we may not even need that much other land devoted to solar. Also, energy efficiency and using solar as process heat directly instead of electricity can cut the land area needed too.

So, I'm not saying we will go 100% solar as you are right about geothermal and wind etc., and there is algae too, and we may even see hot or cold fusion, but 100% solar is not "insane" in any way I can see, just unlikely.

Still, as I see it, solar is so convenient being quiet and low maintenance, that once more innovation goes into it, it will likely be cheaper than anything other than some type of fusion. Now that solar being at grid parity is three to five years away, it is within the planning horizons of US companies. I read recently in an article interviewing a researcher in thin silicon-based panels that something like as much money is now going into PV solar research in two years as since it was invented.

More on GE:
http://ceramics.org/ceramictechtoday/2011/06/01/ge-expands-on-thin-film-solar-becomes-near-term-grid-parity-believer/

First off, you are not clear about what percentage of petroleum becomes plastics and lubricants, and what is burned. I'd suggest the part used for products is relatively small. One example:
    http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/770859.html
"The manufacture of all plastics consumed approximately three percent of the total petroleum used in the US in 1997, and PS production comprised approximately .002 percent of that amount. Comparatively, 71 percent of total petroleum used in the US is used for gasoline, jet, and diesel fuel, and 26 percent for the production of asphalt, oils and lubricants."

Most drugs are essentially a scam anyway, compared to eating better:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Also, plastics and many other products including lubricants can be derived from other sources, such as plants, and things can be redesigned with magnetic bearings to reduce lubrication needs. Example:
    http://www.maglevwindturbine.com/

Asphalt can be replaced at possibly less cost by solar roadways:
    http://www.solarroadways.com/

I've worked a bit over the years towards systems that would help people figure out how to do that:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

So, we have lots of options. We don't have to pollute or otherwise destroy our world for the reasons you suggest. We have plenty of alternatives.

That said, I'm not going to disagree that you make a good point about integrated systems. But your tone suggests you have not really looked into alternatives. Why is that?

You make a good case, and you probaby would like this book by Bernard L. Cohen that says much the same:
    http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/BOOK.html

Also, at some point, even with meltdowns, we can just site new nuclear plants where the old one melted down. So, Fukushima is now a good place to site more plants, as is Chernobyl, given the evacuations and the grounds are already contaminated. We could also produce synthetic fuels in those areas and ship them elsewhere. And we could build lots of robots to do the work.

Thorium reactors are even safer and we have much more thorium (thousands of years) than uranium and plutonium (hundred years?) for reactors.. But ironically it is said that thorium technology was not developed in the 1940s and 1950s precisely because it was safer and you could not make bombs from it.

With all that said, I'm still rooting for stuff like solar roadways, maglev wind, or the Rossi/Focardi eCat.
    http://www.solarroadways.com/
    http://www.maglevwindturbine.com/
    http://pesn.com/2011/05/31/9501837_Cold-Fusion_Number-1_Claims_NASA_Chief/

Even various forms of hot fusion are looking promising.

Although solar thermal could have done the job from the 1970s and on. Renewables IMHO have been cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the externalities like pollution, health impacts, risks, defense costs, and so on.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

One can argue about the externalities from different nuclear options (such as who pays for the permanent evacuation around Fukushima or follow on effects like loss of agriculture or other economic problems in the area). If we do see a nuclear resurgance, it is going to look very different than today's plants (or should).

Conventional nuclear tends to be fairly centralized which has various political implications in a democracy. Yes there ideas like Hyperion, but they still probably require big central plants to make them and reprocess them. Mainstream nuclear in general requires a higher level of transparency then our society seems capable of on a sustained basis so far. Fukushima is just one more example of that lack of transparency or foresight.

Still, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, as if our society ran off of cheap thorium power, our politics might be better and less short-term if it assumed abundance instead of scarcity.

The good news is, we have lots of energy options, and the human imagination continues to invent more of them:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR40.txt

http://www.solarroadways.com/

I have no idea if this would work on a large scale but, man o man, talk about thinking
outside the box.

You argued, probably correctly, that's it's not feasible to put PV cells on automobiles.
This man's work says that you can put them, feasibly, on what automobiles are traveling on.

"Another laugh out loud moment. This thread delivers."

actually the whole idea delivers: THE GUY HAS NEVER BUILT ONE, this is all just a concept in his head:
"Given that the one-off prototype is to cost $100k, and they have the potential for a *huge* amount of mass production, I don't think it's all that unrealistic. I'd still like to see how they handle in the real world, of course, but hey, that's why you give funding to build prototypes. ;)"

W....T....F.... and he's no one, just some electrical engineer that use to teach a few classes at ITT and was a boy scout and likes to play on John Deere tractors. Guy is a few cards short of a full deck, and our govt just gave him $100,000???

"Another laugh out loud moment. This thread delivers."

actually the whole idea delivers: THE GUY HAS NEVER BUILT ONE, this is all just a concept in his head:
"Given that the one-off prototype is to cost $100k, and they have the potential for a *huge* amount of mass production, I don't think it's all that unrealistic. I'd still like to see how they handle in the real world, of course, but hey, that's why you give funding to build prototypes. ;)"

W....T....F.... and he's no one, just some electrical engineer that use to teach a few classes at ITT and was a boy scout and likes to play on John Deere tractors. Guy is a few cards short of a full deck, and our govt just gave him $100,000???

" they assume that the cost of making roads is 100% laying down asphalt. "

not really. RTFA: http://www.solarroadways.com/The%20Numbers.htm
"The average cost of asphalt roads in 2006 was roughly $16 per square foot. The cost does not include maintenance (pot hole repair, repainting lines, etc.) or snow/ice removal. The average lane width is 12 feet, so a 4 lane highway would be 12' (width per lane) x 4 (lanes) x 5280' (one mile) = 253440 square feet. Multiply this by $16 per square foot and your one-mile stretch of asphalt highway will cost $4,055,040.00 and will last an average of seven years.

We plan to design the Solar Roadwaysâto last at least 21 years (three times that of asphalt roads), at which time the panels would need to be refurbished. Adding no additional cost to the current asphalt system, this will allow us to invest about $48 ($16 x 3) per square foot. This means that if each individual panel can be made for no more than $6912.00, then the Solar Roadwayâ can be built for the same cost as current asphalt roads. However, asphalt roads don't give you anything back."

Why not make solar roofs above the roadways? Now you have nothing driving on them and they won't get as dirty as a road would.

Of course then you still have all the costs of the roads + cost of raised solar panels.

oh... they answered my question:
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just build canopies over the roads to hold the solar panels? Or just place solar panels on the north side of the roads, facing the sun? That way, we wouldn't have to be able to drive on them?

No. It would be incredibly expensive as you would still have to pay for our current asphalt roads. We plan to use the money already budgeted for roads for the replacement Solar Roadways. If we still had to build current roads plus the canopies or side panels, the cost would likely be so high that taxes would have to be raised to cover it. You would also lose most of the features of the Solar Roadways, such as being lit by LED's for safer night driving. The side panel idea would do nothing to keep the roads free of snow and ice, so northern cities would still have the removal expense and the accidents caused by the unsafe road conditions. Many of the other features would be lost too, such as saving the lives of millions of animals, a self-healing, decentralized power grid, all aspects of an intelligent road: reporting in with potential problems, reducing crime and terrorism, etc.

Ah they used terrorism! The instant govt money buzzword since 2001! That'll get them money.

Exactly how is the electricity going to work? Am I getting free electricity? I mean if my taxes paid for it, I should get it free, right? Or huge discount?

Looking at their website, I'm convinced this guy has a big idea (that's worth exploring), and somehow convinced the DoT to give him some money, but he'll be unable to produce it. He also has a website here.

People should really read the FAQ and the numbers.

To sum up: it's significantly more expensive, but since glass doesn't wear like asphalt does (it either works or breaks -- and it doesn't generally break from compressive stress, only torsional stress and impact), it should last longer and need less maintenance. And since you also get power out of it, displace plow crews, etc, they make the argument that it'll be a better investment if they can make the panels for $10k or less each.

Given that the one-off prototype is to cost $100k, and they have the potential for a *huge* amount of mass production, I don't think it's all that unrealistic. I'd still like to see how they handle in the real world, of course, but hey, that's why you give funding to build prototypes. ;)

Oh... yes! The numbers! I love the wishful naive thinking on that page, it's just brilliant.

For example, lets examine one of the pieces of insanity on his site. He mentions embedding supercapacitors into the road surface to store energy (I assume overnight). If you don't know what those things are, they would be the filthy expensive, highly experimental, rarely used in commercial products devices with lower than battery storage capacity. I'm sure they'll improve, but I can come up with fancy plans too if I can have parts made of unobtanium.

I particularly like the plan to use the ultracaps to store sufficient power to melt ice off the roads. The inventor clearly doesn't remember his 1st year Physics, where we learnt that the the enthalpy of fusion of water is surprisingly high compared to most other chemicals.

Ok, lets get practical: I'm basing this off the technical specs (PDF) for one of the beefier ultracapacitors made by one of the top companies in the biz - Maxwell Technologies. (note: I'm sure better devices are available from somewhere else, will be soon, etc.. bear with me)

It states that a device that is about 17.6cm high and has an area of 18.9cm x 51.5cm has a total capacity of 55Wh (~200kJ). That's a big capacitor.

So if you made a road surface with it, every 973.35 cm^2 area would have 200kJ of stored power for it. That's about 200J per cm^2.

Since the enthalpy of fusion of water 333 J/g, then 200J of energy will melt 0.6g of water. A layer of water (or ice) 0.6g/cm^2 is 6mm deep.

To summarize, this guy's fancy 'invention', if 100% efficient could melt 6mm of ice (or something like 5cm of snow), assuming that the weak winter sunlight was sufficient to fully charge the capacitors during the previous day. That's assuming the entire road surface has a layer of supercapacitors in it 17.6cm thick (that's 7 inches for you yanks).

Even if you gave the benefit of doubt and assumed a 10x improvement in supercapacitor technology, you still have to factor in that he plans to use the solar power capacity for other things too, like lighting up the LED arrays built-in to the road, and to power nearby homes. Not to mention that no matter how much capacity you have, there's not enough sunlight to charge it.

Note that the cost estimates conveniently left out the cost of the ultracaps. On one of the pages, he mentions a target price of USD48 per square foot. The Maxwell ultracap is about 1 square foot, so we're looking at $48 split between a square foot of: Solar cells, the glass coating, an ultrapacitor 7 inches thick, high intensity LEDs, heating coils, power management electronics, the road substrate, and more.

Who was the moron who gave him $100K? Can I have my free money now too? I can come up with all sorts of wild plans also that make zero fiscal sense!

People should really read the FAQ and the numbers.

To sum up: it's significantly more expensive, but since glass doesn't wear like asphalt does (it either works or breaks -- and it doesn't generally break from compressive stress, only torsional stress and impact), it should last longer and need less maintenance. And since you also get power out of it, displace plow crews, etc, they make the argument that it'll be a better investment if they can make the panels for $10k or less each.

Given that the one-off prototype is to cost $100k, and they have the potential for a *huge* amount of mass production, I don't think it's all that unrealistic. I'd still like to see how they handle in the real world, of course, but hey, that's why you give funding to build prototypes. ;)

Oh... yes! The numbers! I love the wishful naive thinking on that page, it's just brilliant.

For example, lets examine one of the pieces of insanity on his site. He mentions embedding supercapacitors into the road surface to store energy (I assume overnight). If you don't know what those things are, they would be the filthy expensive, highly experimental, rarely used in commercial products devices with lower than battery storage capacity. I'm sure they'll improve, but I can come up with fancy plans too if I can have parts made of unobtanium.

I particularly like the plan to use the ultracaps to store sufficient power to melt ice off the roads. The inventor clearly doesn't remember his 1st year Physics, where we learnt that the the enthalpy of fusion of water is surprisingly high compared to most other chemicals.

Ok, lets get practical: I'm basing this off the technical specs (PDF) for one of the beefier ultracapacitors made by one of the top companies in the biz - Maxwell Technologies. (note: I'm sure better devices are available from somewhere else, will be soon, etc.. bear with me)

It states that a device that is about 17.6cm high and has an area of 18.9cm x 51.5cm has a total capacity of 55Wh (~200kJ). That's a big capacitor.

So if you made a road surface with it, every 973.35 cm^2 area would have 200kJ of stored power for it. That's about 200J per cm^2.

Since the enthalpy of fusion of water 333 J/g, then 200J of energy will melt 0.6g of water. A layer of water (or ice) 0.6g/cm^2 is 6mm deep.

To summarize, this guy's fancy 'invention', if 100% efficient could melt 6mm of ice (or something like 5cm of snow), assuming that the weak winter sunlight was sufficient to fully charge the capacitors during the previous day. That's assuming the entire road surface has a layer of supercapacitors in it 17.6cm thick (that's 7 inches for you yanks).

Even if you gave the benefit of doubt and assumed a 10x improvement in supercapacitor technology, you still have to factor in that he plans to use the solar power capacity for other things too, like lighting up the LED arrays built-in to the road, and to power nearby homes. Not to mention that no matter how much capacity you have, there's not enough sunlight to charge it.

Note that the cost estimates conveniently left out the cost of the ultracaps. On one of the pages, he mentions a target price of USD48 per square foot. The Maxwell ultracap is about 1 square foot, so we're looking at $48 split between a square foot of: Solar cells, the glass coating, an ultrapacitor 7 inches thick, high intensity LEDs, heating coils, power management electronics, the road substrate, and more.

Who was the moron who gave him $100K? Can I have my free money now too? I can come up with all sorts of wild plans also that make zero fiscal sense!

Has anybody actually checked their calculations????

I just eyed the numbers and it seems to be off by three orders of magnitude; they estimate the energy collection to be about 9.19 Billion Kilowatts -- am I wrong or does the calculation actually give 9.19 Trillion Kilowatts????

And they say they calculate ((25,000 mi^2) x (5280 ft / mi)^2) / (200W/15.16 ft^2) but do in fact calculate ((25,000 mi^2) x (5280 ft / mi)^2) x (200W/15.16 ft^2) -- which they should.

Not very assuring, is it? ... Or rather, WOW!, with only an efficiency of 0.015% we can still supply USA three times over ... Or, with 15% efficiency, a fifteenth of the world consumption (2005 numbers, total world energy consumption 500 exajoules = 5 x 10^20 J or about 139 x 10^12 kWh divide into output, 9.19 x 10^12 kWh, and voila roughly 1/15).

Aside from the obvious wear and tear, what about the fact that cars are covering up the panels?

That very point is addressed in their FAQ section on their website. In short: cars never packs up and cover more than a small fraction of the asphalt surface. Other common objections are, if not addressed, at least discussed, on that same page which, all in all, makes for a nice engidreaming read.

Al.

Is reading the FAQ too much to ask?

Try this: Go to Google Maps and start looking at roads. Random roads. Select without bias. Tell me how much of the road surface is covered on average. Then go deliberately seek out traffic, and again, tell me how much of the road surface is covered.

Even in "bumper to bumper" stop-and-go traffic, about half the roadway is exposed. On average, a quick glance at the US's road system suggests that perhaps 98% of it is exposed at any point in time during the day, and perhaps 90% in cities.

People should really read the FAQ and the numbers.

To sum up: it's significantly more expensive, but since glass doesn't wear like asphalt does (it either works or breaks -- and it doesn't generally break from compressive stress, only torsional stress and impact), it should last longer and need less maintenance. And since you also get power out of it, displace plow crews, etc, they make the argument that it'll be a better investment if they can make the panels for $10k or less each.

Given that the one-off prototype is to cost $100k, and they have the potential for a *huge* amount of mass production, I don't think it's all that unrealistic. I'd still like to see how they handle in the real world, of course, but hey, that's why you give funding to build prototypes. ;)

People should really read the FAQ and the numbers.

To sum up: it's significantly more expensive, but since glass doesn't wear like asphalt does (it either works or breaks -- and it doesn't generally break from compressive stress, only torsional stress and impact), it should last longer and need less maintenance. And since you also get power out of it, displace plow crews, etc, they make the argument that it'll be a better investment if they can make the panels for $10k or less each.

Given that the one-off prototype is to cost $100k, and they have the potential for a *huge* amount of mass production, I don't think it's all that unrealistic. I'd still like to see how they handle in the real world, of course, but hey, that's why you give funding to build prototypes. ;)

at least one of the claims here seems a little off: http://www.solarroadways.com/The%20Numbers.htm

in particular, this sentence: "This means that if each individual panel can be made for no more than $6912.00, then the Solar Roadwayâ can be built for the same cost as current asphalt roads." It seems to assume that an outlay of 3x the money for a road that lasts 3x as long is the same cost as 1x & 1x respectively. While this is true for someone with infinite readily available money, the reality is that most places don't have enough money for that.

also "The Solar Roadwayâ will, therefore, eliminate half of the greenhouse gases currently being produced. " seems to be a dramatic overstatement.