Solar Roadways Get DoT Funding

mikee805 writes "Solar Roadways, a project to replace over 25,000 square miles of road in the US with solar panels you can drive on, just received $100,000 in funding from the Department of Transportation for the first 12ft-by-12ft prototype panel. Each panel consists of three layers: a base layer with data and power cables running through it, an electronics layer with an array of LEDs, solar collectors and capacitors, and finally the glass road surface. With data and power cables, the solar roadway has the potential to replace some of our aging infrastructure. With only 15% efficiency, 25,000 square miles of solar roadways could produce three times what the US uses annually in energy. The building costs are estimated to be competitive with traditional roads, and the solar roads would heat themselves in the winter to keep snow from accumulating."

Comments

Oh, get real.

[russotto]

Solid concrete and asphalt get ripped apart in short order by the combination of weather and heavy vehicle traffic, and they propose to use solar panels to drive on? I'd say it's a bold engineering project, but it's gone beyond "bold", past "insane", past "so crazy it might work", and right into "let's see if we can get dumb ideas paid for if we call 'em green".

Re:Oh, get real.

[hedwards]

Well, if nobody does the work then it'll definitely never happen. I'm sure if somebody had told Newton about this wonderful thing called Nuclear energy he'd've laughed in their face. Likewise, I can't imagine anybody of that era seriously believing that we'd have the internet.

The belief that it's not possible is just plain silly, it's not possible with today's technology, but there isn't really any inherent reason why it couldn't be done at some future date. Provided the funding and the future date is far enough off. On paper it's not that difficult of a problem, just put some super tough clear material over the top of the cells and you've dealt with the wear and tear, and solar cells tend to warm up as they receive light so the amount of damage from winter is less. And winter is when most of the damage is done by the weather, the cooling and heating isn't good for it.

In practice it's going to be difficult to find suitable materials, but you're definitely not going to succeed if you don't try, and the roads tend to be pretty exposed anyways. It's also great for small communities located along the interstates. And presumably it would pay for a lot of the cost of upkeep on our roads.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not looking deep enough. Out of this sort of funding, the main project (roadways) is most likely a throwaway. However, there is a good chance the people that develop this type of system might stumble upon a new material, process, etc. So it might not be a waste of money. I'm an optimist though.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Shikaku]

Concrete is solid like a rock. The reason concrete cracks in the weather is because it expands and contracts because of the temperature and water content. If the solar panels were a lot more pliable, just as strong, waterproof, and had something like the self healing plastic abilities, I think it can work just fine.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Brian Gordon]

just put some super tough clear material over the top of the cells and you've dealt with the wear and tear

Another laugh out loud moment. This thread delivers.

I imagine you going to the materials engineer on retainer for your states DoT. "I noticed we're spending $30 million a year resurfacing roads. Send a little of that my way and we can solve that problem. My idea is to put a super tough material over the top and we'll have dealt with the wear and tear."

Re:Oh, get real.

[rtaylor]

For heavily used surfaces it probably wouldn't work.

Most shoulders (in Canada) are paved and very lightly used. Most of the streets in neighbourhoods are also very lightly used (hundreds of slow moving cars per day and not tens of thousands).

I imagine there are locations where this could be used as a surface that is durable enough. The big question mark is production cost (more expensive than current surfacing for a 50 year period) and does it generate enough to make it worth wiring it into the grid.

The test seems very cheap. Surfacing tests of different asphalt mixtures on the order of millions are regularly done.

Re:Oh, get real.

[HuckleCom]

$100k is chump change. Maybe in california, but in Minnesota weather the first plow will ensure a blackout.

Re:Oh, get real.

[HuckleCom]

I take that back... Hasn't anyone learned anything from the Mars Rover? They have to be super careful to keep them flipin panels clean on the rover... something tells me nasa uses better solar panels then what would be on the roads ...

Re:Oh, get real.

[Bught_42]

In Southern California we don't get much in the way of any real weather other than sun. In more rural areas where the roads aren't used that much, and if it's actually comparable to traditional road materials, it should stand up for several years. I'd say the real value is for rarely used roads in sunny locations; or where getting roads, data and electricity all in one is rather appealing.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA - they do not need snow plows, they heat themselves.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Jedi1USA]

One other problem with concrete is that at the "seams" (not to mention the cracks) between panels water can get through to the ground underneath. This can lead to localized soil expansion/contraction which causes stress on the concrete and accelerates the deterioration. If a lot of water gets through the ground can be unstable enough to allow the panels to "rock" then they don't line up evenly any more. I would think these large glass panels could be susceptible to the same problem.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Socguy]

Perhaps, but according to the article, the panels will heat themselves thereby eliminating the need for snowplows.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Bught_42]

Most parts of the earth don't have massive dust storms and when it's not on mars we can clean them. The rovers were built for 90 day missions and they didn't feel a mechanism to clean the panels was important enough.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a perfectly feasible idea. Just put a layer of scrith over the top and presto! you're all set.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Timothy Brownawell]

RTFA - they do not need snow plows, they heat themselves.

Oh, lovely. So instead of just snow, you'll be driving on a layer of slush/ice on top of a little water. That's about as bad as it can get, except for maybe a flash flood.

Re:Oh, get real.

[timeOday]

Oh, just shut up. You you have no good reason to think this won't work, this is just your biased gut reaction to anything associated with efficiency or alternative energy savings, and nothing more. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

The two tracks that take 90% of the wear in each lane cover relatively little of the road, and this doesn't have to be cost competitive with non-energy producing roads because energy is valuable! Roads cover vast swaths of space, which is mostly wasted. So I really hope this works out.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about using this in a parking lot? Much less wear and tear.

Re:Oh, get real.

[CastrTroy]

Problem is, is that in SoCal, all the roads are covered in cars. If there's cars on top of the panels, they can't collect sunlight. Woudln't it make much more sense to just coat death valley with solar panels, rather that putting solar panels on the roads where they will be covered up half the time?

Re:Oh, get real.

[dwye]

> So instead of just snow, you'll be driving on a layer of slush/ice on top of a little water.

You forgot that everything is on top of the super-tough (snicker) glass layer, just to make it more fun. I don't know how thick the snow in Minnesota gets, but I remember hearing of 6 ft of snow in Upstate New York (at RPI, specifically, when visiting colleges before applying). I think that melting the snow will be less than effective.

Re:Oh, get real.

[russotto]

Woudln't it make much more sense to just coat death valley with solar panels, rather that putting solar panels on the roads where they will be covered up half the time?

Or line Death Valley with aluminum panels and turn it into a enormous solar-thermal system. Any James Bond villains around, we can get them to finance it by claiming it's a death ray.

Re:Oh, get real.

[RobVB]

This should be applied first in the southern states, because a solar panel in a southern state will yield more energy than a solar panel in a northern state (like Minnesota), as opposed to fossil fuels, which yield the same amount of energy regardless of where you burn them.

People do seem to be focusing too much on the problems and not enough on the benefits, which is a healthy point of view when you're talking about scientific developments, but most problems I see people pointing out here are easily solved or circumvented. Freeze/thaw cycles are one, the solution being: build them in the warmer states.

Timothy Brownawell wrote about another problem:

Oh, lovely. So instead of just snow, you'll be driving on a layer of slush/ice on top of a little water. That's about as bad as it can get, except for maybe a flash flood.

Again, this problem is relatively easily solved by making sure the roads are properly drained. Slightly slope the roads to the side so the rain or molten snow drains off into a sewer, and you don't have the slush anymore. This snow problem is also severely reduced by building these roads in California and Florida instead of Alaska and New Hampshire.

copponex wrote:

Yes, if the people who designed this system are absolute morons, they may have forgotten that trucks exist and are heavy.

Trucks do exist and are heavy, and do wear down roads and highways quickly. The thing is, a lot of roads aren't heavily used highways, they're calm streets in suburbs.

As rtaylor wrote:

Most of the streets in neighbourhoods are also very lightly used (hundreds of slow moving cars per day and not tens of thousands).

These quiet streets get just as much sunlight per square meter (substitute by your favorite unit of area) as the big highway a few miles further. No need to change the entire transportation network into a power plant at once, you can keep your heavy trucks on asphalt highways, and keep the solar panels in the suburbs where people drive slowly, and heavy trucks are barely ever seen at all.

Re:Oh, get real.

[brusk]

What about the middle of the night, when there's much less traffic?

Re:Oh, get real.

[ILuvRamen]

I agree with that but must also add that none of that would even get THAT far in that these roads are outdoors. Anything outdoors gets dirt and dust and other assorted dirtiness covering it. Blacktop stays black for what, 2 months? Then it's all general outdoor residue. So I think they'd be dirty enough to absorb basically no light before trucks come in and misalign them, shatter them, and vibrate them apart.

Re:Oh, get real.

[PoDiddy]

Laugh at yourselves cuz you voted these guys in!

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite part is that the "roads will heat themselves in the winter". This one has me rolling on the floor. There is not enough energy in the system to do that.

- Roads in wintry areas are asphalt
- Asphalt is dark
- Most of the incident sunlight on asphalt roads gets converted to heat
- All that sunpower can't keep the roads above freezing.

Light->Electricity->Heat won't give you more than Light->Heat already does. This is grade school science. These clowns are selling solar-powered flashlights.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jcr]

I forget... Is scrith transparent?

-jcr

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

My specialty is Asphalt paving and this is just stupid.

This thing makes no sense and would probably be 99% blocked by oil from car tires in the first 24 hours, add to it the durability of it and costs must be astronomical.

This idea is so crazy and stupid, it made it to front page of Slashdot.
I don't even Digg goes to that low with a story like this.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Toonol]

Of course, when they have power, they don't need to heat themselves, and when they need to heat themselves, they won't have power.

Melting snow takes a LOT of energy. It would be cheaper, I think, to buy more snowplows. This idea fails a lot of different smell tests. Developing cheap solar-energy roofing materials seems smarter; it covers more area, and roofs don't have MILLIONS OF CARS DRIVING ON THEM.

Re:Oh, get real.

[pdabbadabba]

Well...I take your point. But I'm pretty sure nobody ever said the panels need to be installed where it snows heavily to be useful.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Driving on sheets of glass. Hmm on rain or snow slush + 55 MPH. Wonder how well that is gonna work when I need to stop or if it's going to be just as textured as current roads. Won't that just be like a Slip'N'Slide with 2000+ pounds of steel, plastic and aluminum? And if it's going to be textured, how well will it work when it gets dirty.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Brianwa]

solar cells tend to warm up as they receive light so the amount of damage from winter is less.

So does asphalt, yet it still doesn't seem to resist snow very well.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

Ummm... what? You do realize that the snow falls *on top* of the dark-colored asphalt, right? And that snow isn't transparent. You know that, right?

Snow reflects 90% of the light that hits it. It's an insulator, too.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Funny

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

Can we stop acting like the cars are driving directly on top of the solar cells? They're not. They're driving on glass, treated for greater impact resistance and a textured surface. The question should be, how well does treated glass withstand winter damage?

Re:Oh, get real.

[jamstar7]

I forget... Is scrith transparent?

Nope. It's fairly tough tho...

'Solar roads' sounds interesting, but how they gonna deal with the weight of cars and (especially) trucks driving over them constantly? Trucks have weight limits for a reason, to keep from tearing up the current roads. Every solar cell I've ever played with is orders of magnitude more fragile than rocks and concrete.

On the up side, though, it'd create more work for road crews to repair and replace the new solar cells...

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... what? You do realize that the snow falls *on top* of the dark-colored asphalt, right? And that snow isn't transparent. You know that, right?

Snow reflects 90% of the light that hits it. It's an insulator, too.

Which applies equally to solar powered roads also.

What's that you say? They have capacitors for energy storage? So they're suppose to supply the electrical grid with power day and night and store enough power to melt any snow that falls on them?

Yeah, I don't see that happening.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Bught_42]

Well actually I was talking more of Southern California as in below San Francisco, not LA, I hear Northern California gets weather occasionally. I'm on the "Central Coast" and there's lots of roads that would be uncovered most of the day but still ample sunlight. I imagine in the higher use areas there would be an issue of longevity as well as reduced light.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Spit]

Translucent, but it's also nearly frictionless. So you'd have to put a contact layer on top of that, something like asphalt is fairly cheap.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, common, ordinary glass is a VERY VERY durable roadway surface which admits light. Anything thicker than 6 inches, and supported by compacted earth underneath, would EASILY handle the weight of a vehicle driving over it. The problem that glass has is that it has a very low reflexive modulus, meaning that it doesnt take tortion or bending stress very well at all. (It shatters.) This makes it a poor choice as a structural material for buildings, other than as the outer shell, where it's strong resistance to weathering suppliments the high reflexive moduluous of steel girders.

For a roadway, it would work very well. The problem would be people with sledge hammers being knob-gobblers, and damaging roadways-- and other bone headed "Lets drop a super heavy object on the roadway and see what happens" kinds of faux-pas. (Dropping the great big industrial dumpster on the glass roadway would be a no-no.)

I suggest glass over say-- recycled polycarbonate plastic (Recycled water bottles) because the former does not decay on exposure to UV light, does not leak Bisphenol-A into the ground water, is not flammable, and doesnt produce toxically accumulating microparticles from surface abrasion that gets washed out into the ocean.

Now-- That said-- there WOULD be problems with a glass roadway.

1) It tends to be rather slick when it leaves the factory, especially if you want it to admit light well. (Solutions might be to dimple the surface, or to make it "rough" with rounded bumps on the surface, which would actually allow it to admit and trap more light internally-- however, then it would harbor dirt, roadkill residue, snow, snow control sand/gravel/salt, and any other "able to be ground into a surface" materials, which would inhibit the solar pannel functionality.

2) The energy costs in creating that much glass. This might not be such a problem though-- there are similar energy expenditures in the creation of concrete. (Both require kiln operation.)

3) "Sharp particles" being produced by people being retards, and doing things to the road that one realy shouldnt do. (Like do a high speed chase on flat tires, and subsequently driving on rims, or dragging a turned over trailer down the road because you got drunk when you were at the lake-- etc.)

4) Some other consequence I havent thought of yet.

But, for the record-- the main reason we use asphalt as a roadway surface is because it makes a convenient place to deposit oil refinery waste. (Asphalt is a refinery biproduct from crude oil-- essentially crude oil solids.) Other nice things about are is that it doesnt rot, it self-repairs to a limited extent, can be poured/pressed into place, and makes a nice gripping surface.

If we stop using fossil fuels as an energy source, we wont have a ready supply of asphault to resurface roadways with either-- so researching alternative roadway surfacing materials is a must if we are to move away from this doomed energy source.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Vellmont]

The belief that it's not possible is just plain silly

The believe that "the future" just magically solves all problems and all things will be possible be possible is at least as silly. Unfortunately we don't have any derogatory words that are adequate to describe this level of naivety. Pointing to something nobody could have foreseen hundreds of years ago as proof that this we're just ignorant fools now and the problem will just go away because of advances in technology is beyond foolish.

In practice it's going to be difficult to find suitable materials, but you're definitely not going to succeed if you don't try

Which is also true for the more practical ways of solving our energy problems. We clearly can't try EVERYTHING, so why would we try the ones that sound incredibly impractical and foolhardy?

Re:Oh, get real.

[jamstar7]

Woudln't it make much more sense to just coat death valley with solar panels, rather that putting solar panels on the roads where they will be covered up half the time?

Or line Death Valley with aluminum panels and turn it into a enormous solar-thermal system. Any James Bond villains around, we can get them to finance it by claiming it's a death ray.

Not a bad idea there, especially for those of us just one lab accident away from becoming supervillians.

Halfasec while I check land prices in Death Valley for my new improved solar powered lair...

Re:Oh, get real.

[Faylone]

A death ray? Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Iargue]

Plexiglass can do that very easily. Its amazing :).

Re:Oh, get real.

[jcr]

The question should be, how well does treated glass withstand winter damage?

I'd like to know what kind of glass can be chilled to typical great-plains winter temperatures and not get brittle as hell. If you have to heat the roads not just to keep them clear of snow, but also to keep the panels from shattering, the idea looks even less plausible.

-jcr

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is THE answer. With enough impetus this could change our world. The technologies available today could make it work, albeit with a high maintenance cost, low initial acceptance and msjor technical difficulties it would be a challenge. But with the right people behind it and research into amorphous glass and solar cells and who knows what else it could be a goldmine for developers and investors and make the power companies start to look over their shoulders as they should already be.......awwwwww...never mind... I just realized the flaw in the ointment.....

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

and how does the cost compare with traditional materials per unit area of coverage?

Re:Oh, get real.

[amRadioHed]

You're talking about downtown areas and major freeways. I can assure you that the vast majority of roads in southern California are not jammed with roads during all hours of the day. I live in a residential neighborhood a few miles from downtown and the roads here would be perfect for solar power.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's important to realize that the government is only putting $100k into this to build a single panel as a proof of concept. I initially had the same reaction you did (it wont work because of the maintenance - not to mention how much fun is it going to be driving on a reflective surface in the afternoon....), but it was because I read the pie in the sky 25,000 miles figure in the summary.

If they can prove its practical though, then I agree it'd be neat solution to alot of problems. I just hope 100K doesn't turn into 100B before they decide to say "guess we was wrong, it really wont work."

Re:Oh, get real.

[rhook]

The real question is "how safe is glass to drive on?" You're not going to get the same kind of traction that you do on asphalt.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

Yeah, I don't see that happening.

And why not? Sun = 1000W/m^2, decreased by angles, obstructions, night, etc. Let's say 8kWh/day/m^2 on a clear stretch of road. That's 6.88Mcal/day/m^2. Latent heat for melting ice is 80 cal/g and temperature raising is 1cal/g/C, so 10C temperature rise and melting is 76.4kg snow per day at 100% efficiency. Snow is about 100kg/m^3, so that's .764m^3 per m^2 per day, or 2 1/2 feet per day.

Now, obviously, efficiency isn't 100%. Solar cell efficiency is about 15% in this application. However, the "waste heat" isn't exactly waste; it's heating up the road. Now, it radiates away instead of being stored, but what's there is useful. Anyone who lives in a northern clime can tell you how the first snow after a warm period tends not to stick well. And even the 15% solar efficiency -- call it 12% after grid and storage losses -- times 2 1/2 feet is 4 inches of snow per day, or 27 feet of snow per winter.

What, you think nobody bothered to check the numbers before issuing the grant?

Re:Oh, get real.

[blackraven14250]

One thing that might keep damage from being as big of a problem: glass can be reused very easily, in much the same way asphalt can.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

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. ;)

Re:Oh, get real.

[igny]

Did you ever put a carpet on ice?

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

The first inch or two of snow to fall on an asphalt road *does* melt from the heat of the road. Even lighter colored concrete roads tend to melt a lot of the first snow to hit them. The problem is that once the road gets covered with snow, it's no dark. Snow reflects about 90% of the light that hits it.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Bruce Perens]

That was another substance, like "twing". It was the window in phss-th-pok's spaceship.

Re:Oh, get real.

[plague911]

The short answer is they have bendable solar panels. Solar panels come in a variety of classes. Expensive High Efficiency, Brittle and Cheap Low efficiency flexible are the two main classes with a range in between. Fortunately the cheap version is also the flexible version which is a handy synergy in this situation. Yes mechanical stress will play a role. But the trick is not to make them last forever, the trick has been to make them a little more cost effective than any other solution. Yes normal roads may cost only a $1,000,000 a mile per 10 years and the new solar roads may cost 1,400,000 a mile per 10 years but what if they pay you back 500,000 grand? The road dose not even need to be break even for this idea to work. IT just needs to cost slightly less. This idea may actually be more feasible than getting solar power in general due to the fact that it only needs to be cheaper not break even.

Re:Oh, get real.

[blackraven14250]

If you put the panels on the roads, it's closer to its final usage point than if you put them in the middle of nowhere. Also, you can pick roads that aren't quite used as much. I imagine your highways are hugely crowded, but how about other roads, like every dead end in the area?

Re:Oh, get real.

[plague911]

Self heating would make it so you dont need to plow. Having electricity flowing would likely result in snow never being able to accumulate even in the middle of a sever storm. And yes Ive been in some big snows myself, Ive seen 6 feet in one night.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

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.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your numbers are all crazy.

Firstly, the temperature of the road must be increased to 0C before melting can start, which you account for. Except that the ambient temperature is below 0, which is often the case during winter. Heating something from -10C to 0C takes a bit of energy - heating it while it's in a freezer takes a lot more.

Secondly, if you discount all the areas not covered in snow (i.e. we look at the snow-covered area in isolation, as you do) then an asphalt covering should obviously be equally effective at melting snow. If we treat the solar radiation reflected as negligible, as you do, then whether that radiation is converted into solar power and used for heating, or directly heats a surface, should make no difference. Hence, by your numbers, every asphalt road in the country should, during winter time, melt 2 1/2 feet of snow per day by the sun's power alone. That is clearly bunk.

Re:Oh, get real.

[nitroamos]

"let's see if we can get dumb ideas paid for if we call 'em green".

Look... they were given $100,000, which is a TINY amount of money when it comes down to it. The US gov't can cough up $trillions for wars with highly uncertain energy related benefits. Compared to that, these guys have been given a TEENSY WEENSY amount of money. It's like giving your kid brother 2 pennies to make your bed for you. Chances are, he won't do it, but the cost was essentially zero!

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

Melting an inch of snow and raising it by 10C on a 10'x1mi stretch of road takes 46,000 kWh, or $4,600 at residential rates, $2,700 at industrial rates.

Yeah, it'd probably only be cost effective for minor snow events and freezing rain, rather than trying to melt five inches off the snow, but better than nothing.
   

Re:Oh, get real.

[MiniMike]

By the time this is technically and financially feasible, we'll have flying cars and no roads.

Re:Oh, get real.

[sonicmerlin]

So maybe this technology won't be applied in cold weather areas? Solar cells aren't that practical for the snow belt in the first place.

Re:Oh, get real.

[kheldan]

Agreed. This idea is made of 110% FAIL. It's exactly the kind of bullshit that our completely uninformed, non-technical politicians would go for. Everyone should be glad it's only $100K and not $100M.

Re:Oh, get real.

[q-the-impaler]

It's never an upside when you create a job just for the sake of creating a job. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Throw him in water and he'll glrugh, glurgh, glurgh drown.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

Except that the ambient temperature is below 0, which is often the case during winter

And it's often above 0. I think a 10C temperature rise is perfectly fair.

Heating something from -10C to 0C takes a bit of energy - heating it while it's in a freezer takes a lot more.

Depends on the rate of heating. Given the limit of heating time approaching zero, energy lost to conduction/convection/radiation approaches zero. Also, don't forget: snow is an excellent insulator.

Secondly, if you discount all the areas not covered in snow (i.e. we look at the snow-covered area in isolation, as you do) then an asphalt covering should obviously be equally effective at melting snow.

Yeah, let me know when snow becomes transparent, rather than reflecting 90% of the light that hits it.

In the first snow after a long bright or warm spell, roads *do* tend to melt a lot of the early snow that hits them until they cool off. The problem is that they then become covered in snow and ice (which the plows often don't completely strip), and they then reflect the lion's share of the light that hits them.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, if they implement it with a little slope and (similarly heated) drainage system so that the water doesn't just sit on top of the surface, but actually flows away to clear it, this could work. I admit, the cost would shoot up if you have to bury storm water pipes 6-8 feet underground the whole way, but road safety improvements alone would probably justify the extra cost. I wonder what the northern schools that route steam pipes under sidewalks to melt snow with waste heat do about this issue.

Re:Oh, get real.

[JWSmythe]

    I was going to say, how many accidents would this cause?? If you made the surface with a friction, it would reduce it's ability to absorb light. If you avoided that, you'd have cars that are unstable. I get nervous crossing metal grated bridges. My car sways as it grabs traction on the not quite straight lines in the road. What's going to happen when it becomes impossible to stop, accelerate, or turn (lane change). It's a pending disaster. A little rain, and it's a disaster for safe driving. I will admit, I've done emergency lane changes, because someone did something stupid in front of me. With this plan, emergency lane changes would become impossible, right along with braking.

    I'm sure they tested with cars. What happens when you constantly run one over with fully loaded 53' trailers? It's obvious where trucks frequent an area, the ditches created by their weight, even in asphault, would destroy the panels.

    But hey, not my idea, and I'm not responsible for the liability involved. We'd be better off using the right of ways (that pesky grassy area on either side of the road) for solar, and they'd be able to track the sun for improved light absorption.

Re:Oh, get real.

[sharkman67]

What about residential driveways? I know that it would not apply to everyone but if that tech existed, my driveway is long enough that it might just power my entire house. They don't get the traffic or the weight that a major highway receives which would aid in their longevity.

Re:Oh, get real.

[mldi]

Except that the ambient temperature is below 0, which is often the case during winter

And it's often above 0. I think a 10C temperature rise is perfectly fair.

Heating something from -10C to 0C takes a bit of energy - heating it while it's in a freezer takes a lot more.

Depends on the rate of heating. Given the limit of heating time approaching zero, energy lost to conduction/convection/radiation approaches zero. Also, don't forget: snow is an excellent insulator.

Secondly, if you discount all the areas not covered in snow (i.e. we look at the snow-covered area in isolation, as you do) then an asphalt covering should obviously be equally effective at melting snow.

Yeah, let me know when snow becomes transparent, rather than reflecting 90% of the light that hits it.

In the first snow after a long bright or warm spell, roads *do* tend to melt a lot of the early snow that hits them until they cool off. The problem is that they then become covered in snow and ice (which the plows often don't completely strip), and they then reflect the lion's share of the light that hits them.

Holy crap, let's slow down a minute, batman. Did anyone ever stop to consider that maybe things staying cold in the winter is a good thing? You know, global climate and everything.

I'm just saying... we've seen the heat that cities generate from their lights have an impact, but they don't account for much of the land yet. I can't imagine what impact a giant network of super heaters might do.

Solar roadways are not much good when the globe floods, after all.

Re:Oh, get real.

[alaffin]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that none of this is going to be laid down anywhere that sees snow more than once a century, despite what is written above. Although I can't be certain, I can't imagine the heaving and shifting a road undergoes during that sweet spot where things (water, specifically) freeze overnight and thaw during the day would be healthy for those solar cells. Here in Canada we can barely get regular highways to stay in good condition over more than a couple winters. Those fragile solar cells would be toast.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Joce640k]

How about "glass will scratch and grind to a non-transparent finish in no time".

Re:Oh, get real.

[sumdumass]

There are probably enough parking lots in most cities that see a lower volume of traffic with speeds slow enough that the slippery glass wouldn't be too hazardous that could generate enough power to more then achieve the goal. Just only put the panels in the cause way of the parking lots and use whatever for where the cars that would be parked on it.

Most shopping malls have spare parking space that really isn't used except during the busiest seasons. Putting a few panels in those spots out on the edge could be something too.

Of course with that idea, there is the problem of property rights, right of way, and who's going to maintain them.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you've repeatedly lost traction on various surfaces, you probably don't know what you're talking about. Driving normally is is a very poor way to assess available traction, and the funny "feel" of metal-grate is more on account of tread behavior on all-weather tire designs than actual limited overall traction.

Glass-on-rubber, which I'm sure you have no driving experience on, is actually quite decent dry; it's only wet that it becomes a hazard, but then wet ice or really wet asphalt are just as bad. IMO, this still leaves it great for dry places like Arizona, which are also damn good insolation-wise, but defeats the self-melting "benefit", as water-on-glass is as bad as water-on-ice-on-glass, and worse than non-wet ice-on-glass.

And please don't point out that trucks wear ruts in "even" asphalt; asphalt is quite malleable, so smoothly rolling heavy weights displaces it to make ruts. Glass, as an extremely hard, rigid substance, has completely different failure modes, principally related to impact cratering and abrasive wear, and big rigs would probably be the least-abusive load round. With completely different damage mechanisms, it's worse than useless to compare damages. Incidentally, this would epically fail in Amish country -- metal-shod horses are rough on asphalt, through plastic cratering, but would be absolute hell on glass.

All that's not to say that it's of even limited practicality, just that some of your arguments are misinformed. The real problem with practicality is the cost, and the proponents comparing cost of raw panels to complete road-laying costs to make affordability seem reachable are just plain dishonest.

Re:Oh, get real.

[HiThere]

Maybe. You don't want a polished surface. No traction.

OTOH, if you mill the surface, wear might smooth the rough edges, and make it more slippery. Somebody needs to study this. Perhaps somebody has.

Also, if you're not after maximal efficiency, then one can use a translucent surface rather than a transparent one. This ameliorates the problem that you see.

I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I don't understand why you are so certain that it's a bad one.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Mr. Freeman]

"Well, if nobody does the work then it'll definitely never happen." Right, but that's not to say that it SHOULD happen. Why not put the solar panels in places where cars aren't driving on them. You don't go spend lots and lots of money developing something to work in harsh conditions when you can just as easily place the unit elsewhere and not have to deal with the problems in the first place.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Mr. Freeman]

It would create more work. Why is this an up side? Have you seen our roads NOW? Creating MORE maintenance problems is just going to lead to worse roads and higher taxes to pay for the increased repairs.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Mr. Freeman]

"this would epically fail in Amish country -- metal-shod horses are rough on asphalt, through plastic cratering, but would be absolute hell on glass."

That, and the fact that the Amish don't use electricity in the first place so it's kind of a moot issue.

Re:Oh, get real.

[noidentity]

You're not thinking big enough. Super-tough material that never wears out? Bah! Why not just invent and install some teleporters at every city, or perhaps for every building? It's simple enough to describe, so it shouldn't be hard to actually do. Hmmm, I just had an even better idea... we could just invent a machine that solves all problems in the best possible way.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Matje]

dude where is this heat coming from? From sunlight, right.

Where did that sunlight go before they started converting it into energy (as proproped by this plan)? Exactly, it warmed up the environment.

See it now? You're not adding any heat in this case, so there's no negative impact on the climate.

Re:Oh, get real.

[RichiH]

While you are right that with today's technology we can't do it, there are some things such as _likeliness_. 100 TiB on a thumb drive? Yah, we will prolly have that in a decade or three.

But...

> just put some super tough clear material over the top of the cells and you've dealt with the wear and tear

Clear implies a slick, non-permeable surface which is ideally self-cleaning. So you have lots of water on roads that are extremely slick to begin with. No idea about you, but I like to stay on the road instead of sliding into a painful death. Just a general preference.
And when water is not an issue, you usually have sand. Sand that is pressed against said surface again, again and yet again, you are sure to scratch it at _some_ point.

If they were talking about harvesting excess heat in places like Texas, sure sign me up. Lots of sun and a dark surface to gobble it up. That works.

And even then, you have shearing of the material, vertical deformation and don't forget that good tarmac looks like a sponge with a drain below to get rid of the water.

Re:Oh, get real.

[SEWilco]

I'd like your glass road to meet my little snowplow friend.
Glass, meet steel blade. Steel blade, meet... hey, where'd he go?

Re:Oh, get real.

[Kokuyo]

Solar panels tend to melt away snow and ice to a certain degree. I In this case, that could be a cool advantage.

But how do you propose one slows down a vehicle on a glass surface? Especially when wet. The usual approach would be to make the surface bumpy but that would directly hinder the production of energy. So I don't quite see how this is supposed to work. The idea is neat, though.

Re:Oh, get real.

[phoenix321]

Well, "50% as tough as concrete and still repairable on-site" would be good enough for the solar application.

Being transparent has not been a requirement for road surfaces for as long as there were roads. That doesn't mean it is impossible. I guess no one ever tried to, because it was simply completely fruitless to do so up until now.

Until now, we had three primary requirements for road surface: tough, easy to apply, cheap.
With solar panels beneath, the requirement "cheap" could fade in favor of "transparent" and change the whole road economics.

Maybe it wouldn't matter if you'd have to renew road surfaces two times more often with a material that is ten times as expensive, as long as the solar cells beneath generate enough cash to cover all that and more. Engineers can produce pretty good estmates on cost vs. profit of a given idea and I guess the numbers were good enough to warrant an actual experiment.

It's not like all people are stupid.

Re:Oh, get real.

[phoenix321]

The asphalt point is spot on: asphalt prices and availability depends on crude oil refinery processes, availability and costs.

With diminishing reserves on crude oil and a higher price on gasoline, either cracking hydrocarbon chains in asphalt becomes economically feasible or total crude oil refining output is dropping to a point where asphalt stops being abundant and cheap.

Then we'd only have concrete and glass left to surface roads with. I'm not sure if glass really is so much more expensive than concrete if we don't need perfect transparency with an optical-instruments-grade surface.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Fred_A]

These clowns are selling solar-powered flashlights.

I happen to have a solar powered flashlight and I love it. The designers had the brilliant idea to include some of those "battery" thingies. Works a treat.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Znork]

You'd have to do quite a lot of work with the surface; you have to deal with water accumulation too, so you'd have to structure the surface to allow run off and rapid displacement to avoid causing hydroplaning.

Still, there are some interesting possibilities. Instead of just glass you could use a silicone/glass hybrid, which could possibly obtain characteristics similar to asphalt, while still retaining translucency.

I wouldn't expect the translucency to last tho; however you build it it's going to get covered with a serious amount dirt in a short time. The engineering issues are, perhaps, not insurmountable, but they are bad enough that you'd be better off simply sticking the solar panels on the sides of the road instead and avoiding the most intractable parts of the problem.

If one necessarily wants to use the actual road surface as energy collector I'd explore the possibilities of simply running tubing below it to gather heat instead (which could also still be used to de-ice it). I'm not sure it'd gather enough energy to be worth it, but it'd certainly be a whole lot easier and more feasible than the photovoltaic option.

Re:Oh, get real.

[msclrhd]

So the roads are giving off heat...
    1/ Is this enough heat to melt the rubber on vehicle tires?
    2/ Can it burn the skin?
    3/ What about chewing gum and other pieces of crap that will get onto the roads?

Will the glass get dirty? (yes) How will this affect efficiency? How easy will it be to clean?

Will the paint needed for the road markings stick to the glass? If not, will coloured LEDs work? And if so, how much power will they use? Are they always guaranteed to work? How visible are they? Will they distract drivers?

I'm not saying that this can be a good thing, but at least test it before committing to using it on a large-scale section of road. Lay out a reasonable stretch of road and have extensive usage in different conditions in a safe manner.

Re:Oh, get real.

[msclrhd]

So this should not be used in areas that are susceptible to earthquakes then.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jo_ham]

So rather than, oh I don't know, do some research on new ways to make roads, you'll just laugh at anyone who attempts to do so because the materials we use right now are so readily destroyed by heavy traffic?

"Super tough clear material" is non specific, but what if it's something based on carbon nano-tech, or based on current plastics but is replaceable like tarmac or concrete on a similar replacement schedule.

You think when Galileo said "hey guys, I've been looking up at the sky a lot lately and it seems to me that the Earth goes around the Sun..." everyone else in the room said "oh man, another laugh out loud moment, this discussion *delivers*!".

Congratulations, you made yourself look like the 16th Century church. Go repress some people and leave /. alone.

Re:Oh, get real.

[bertok]

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!

Re:Oh, get real.

[msclrhd]

The potential is there, and there are benefits, but I wonder how much practical testing has been/will be done in real-world conditions before full scale adoption.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jonadab]

> Well, if nobody does the work then it'll definitely never happen.

I'm pretty confident this is one that'll definitely never happen anyway.

> I'm sure if somebody had told Newton about this wonderful
> thing called Nuclear energy he'd've laughed in their face.

Nuclear energy didn't become possible because somebody said, "Hey, you know what? Burning coal isn't a very good source of power. We should get power from something else. How about metal? Yeah! I know, we'll use uranium!"

Nuclear power became a reality because somebody in theoretical physics realized that matter is essentially a particularly-structured form of potential energy. Nuclear power was one of the implications.

If materials scientists had been working in their labs and discovered a compound that is well-neigh indestructible, has high surface friction, and converts electromagnetic radiation into usable energy, then roads that generate solar power could be considered as one of the possible implications, and people would take it seriously.

But that's not what's going on here. What happened here is, some dude watched too many episodes of the Jetsons while drunk and then went to a green energy brainstorming session and said, "Duuuuudes, [hic], I've GOT it: we'll put the solar cells... in the [hic] ROAD!"

I mean, come on, they're talking about using *glass* for the surface layer -- silicate glass, for crying out loud. It's much too hard to make a practical road surface, it's WAY too brittle, and even if we could somehow get around those problems, the real killer is we'd pretty much have to make car tires out of gecko skin. I'm sure *that* would get the environmentalists in the warm fuzzies.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Tuoqui]

I believe what's trying to be said here is that the Solar Roadway technology being discussed will be more 'active' than Asphalt. Meaning when it starts losing light due to snow it'll convert energy it's already stored into heat thus be more able to keep the roadway clear more often than not. With proper banking of roadways a few degrees either way you could melt the snow and have the water run off to the side.

Also the ideas that plows might be a problem was what I was thinking. Such big monstrous things could very easily damage or destroy the electronics or any surfacing agent used. Usually after plowing up here in Canada they lay down a layer of rock salt although lately they've taken to using brine which supposedly is better for the environment since it uses less salt.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jonadab]

> > [unless] the ambient temperature is below 0, which is often the case during winter
> And it's often above 0. I think a 10C temperature rise is perfectly fair.

He meant below zero Fahrenheit, not below freezing (0 Celsius). (Granted, he wasn't very clear.) When he spoke of heating something 10C, he was setting up a comparison, only ten degrees versus all the way from subzero. He was saying that heating a road all the way from ten or twenty below clear up to the melting point of snow takes a considerable amount of energy.

However, it should be noted that roads that carry a lot of traffic stay warm to the touch even when the ambient temperature is twenty below. Snow doesn't stick on the interstate unless the weather is sufficiently severe to keep people off the roads (typically, this requires a level three, i.e., the state highway patrol threatens to arrest anyone who's out driving for non-emergency reasons). This is because asphalt is a high-friction surface, so the car tires driving on it create a lot of heat. A glass surface, as proposed in the stupid article, wouldn't work nearly so well in that regard.

Re:Oh, get real.

[JWSmythe]

    Well, as a matter of fact, I have driven on just about ever surface that's used on roads in America. I haven't found one yet that is made of glass.

  I've driven on wet asphalt and concrete during hurricanes in Florida. I've driven on roads through the hottest parts of America (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico) both when dry and during flash floods. I've driven in the Northeast US in both good and blizzard conditions. I even had the opportunity to go skiing in a SUV in Alaska (stop? we can't stop).

    Everywhere gets some rain at some point. Roads with glass surfaces will be a hazard regardless of where they put them.

    And yes, asphalt does give under a truck. It gives much better than what glass would do. Instead of grooved lanes, you'd end up with shattered glass roads. That's far from ideal in anyone's book.

 

Re:Oh, get real.

[atamido]

It might be enough waste heat from the solar panels, but there will be less waste heat from solar panels than black asphalt. Black asphalt converts all absorbed sunlight to heat and then releases it over time, while the solar panels would only release 85%. The only way the solar panels would be better at melting snow is if you could pump energy back through them to warm them up.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, this problem is relatively easily solved by making sure the roads are properly drained. Slightly slope the roads to the side so the rain or molten snow drains off into a sewer, and you don't have the slush anymore. .

Your forgetting that water doesn't stay water long once its away from the heated surface. In really cold weather it would freeze before it could go down the drain or the drain would be coated in ice. Not to mention if the ditches are filled with snow already and the snowbanks reach higher than the sides of the road than the water isn't going anywhere. I don't see this as being feasible at all in northern cold weather climates.

Re:Oh, get real.

[drinkypoo]

I would think these large glass panels could be susceptible to the same problem.

You can't pick the concrete up and work on the road surface underneath it. You may well be able to do that with an engineered roadway which is laid down in segments. Since most roads seem to fail due to inadequacies of the roadbed or the surface beneath it, this could make a big difference. An engineered roadway which was thick enough might actually help a great deal in this regard, because when it spans a hole it might adequately cover it where concrete (with no self-healing) or asphalt (whose self-healing abilities are limited and pretty well restricted to hot weather) would simply be pressed into the hole and broken; on the other hand, it might also be a liability because it might hide that kind of defect in a roadbed until it becomes a major problem.

It would be a lot smarter to build solar railways, with solar panels between the rails, and forget about this interstate highway bullshit.

Re:Oh, get real.

[aplusjimages]

So wait you are arguing that this is a bad idea because we shouldn't use a material that may get destroyed by the elements because the materials we currently do use are already getting shredded by the the elements. Sounds like it's dumb of us to keep using this asphalt and concrete you speak of.

Re:Oh, get real.

[drinkypoo]

The big question mark is production cost (more expensive than current surfacing for a 50 year period) and does it generate enough to make it worth wiring it into the grid.

I think the big questions are traction, and where the supercapacitors will come from. We have some amazing kinds of glass, I'm sure we can handle the materials technology. Wiring into the grid is so trivial today that it does not even bear mentioning. The most sensible thing is probably to put an inverter directly into each segment. Power will be carried on a big fat bus.

The test seems very cheap. Surfacing tests of different asphalt mixtures on the order of millions are regularly done.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. Shit, my whole town seems like a surfacing test... a failed one. We have a shitload of sun here, and the roads are mostly uncovered most of the time. Covering the parts of Main Street without tall buildings with solar roadway might be the win.

Re:Oh, get real.

[commodore64_love]

That's because flashlights and calculators use use around 1 watt of power, whereas the typical home A/C or heat pump uses ~10,000 watts. Good like scaling your little solar panel upto that level. Do you have a small farm nearby, because you'll need to pave it over with panels in order to run your A/C off sunlight.

(sigh)

Reading this thread you can really tell who are the engineers (they know their science and what's impossible), and the environments (they believe with all their hearts anything is possible, even if it violates the laws of the universe). I recall having a similar argument with my dad. He said "if they took an electric car and attached a generator to the tire, the generator would keep the battery full, and you'd never need to plug it in." I tried to explain to him that's impossible since perpetual motion is not possible, and energy is wasted as "heat" due to air friction as the car drives down the road, so eventually his EV car would empty its battery and stop.

He insisted I was an idiot and of course it would work. I got angry and walked out. I probably shouldn't have done that but then, science-illiterate people shouldn't be calling people with two college degrees "idiots" either.

Learn science FIRST before you propose stupid ideas.

Re:Oh, get real.

[commodore64_love]

P.S.

Other idiots include the silk-suited people in Congress who think Fuel Cell Cars "run on water" and therefore all we need to do is buy a bunch of them, and all our problems will be solved! (rolls eyes) No Mr. and Mrs. Congress, fuel cells do not run on water. They run on hydrogen. Please show me where we can drill a well and find a bunch of hydrogen?

What's that? You don't know? Well neither do I. Your FC Car won't go anywhere without H fuel. Yes I know it's true that we can make hydrogen from oil or natural gas, but why??? We can burn oil/ng in the cars we already have, so what's the point of switching to new tech that still requires fossil fuels to run? Hmmmm.

Looks like FC cars are not the "miracle" you were looking for after all Congress,
just like computerized voting did not magically fix the balloting problems.

Re:Oh, get real.

[sanosuke001]

Wouldn't just building a simple roof over the road be a bit more feasible? It wouldn't require clearing out the embankments (which are pretty shitty in most places) and would block some of the weather and morning sun glare from the road which would make it a bit safer. They could also then use higher efficiency panels as they wouldn't get as much wear and tear.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Hal_Porter]

This post is an inspiration to me. It shows you that no matter how rich and famous you get you still have time to argue about materials science fiction on slashdot.

Re:Oh, get real.

[BlueParrot]

Anyone who lives in a northern clime can tell you how the first snow after a warm period tends not to stick well.

Yet another reason why it would be better to build the cells as a roof above the road as I mentioned in a post further down this thread. Then you can give the cells a slight tilt and use electric heating to only melt a tiny layer of snow beneath them, causing the rest of it to slide off.

Re:Oh, get real.

[TheLink]

Actually many Amish communities do use electricity. But their electrical devices tend to be using batteries or generators and not connected to the national grid.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking tool.

Re:Oh, get real.

[lastchance_000]

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.

Re:Oh, get real.

[kenh]

I love this line from the article: "The building costs are estimated to be competitive with traditional roads" - REALLY? Layers of glass, capacitors, LEDs, and other electronics will be competitive with pouring asphalt on a gravel base?

For starters, I think you under-estimate the need for Union Electricians to install your new roadway (I can see the government requiring it to pay-off the Electricians union), you over-estimate the energy generated (there will be cars, trucks blocking the sun as they travel the roads), and failed to do the math to calculate the amount of the raw materials needed for this new kind of road.

Make a real test bed, say a mile long, put it on a busy, active highway (RT. 80 just outside a major city?), and see how your well thought-out materials theory stands up to a 50,000 pound semi whena wheel blows out or a truck jack knifes on the highway.

I guess what they are talking about is 25,000 miles of (essentially) bullet-proof glass protecting a solar panel and electronics, resting on a roadbed at least as costly as today's asphalt and concrete roads.

And the self-heating to melt the snow thing is just dumb - to melt snow from night snowfall it will require electricity from somewhere else (let me guess batteries?) - how was that figured in to the equation?

Re:Oh, get real.

[agnosticnixie]

To be fair, wouldn't the continuous existence of a plastics industry (a much better use for petroleum at the current moment even if that should probably be replaced a bit) mean asphalt is still existent as a byproduct of at least something (I know, begging the question is terribly poor form :p ).
Also, the restoration of North America's railroads, public transit and toll roads might help reduce our need for asphalt (or kill Walmart, both of which are probably a good thing) by diverting some of the trafic (but it would need a complete culture shift I guess, I'm rather amazed how important people here think a car is, I'm a first-gen Canadian living in Montreal (so a major city in a small region of Quebec where half its population lives) with good transit so idg "car culture" at all from every point of reference possible).

Re:Oh, get real.

[Road]

Again, this problem is relatively easily solved by making sure the roads are properly drained. Slightly slope the roads to the side so the rain or molten snow drains off into a sewer, and you don't have the slush anymore. This snow problem is also severely reduced by building these roads in California and Florida instead of Alaska and New Hampshire.

I almost had a glass of molten snow with breakfast, but I didn't want to burn my tounge, so I waited till it coold down to water.

Re:Oh, get real.

[adolf]

Good, great. Fantastic ideas.

Now, let's take all of them, and put them off the side of the road somewhere: In the median, or on the berm.

And then, we don't need to make them strong enough to drive on. And we don't care about traction. And we don't care about...well, lots of things.

WTF was the advantage of driving on the bloody god-damn expensive solar panel in the first place, anyway?

Re:Oh, get real.

[GeorgeS]

Are you going to park that flying car in mud or on a "paved" surface of some sort?
If nothing else perhaps this new "roadway surface" could be used in some large parking areas that are farther away from the stores so they get less vehicles parked on them and are thus exposed to the light a good bit more. These parking areas would probably work better for the colder climates because people would not be driving at the higher speeds in a parking area.

Re:Oh, get real.

[volkris]

In many areas roads are just as much about making work as they are about getting cars from place to place.

Decrease maintenance costs and displace plow crews and you take away half of the infrastructure's utility!

Re:Oh, get real.

[adolf]

The snow melt thing screws me up, too.

I live in Ohio. We have asphalt roads, and the major ones get replaced often due to freeze/thaw cycles in the winter just ruining them, so a lot of them are pretty much black in color. They are, therefore, probably fairly efficient at converting sunlight into heat. Snow still piles up on them, though, since it's usually not very sunny when it's snowing. And then, once it is sunny again, the roads are covered in highly-reflective snow.

So, that's roughly how things work today, minus all that fancy math which you helpfully provided.

IF the solar cells are 100% efficient, then there's no waste heat at all to help melt the daytime snow. Which means it'd need melted off using electricity. Which takes away from the electricity that they're trying to store using unobtanium capacitors for night-time use running homes, LED lane markers, and (the expensive part) melting snow.

Right. So, since the roads will be covered in crap, the plows will need to get busy or people will start dieing. So out they come, scraping giant steel shovels over the glass panels, and throwing behind them a mixture of salt and sand.

Following that, is a seemingly endless supply of cars and trucks. Which will grind up the top side of the glass using the sand. And never mind the salt, with it's obvious corrosive qualities and the rapid temperature changes it introduces.

Re:Oh, get real.

[goodmanj]

Black asphalt converts all absorbed sunlight to heat and then releases it over time, while the solar panels would only release 85%. The only way the solar panels would be better at melting snow is if you could pump energy back through them to warm them up.

And even if you *did* pump all the electricity generated by the panels back into them, it would add up to exactly as much as the asphalt is already absorbing. The only way to melt snow *more* than asphalt is to pump extra electricity in from a nearby power plant. We could do that now, but we don't, because it's ridiculously expensive.

(I estimate the cost to melt 10 cm of snow or 1 cm of solid ice off a roadway 50 m wide and 1 km long to be about $5000.)

Re:Oh, get real.

[ZOmegaZ]

I won't debate your numbers, they look fine at a glance. However, supercapacitors are quite common, actually. You'll likely find a small one in any cellphone with a camera flashbulb. They're a relatively mature technology, as well, and not unreasonably expensive for what they do. On a larger scale, a single 48V 165F Maxwell costs on the order of $1-$2k, if memory serves. That's for a capacitor that has an ESR of around 5 milliohms, and which can deliver several thousand amps instantaneously, repeatedly, with no significant negative impact. Try doing that with batteries. My company uses these things on a regular basis, probably on the order of hundreds per year, integrating them into a number of projects on a variety of scales. I just finished designing a portable unit to charge and discharge 500V 130V capacitors, measuring their capacitance and ESR in the process. Of course, I can imagine a different approach to the ice problem. Instead of melting all the ice over the entire road, they could melt paths in the ice instead, breaking it into smaller chunks which are easier to deal with and melt faster. Also, I'm wondering if there would be a significant difference between the amount of energy necessary to actually melt that layer of ice, and the amount of energy necessary to prevent it from forming in the first place. Neither of those would make orders of magnitude difference, probably. The fact that ice might not form or stick the same on a glass road as it does on asphalt might though...

Re:Oh, get real.

[Starcub]

If you made the surface with a friction, it would reduce it's ability to absorb light.

I'm not so sure about that, smooth surfaces tend to be more reflective than matted ones, and in any case, it is likely that any surface used would roughen over time regardless.

I get nervous crossing metal grated bridges. My car sways as it grabs traction on the not quite straight lines in the road. What's going to happen when it becomes impossible to stop, accelerate, or turn (lane change). It's a pending disaster. A little rain, and it's a disaster for safe driving.

You're bringing up situations that arise because the tires your car uses to grip the road weren't designed to perform well on those surfaces, they were designed to perform on asphalt. Correspondingly, there would probably some tire design changes necessary, but I'm guessing it probably wouldn't be too drastic, as I would imagine that roughened surfaces (probably some form of plexiglass) would be necessary to deal with the elements as well.

It's obvious where trucks frequent an area, the ditches created by their weight, even in asphault, would destroy the panels.

If the panels were silicon based, perhaps they would be damaged, depending on how thick the covering is. My guess is they will employ some form of thin film solar PV technology -- the article did mention the collectors were only 15% efficient, and TF is a better performer in terms of cost efficiency. Actually, they could probably use piezoelectric backing material as well, which might be why doing this on roadways is pereferrable to medians.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Starcub]

And why not? Sun = 1000W/m^2

The global average figure for insolation is actually closer to 1370W/m^2. I'm guessing that in the US, it's pretty close to that.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jeffstar]

what about when it snows at night?

Re:Oh, get real.

[apoc.famine]

That was my first thought. My second was "sidewalks". They tend to run past houses, and don't have much in the way of heavy traffic. If these can stand up to road traffic, (and I'm doubtful, having lived in place which have winter most of my life) they should definitely be able to stand up to pedestrian traffic. And in most places I've ever been sidewalks, houses, and the power infrastructure are very near each other.

Re:Oh, get real.

[swv3752]

While spread out, this should be relatively minor compared to a nuclear, coal, or gas fired generator.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Starcub]

Of course, I can imagine a different approach to the ice problem. Instead of melting all the ice over the entire road, they could melt paths in the ice instead, breaking it into smaller chunks which are easier to deal with and melt faster. Also, I'm wondering if there would be a significant difference between the amount of energy necessary to actually melt that layer of ice, and the amount of energy necessary to prevent it from forming in the first place.

I was thinking along those lines as well. It seems to me that since most roadways are already lined with power lines, batteries would only be used to store power in the winter to be used to melt snow and ice. Instead of using electricity, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to hollow out tubular sheets in the glass where the tires are prone to travel over maybe with a highly reflective undercoating. You could run some kind of thermally absorbing liquid through the tubes and superheat it. In the summer you could probably use the liquid to power a generator, in the winter it would keep snow and ice from accumulating.

Re:Oh, get real.

[iamhassi]

"My idea is to put a super tough material over the top and we'll have dealt with the wear and tear."

Transparent Aluminium

Re:Oh, get real.

[iamhassi]

"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."

Agreed. I'm just glad it was only 100k and not 100 million.

For some reason I recall hearing about using solar panels in roads 10+ yrs ago, think it was in popular science, but it was deemed laughable because it was cost prohibitive and we lacked a clear material that could withstand thousands of vehicles daily.

Re:Oh, get real.

[budgenator]

"this would epically fail in Amish country -- metal-shod horses are rough on asphalt, through plastic cratering, but would be absolute hell on glass."

Most Amish aren't cruel enough to their animals as to force them to work long distances on hard-surfaces with metal shoes, rubber soled shoes are much kinder.

That, and the fact that the Amish don't use electricity in the first place so it's kind of a moot issue.

The Amish do use electricity, they just like being self-sufficient more, self-generation allows electricity without being dependant on the outside world. Every Perish has different rules and most have one or two individuals that push the limits.

Re:Oh, get real.

[budgenator]

1/ Is this enough heat to melt the rubber on vehicle tires?
no does your electric window deicer in your car's back windshield melt the tires?
2/ Can it burn the skin?
see above
  3/ What about chewing gum and other pieces of crap that will get onto the roads?
see above

Re:Oh, get real.

[iamhassi]

"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???

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just question what will happen when certain people realize they're driving over $10k road panels.

I mean, power lines around here have been getting stolen to sell as scrap copper...

Re:Oh, get real.

[mykos]

There are plently of people willing to sacrifice their lives (and the lives of others) in traffic accidents in the name of efficiency. Look at the youtube videos of electric car crash tests!

Re:Oh, get real.

[Brian Gordon]

I think time travel is possible. It's non-specific but what if it's something based on quantum mechanics? You think when Galileo said "Looks like the earth goes around the sun" everyone else in the room laughed and said "oh man another lol moment"?

Congratulations. You made yourself look like the 16th century church.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Brian Gordon]

Don't forget he was in the Marines and is interested in religious studies. So you know he can think outside the box.

Plus he has the support of the co-founder, his wife, who is a licensed family therapist!

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

Building as a roof means you need to withstand winds (as well as blocking the view). And cells can be tilted underneath glass. You can also use a fresnel lens approach.

Re:Oh, get real.

[atamido]

I think the idea is that a 0.5cm of snow on the road would prevent the asphalt from absorbing any sun. Use the panel to melt at least some of it, and the sun will do the rest. You aren't going to melt any snow drifts, but you might get rid of that light coating that will turn to ice in the dark.

We don't do that now because it requires a lot of additional infrastructure. This already has the infrastructure built in (assuming running electricity through a solar panel produces heat).

Of course, this doesn't do much for you at night, or when there is no sun, or when the temperatures are so low that you can't pump enough power in to melt an snow cone.

Either way, I have my doubts that they can produce a covering for the solar panels that are:

1. resilient
2. translucent
3. high traction
4. cost effective

I do have other questions, such as how would this compare, cost wise, to build a roof over all of the roads with cheap solar panels on top? A roof would provide shade in the summer and drier roads in the rain/snow, with the added benefit that protecting from the elements would increase the life span of the road. (Although roofs can have issues with wind.)

Still an interesting idea though, and I'm curious to see how the trial does.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Rei]

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.

First off, right there, you completely discredited yourself. Supercapacitors are a billion dollar market today, and are projected to grow to 8.3 billion dollars by 2015. There are anything but "experimental"; they're a mass-market product. What year are you living in, 1990?

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.

Snow is not ice. Snow has a density of about 0.1g/cm^2 (it varies). That's 6cm of snow, or almost 2 1/2 inches. And that's ignoring the snow that gets melted by the heat of the road; keeping a road clear of snow and ice means it heats up more in the sunlight. Anyone who lives in a snowy area can tell you that the first snow to fall on a completely clear road melts right off; the snow has to cool the road before it can stick.

AND, you're forgetting that this is gridded. Not everywhere gets snow at the same time, not everything has to be melted at the same time (just like everything doesn't get plowed at the same time), and so forth. Really, what's your argument -- that a non-gridded version wouldn't work well in Buffalo, so the whole concept is silly? To top it all off, you picked a small supercapacitor, and its numbers include casing, monitoring electronics, etc -- things that on the large scale will decrease.

assuming that the weak winter sunlight was sufficient to fully charge the capacitors during the previous day.

I already do the math earlier in this thread; the road should produce enough energy to melt about 4 inches of snow per sunny day.

Not to mention that no matter how much capacity you have, there's not enough sunlight to charge it.

Yeah, nice bold assertion, Numbers Guy.

On one of the pages, he mentions a target price of USD48 per square foot.

He shows cost-competitiveness with asphault at about $10,000 per panel, *not* counting tangential benefits such as the cost of transmission infrastructure, reduced road maintenance, plowing, health benefits, etc. That's $70 per square foot.

"Divide this amount by the 4.84 billion Solar Road Panels(TM) required to replace the asphalt, and we get a target cost of $9923.16 per panel."

Re:Oh, get real.

[shirotakaaki]

As rtaylor wrote:

Most of the streets in neighbourhoods are also very lightly used (hundreds of slow moving cars per day and not tens of thousands).

These quiet streets get just as much sunlight per square meter (substitute by your favorite unit of area) as the big highway a few miles further. No need to change the entire transportation network into a power plant at once, you can keep your heavy trucks on asphalt highways, and keep the solar panels in the suburbs where people drive slowly, and heavy trucks are barely ever seen at all.

Just a random thought on this point. I agree with it and would think it would work in theory. However, most quiet and neighborhood light traffic streets have vegetation (trees et al) which produce alot of shade. The more heavily trafficked roads (interstates/highways/etc) are (for the most part) in large open and unshaded areas. Thi of course is not universally true but I would imagine it is mostly true. Anyway, just something I was thinking about as I looked out my window on a quiet residential street on a sunny afternoon.

Re:Oh, get real.

[goodmanj]

Melting a half cm of snow will still cost hundreds of dollars of electricity per km (more if the air is well below freezing), a job that can be done perfectly easily with a couple bucks worth of road salt.

Oh, god, I just realized another reason roadbed solar is a bad idea. Road salt. Electrical wiring under the roadbed. *shudder*...

Re:Oh, get real.

[chudnall]

Maybe this form of transparent aluminum would be a bit more practical.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if you give a loony an internet connection, he'll make bizarre analogies to try and support his ridiculous positions on slashdot.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the sun isn't out usually when it snows. Your math is based on the average sunny day, not the butt-end of winter day where the sun is at a lower angle in the sky and usually behind very dark storm clouds from whence the snow comes.

It doesn't matter that it can melt snow in July.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jklovanc]

What happens if it snows more than 4 inches over night? Wouldn't there be e buildup that requires plowing. It is not uncommon for a foot of snow to fall in a 24 hour period.

These calculations also do not take into account heat sinks such as the glass, the concrete, etc. What about heat dissipation to the environment?

Falling snow is not the only issue. What about blowing snow? In windy conditions snow blows around and is deposited on the road and would have to be melted

What happens to snow when it melts? It turn into water which may or may not run off. If that water is not continually heated it will form ice. Great thing for a road.

If the road is using it's power to melt snow and ice it is not contributing that power to the grid. So during the winter months a large portion of the power grid would be off-line.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

keep it below the frost line. I don't think a glass road will deal with frost heaves to well.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Practical? Yes. Practical for the US governing bodies? Not really -- AFAIK, they don't own the railroads! So, it'd be cool for the railroad companies if they wanted to generate power -- but it wouldn't lower the cost of operating their railways unless the panels between the tracks could pay for themselves entirely and then some. The difference for roads is that it sounds like it may be the same price in the long run for construction, plus you get the added benefits of power generation (and ice reduction) thereby (eventually) lowering the loss incurred by maintaining the roads. Maybe for the railroad companies it would have the same benefits -- but somehow I'd rather have the US government with the extra power so they can lower my taxes or offer me more services rather than pay money to another energy providing company for their profit.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch the video. He addresses all of these points:

Shattering, breaking, semi-trucks, etc, etc.

When he went to the materials lab he said it has to be glass, has to be able to withstand fully loaded semis, must be shatter proof, fireproof, translucent enough to allow in light but not glare, etc, etc ,etc. He has already addressed every single thing people have talked about. Watch the video and see. Awesome stuff.

The inventor has a masters degree in materials engineering at University of Dayton, which he says is the number three materials research lab in the nation and he went to them with the specs of what he wanted and they said "yes we can build it, it will cost millions but we can build it." So right now it costs millions, but what they fabricated already stands up to everything everyone is critiquing it for.

Re:Oh, get real.

[JWSmythe]

    That's an interesting idea. That would allow for better alignments of the panels (adjustment for southern view), and protect the roads. I'd have to wonder what effect covered roads would have in most areas though. It would reduce light on the roads, almost mandating running headlights all the time, and weather does help keep roads clean (ran washing loose debris like sand away).

    There are some roads that I drive that are partially covered by a parallel overpass. It's wonderful to drive in the shade but it's usefulness for blocking the glare depends on which way the road goes. For example, it's great heading East an hour or so after sunrise, but when it turns Southeast, that benefit is lost.

    There may be large practical concerns, like height and wind resistance. While we love to believe high winds are a hurricane related event, they hit every part of the country at some point in hurricanes, summer thunderstorms in the SE, Noreasters, tornados, Santa Ana winds, etc, etc, etc.... I've seen a few bridges damaged from overheight trucks. One was an unexpected event, where the raising valve on a dump truck failed, so the back raised itself while traveling, and hit an overpass. The driver had no clue until his truck suddenly stopped. That would go from a sudden stopping event, to a potentially catastrophic event with the truck now electrified.

Re:Oh, get real.

[JWSmythe]

    A little something like this. It looked like a very practical experiment. :) I saw some of the others with that car, and none looked particularly survivable. I guess a 2mph impact with say a squirrel may be ok. Well, not for the squirrel, but

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems so obvious, put the panels in the center of the road in between where the tires would tread.

Even use large pre pressed asphalt tiles that can be taken up. This would also make for much easier maintance on the roads as well as repair.

Re:Oh, get real.

[herbierobinson]

10KW is kinda high -- unless everybody live in mansions. I figured I could fairly easily cover the A/C in my house with panels on half the roof (the half the points south). It required the good panels (16-18% efficient). One thing to remember is that peak A/C demand coincides with the max amount of sunlight.

Re:Oh, get real.

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Some other consequence I havent thought of yet.

Like the need to keep it constantly clean of dirt, mud, rubber reside from hard braking, spilled oil, other miscellaneous stains, etc? Like potentially melting the surface whenever there's a car-fire? Like giant fricking gouges in the surface every time a poorly maintained car loses a tire--or police throw out the spike strips? Like the cost of constantly replacing the glass every time it's damaged? Like sharp edges being formed in the glass by accidents which then go on to tear up tires, causing more of the gouges mentioned before?

I like the solar panel idea but not at all as a road surface, unless it's roads that aren't usually in use, such as in deserts. If they were deployed over the road, as a sun and rain shield, or something, I wouldn't object, although I can see that some people would.

Whatever.

Re:Oh, get real.

[xactuary]

Thoughtful points, but it occurs to me that regular traffic accidents would provide plenty of glass road-breaking opportunities.

Re:Oh, get real.

[[Mobius]]

How will a glass surface respond to tire chains on trucks and frost heave?

As soon as someone shows me glass that is tougher and more durable than granite (which frost will easily shatter over time), I'll believe these panels are suitable for anywhere in Canada.

Anyone who says glass is a suitable highway road surface probably also thinks concrete is as well... You'd fail as a road engineer in Canada.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Ol Olsoc]

You've never seen just how the Amish treat their animals have you?

1. Use em up

2. Wear em out

3. Sell the remains for

4. Profit!

Many Amish also use electricity, sometimes in strange ways. There won't be electricity in the house, but they might have it powering a air compressor, then the air goes into a workshop. Same with telephones. Often there is a Phone pole in the field, and a telephone attached to it. The wires just can't go into the house.

"Out on the road today I saw a Dead-Head sticker on a Amish cart......."

Re:Oh, get real.

[bobs666]

Well, if nobody does the work then it'll definitely never happen.

I am with you. You have to try!

But your example breaks down.

I'm sure if somebody had told Newton about this wonderful thing called Nuclear energy he'd've laughed in their face. Likewise, I can't imagine anybody of that era seriously believing that we'd have the Internet.

You see Sir, Isaac Newton was an Alchemist. He would not have laughed he would have wanted to know more.

I will give you the Internet thing. But ponder this. In that time frame Computers where people. Networking was the mail man. Packets where sent via courier. So one could perhaps call the postal service an Internet. Its a matter of perspective.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have without knowing. I don't know about the USA, but here in New Zealand some recycled glass that is not suitable for remelting is broken up into aggregate for roading use. Of course, since it is mixed up with perfectly ordinary black asphalt it is not transparent so it would not be much use for covering solar cells. Still, there is glass in the roads.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

The intended advantage isn't that you get to drive on the solar panels. That would be stupid.

The point is that roads make up a hefty chunk of surface area and are going to be clear a vast majority of the time. So if it is possible to have them all generating power through solar means with little to no drawbacks, you'd be mad to not do it.

Putting them in the median is a non-solution because a) there is barely any median surface compared to road surface and b) median space is generally reserved for foliage, which is vastly less likely to be found suitable for covering solar panels in the near future than cars are.

Re:Oh, get real.

[JWSmythe]

    I found this document on using glass in asphalt (aka glassphalt). It's used in surfaces designed for speeds under 40mph. They mention that if it's used for the upper layer of the roadway, as long as less than 10% of the mix is glass, skidding doesn't become a concern. What was being suggested is closer to 100%.

    I believe limestone is used in some roadways. I have seen some roads glitter when the light is right, so I don't know if it's pieces of glass or quartz crystals.

    I used to live in an area that used crushed limestone for some rural roads. It could be a trick to drive down them when they were wet. That wasn't the fault of the crystals though, wet limestone gives you no traction. The speed limit on those roads were always 30mph, although that was rarely followed. Of course, with the ignoring of the speed limit, there were frequently cars that needed to be pulled from the side of the roads, where they slid off.

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

You drive on your car's back windshield?

You can get things which de-ice windshields in the first place??

Re:Oh, get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

Places such as where?

whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[davidwr]

Ok, that's probably overstating it.

This probably is doable, but I think we are years if not decades away from it being cost-effective.

Besides, if you've seen the wear and tear, potholes, and cracks in roads around here you'd know things are rarely as easy in the field as they are in the lab.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[MagusSlurpy]

Of course it's cost effective. The first 12'x12' panel, 144 sq feet, cost US$100,000. So, 25,000 sq miles x 5280 feet x 5280 feet x ($100,000/144 sqft) = . . . $484,000,000,000,000. Is that. . . 484 trillion dollars? Where's Dr. Evil's laugh when we need it?

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The first model T cost $89,000, the next 12,000 cost $550...

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Coward]

So each subsequent Model T cost 161.8 times less than the original. Thus, our solar roads would not cost $484 trillion.

Instead, they'd only cost $2.99 trillion.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Weezul]

I've a much better idea : power electric cars using wires embedded in the roadways.

It's already being done for tramways in high pedestrian traffic areas of ancient Euroepan cities, merely to make things prettier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramway_de_Bordeaux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply

Yes, tramways are lower speed than highways, and are longer than cars, but we could easily make this work for cars on highways too. Of course, electric cars would still need batteries for local roads which might not be wired.

You could even just forget about purchase price subsidy electric cars and give away the electricity for the first few years, while gas car owners are still paying out the ass.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[webnut77]

My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.

I think I know her! Is her name is Sally?

She keeps them in a bin in her store. Or is it a /usr/bin?

yeah right

[Brian Gordon]

With only 15% efficiency, 25,000 square miles of solar roadways could produce three times what the US uses annually in energy

25 thousand square miles of solar panels? I laughed out loud at that being considered a plausible solution to the energy crisis. You could power the entire world with the amount of money that would cost, using cheaper power like hydroelectric/wind. Also it would cost a fortune to maintain. Also why do they have to make roads out of them.. where did that come from? Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

Re:yeah right

[Mithyx]

...Also why do they have to make roads out of them.. where did that come from? Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

This was my first thought too. Making the solar panels into roads (or vice versa) is compounding the problem. Just put the 25,000 mi^2 of solar panels in the middle of the desert and call it even. Adding a layer of glass or some sort of protective surface is going to lessen the efficiency and raise the cost of production and maintenance. I'm all about green energy, but there are better places we could be spending our money and energy.

Re:yeah right

[hedwards]

Because we need to have roads, so that area is already set aside, plus apart from the roads inside of cities a lot of stretches of roads are less used, but might still be conveniently located for smaller communities. But, you're absolutely correct when you suggest that converting the whole system to solar panels is stupid. There are cheaper places to put them and cheaper means of getting electricity.

Re:yeah right

[negRo_slim]

Also why do they have to make roads out of them.. where did that come from? Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

Yes let's go tear up what's left of arable land and natural habitat for our never ending thirst for energy. People will point to the desert as if it's some vast lifeless tract of land. Which is simply not the case.

Re:yeah right

[Connie_Lingus]

yeah i did some math...he mentions in the video he thinks he can get the cost "down" to $43/sq ft. 1 square mile ~= 5200x5200 x 43 ~= $1.1 billion x 25000 = $27 trillion.

fire up the printing presses.

Re:yeah right

[Kagetsuki]

I agree. This is not a solution, and why choose this over viable solutions available right now? Even if you wanted to use the roads for solar energy why not do something like use them as they are, or run pipes under/in the asphault and pump water through them for water heating in the summer (which would cool the roads as well) -and you could pump water through them in the winter to de-ice the roads. Of course that also creates problems when pipes crack and it would increase the cost of road construction, but still it seems waaaay more viable than this. In fact if I sat down for an afternoon I'll bet I could come up with 100 more viable ideas than this.

Re:yeah right

[Brian Gordon]

You apparently have a very loose definition of arable.

Re:yeah right

[shadowofwind]

But they can conveniently power our vast array of roadway embedded GPGPU supercomputers.

Re:yeah right

[madcat2c]

Your assuming mile wide lanes. Lets assume 2 lane roads. Normal 12' wide lanes means 48' of width.
5280'long X 48' wide = 253,440sq feet per mile
253,440sqfeet per mile X $43 = $10,897,920 per mile
$10,897,920 per mile X 25,000 miles =
$272,448,000,000.

So $273 billion or so for nationwide energy independence would be pretty cheap if you ask me.
I cant keep my kids eyeglasses from getting scratched up every six months, so im not sure how they will keep the clear covering scratch free...if they cant then that efficiency goes way down I bet.

Re:yeah right

[bcwright]

25,000 square miles is a lot of land to give up, even if it's desert.

A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that 25,000 square miles is about 9.4 million lane-miles, or about 2.4 million miles of 4-lane roadway. This sounds suspiciously close to our total inventory of highway miles of all sorts, everything from Interstates down to country roads, so I suspect that that's where that number came from. I would certainly have a great deal of concern about the issue of wear-and-tear on major highways built using this technology; dealing with that would have to cost more than making normal solar panels, and all they have to do is just sit out there in the sun.

It would seem that there are lots of other places you could put that many solar panels that wouldn't have quite as much of the wear-and-tear issues: roofs of all sorts, for example. Since you don't really need 25,000 square miles of solar panels given current solar panel efficiency and current power needs, that would appear to be a better place to site them first. If it isn't cost-effective there, it won't be cost-effective anywhere.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i did some math...he mentions in the video he thinks he can get the cost "down" to $43/sq ft. 1 square mile ~= 5200x5200 x 43 ~= $1.1 billion x 25000 = $27 trillion.

fire up the printing presses.

We could print MORE money!

Re:yeah right

[zero0ne]

http://www.covalentsolar.com/

Ignoring the solar cell aspect, are you forgetting about the whole data and power layer?

That alone would make it worth it IMO.

The Roads are owned by who? So who would own the data pipes?

We would call that getting two birds stoned at once in Canada.

Re:yeah right

[bertok]

...Also why do they have to make roads out of them.. where did that come from? Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

This was my first thought too. Making the solar panels into roads (or vice versa) is compounding the problem. Just put the 25,000 mi^2 of solar panels in the middle of the desert and call it even. Adding a layer of glass or some sort of protective surface is going to lessen the efficiency and raise the cost of production and maintenance. I'm all about green energy, but there are better places we could be spending our money and energy.

Back at uni, I did a mini-course on the the Solar Car challenge, because my University made some of the solar panels for the top cars, and we also had a car that entered and did fairly well (for a low budget). One of the things we learned was that solar cells lose efficiency very quickly from a variety of things. The two that most researchers ignored in the lab but mattered in the field was heat and dirt. The cars in the race are washed with cold water thoroughly at every opportunity because colder, cleaner cells are substantially more efficient. Think CPU overclocking - lower temperatures improves things a lot.

Now lets compare this situation to a typical road which is:
a) Blistering hot most days.
b) Really, truly, thoroughly dirty.

Sounds like the perfect place to put an expensive solar cell panel!

Another thing we learned is that a single "test" panel in a lab operates very differently to a bunch of real panels in the field. What a lot of naive researchers miss is that the amount of sunlight over the entire collecting surface in the real-world is not constant. For a one-square-foot panel, it is, but for any significant surface (the size of a car, road, whatever), it won't be. The surface will be curved or partially shadowed. This matters a lot because if you just connect a bunch of cells together, they perform roughly the same as the worst of the lot. If there's a few cells under a shadow, that's drags down the efficiency of the panels receiving sunlight. To efficiently extract energy from a bunch of panels receiving differing amounts of light takes a bunch of expensive power management electronics that can combine the different cell outputs in the right way.

In practice, cells are so expensive that the best place to put them is on huge, flat, orientable panels out in the desert where there's no clouds, no rainfall to cake dirt onto the panels, and they can be oriented to face the sun at all time, like this array in southern California.

Re:yeah right

[brusk]

Given that the US spends over a trillion dollars on energy a year, that's a bargain.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

We're assuming 25k square miles means 25k square miles, not 25000 miles at 48' wide. Those two areas are no where close to each other, and neither is the power output.

Re:yeah right

[Zen Hash]

Your assuming mile wide lanes. Lets assume 2 lane roads. Normal 12' wide lanes means 48' of width.

5280'long X 48' wide = 253,440sq feet per mile

253,440sqfeet per mile X $43 = $10,897,920 per mile

$10,897,920 per mile X 25,000 miles =

$272,448,000,000.

So $273 billion or so for nationwide energy independence would be pretty cheap if you ask me.

I cant keep my kids eyeglasses from getting scratched up every six months, so im not sure how they will keep the clear covering scratch free...if they cant then that efficiency goes way down I bet.

The article says that there are 25,000 square miles of road in the lower 48 states. So the GP's math would be correct for estimating the cost if we were to be replacing every road in the lower 48 states. In which case, we would also be generating over 3 times more power than the US uses annually.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

For years I thought it would be a great idea to put 'softish' solar panels in the median of four lane highways an just lay cables under the roadway every so often. I think this is a good idea since it alleviates the snow problem, however I still think they still should move that great idea twenty feet to the left.

Re:yeah right

[amRadioHed]

That is nothing like the typical US desert.

Re:yeah right

[LynnwoodRooster]

Only if we don't have to replace those panels after 40 years of so (to make back the time-value of money lost over the original 27 years). If we have to replace the panels every 15-20 years like conventional panels, it's a guaranteed money-loser every year.

Re:yeah right

[cbiltcliffe]

We would call that getting two birds stoned at once in Canada.

I don't know.....getting birds stoned sounds more like an English thing. :-)

Re:yeah right

[plague911]

As other haves pointed out. This solution dose not need to break even. Right now sunk costs per mile of highway can be in the millions per mile. In order for solar to work in this situation it dose not need to have a net profit over the lifetime, it just needs to have a slightly lower net cost. Which is entirely possible as paving is not cheap.

Re:yeah right

[dangitman]

Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

Or, how about above the roads? That would mean that maintenance wouldn't require road closures, and you wouldn't be using land that could be used for something else..

Re:yeah right

[plague911]

You should also beware applying your experience with solar cells to to every solar cell. I would probably be willing to put money of the fact that you were working with monocrystalline cells. Yes using monocrystalline cells in this situation would be stupid. But to be honest the people designing these project did not even consider monocrystalline because their advantages/disadvantages do not match this project at all. Amorphous cells on the other hand match the job a lot better. Cheaper more rugged and relying more on large surface area than high efficiency.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back and read the summary. It says 25,000 square miles. No one is assuming mile wide lanes, but the calculation was done based on the stated area being used. Your calcuation is for a drastically smaller amount of area.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

news for you, NOT ONE of these stirling dishes have been built. The land is there (approval is still pending an EIR), lines are being put in (hello controversial "sunrise power link"), but no construction work has begun at either site.

http://renewableenergydev.com/red/solar-energy-stirling-energy-systems-solar-power-plant-california/

I'll keep my optimism in check until they actually start building these things. So far seems like all they're interesting in is taking investment capital.

Re:yeah right

[bertok]

My bad, I just googled for a random picture of solar-panel things in the desert. 8)

The fact that it hasn't been built just strengthens my point. Event the 'optimal' solar panel sites are uncompetitive with traditional forms of power, or the cheaper forms of green power (especially wind). Throwing away a bunch of efficiency on top of that is just crazy.

Re:yeah right

[HiThere]

You *do* know that there are different kinds of solar cells. And that some are a LOT cheaper to make than others, though much less efficient. And that the cheap ones tend to be flexible and relatively sturdy...and can even be printed with a modified ink-jet.

I don't see anything absurd about it, and I feel your reaction is more stupid and pitiable than anything else.

I'm not at all certain that this will work, or that it's a good idea. It's not, however, self-evidently silly.

Re:yeah right

[mcrbids]

25 thousand square miles of solar panels? I laughed out loud at that being considered a plausible solution to the energy crisis. You could power the entire world with the amount of money that would cost, using cheaper power like hydroelectric/wind.

Really? You need to find

A) Water that's falling, for hydro-electric. In case you hadn't noticed, there aren't that many more rivers of decent size that haven't been dammed (no pun intended) all to hell. Hydro-Electric is a non-starter for any more future development. There just isn't any.

B) Wind and a PLACE TO STORE THE POWER. Wind energy is cheap, but is only available when the wind blows. And that only has ZERO correlation to the when we need the power. See, in the American Southwest, we see a very distinct pattern of usage during the peak (summer) times of year. Every day, power usage spikes at about 2:00 PM, when everybody's air conditioner is running full tilt. Nicely, solar energy availability peaks at about 1:00 PM, so if we were smart about it, we could use solar to offset this horrific peak of power that otherwise maxes out the grid every year.

Also it would cost a fortune to maintain. Also why do they have to make roads out of them.. where did that come from? Just put them out on land somewhere, you don't have to drive all over them.

Driving on PV panels is teh stupid. But why not put them over the road, like a roof? Then you drive in relative "coolth" while the sun's heat is converted into electricity and/or re-radiated upwards instead of into your car. Cover parking lots, too. Wouldn't it be nice if your car didn't heat up to 150 degrees F when you parked at the local mall?

Re:yeah right

[n8r0n]

I agree with your contention that the best place to locate solar panels is in the desert.

But, I think you've missed the boat with the heat analogy entirely. I can imagine that a panel on top of a car in a desert race would heat up, but that's not what this project is building. The panels will be located on an enormous heat sink that's always cool, no matter what the air temperature is. Have you ever been in a hot desert? Just dig a few inches under the top layer of sand, and it cools down dramatically. This is why heat pumps work (to cool building down).

The contact with car tires will also be multiple inches of glass away from the panels themselves. They're not going to be heating the panels up.

And of course a traditional road gets hot. That's the whole point behind the promise of this technology! That's the enormous amount of solar energy. On an asphalt road surface, that all gets converted to heat. Solar panels are dark, too, but they're using the photons to generate electricity, instead of solely heating the road surface. Such a road would also lose some incident energy to reflection, which asphalt does hardly any of.

I'm not saying heat is a non-issue, but I think your example is a poor one, that overstates the problem.

Re:yeah right

[ceoyoyo]

Looks like a great place to put some solar cells though.

Deserts, even regular deserts, are generally not considered "arable." They're not lifeless, but also not arable.

Re:yeah right

[brusk]

But if the cost is one we'd pay anyhow (to resurface roads), it's a twofer.

Re:yeah right

[Connie_Lingus]

well wait...both the article and video state there are "25,000 sq miles" of roadway, not linear miles as your post assumes.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The web site addresses the dirt concern in the FAQ.
2. Maybe the panels will use micro-inverters ... http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2008/20080076.html

Re:yeah right

[goodmanj]

Hay guys, I found some nice desert land to put some solar panels on. Lots of nice flat areas, clear skies, and the best bit, it's got power lines running to it already!

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.868144,-118.22647&z=14&t=h&hl=en

Re:yeah right

[Brian Gordon]

as paving is not cheap.

How about paving with $40/ft^2 solar panels?

Re:yeah right

[Brian Gordon]

It's not, however, self-evidently silly.

Driving around on glass solar panels isn't silly?..

We have vast dry lake beds, salt flats, and plain old deserts out in the western US. Let's fill those up before we start replacing roads.

Re:yeah right

[bhiestand]

It's not, however, self-evidently silly.

Driving around on glass solar panels isn't silly?..

We have vast dry lake beds, salt flats, and plain old deserts out in the western US. Let's fill those up before we start replacing roads.

Issues with driving on glass are the obvious problems that need to be solved. The point that makes this unsilly is that if they can manage to produce these for anything near the current cost of roads, it's a huge net savings. They already have to build new, replace, and resurface roads on a regular basis. If they can do it with power-producing roads for a marginal increase in road cost, it's a huge net money saver.

The obvious question, then, is whether they can actually overcome all of the challenges and do it for a decent price... which is pretty much the reason to build a prototype.

It's not an inherently stupid idea, but it does have some obvious challenges that would need to be overcome. We'll see if they can manage to do it.

Re:yeah right

[gmprog]

Agreed, we shouldn't disturb natural habitats to solve our energy problems. If we're going to cover land area with solar panels, let's find a location where the resulting destruction would actually benefit mankind. Perhaps Redmond, Washington?

Unsafe?

[digitalmonkey2k1]

I'm sure they did fairly decent testing with 4 wheel vehicles, but my motorcycle lacks the inherent stability that a car has. How bad would a surface like this be when it gets wet?

Re:Unsafe?

[virmaior]

if you read the website, you would realize the only thing they tested is the HTML.

Re:Unsafe?

[couchslug]

If it's rough enough for traction, it'll get coated with crud and work less well.

Re:Unsafe?

[jhol13]

Or snow?

Oh, did you know that most of the places which gets snow is so north that there is practically no solar energy whatsoever so the panels cannot melt the snow.

Re:Unsafe?

[Anonymous Coward]

when people do bail out and/or have fires, the road will be completely out of commission until the panel is replaced. At least concrete survives most of the impacts/fire.

Re:Unsafe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add rain/dust/dirt/exhaust/oil/other-debris... the protective layer over the solar cells will be scratched/cracked/foggy and slick as hell and the parts that aren't will create huge glare problems.

But hey, we only need 25,000 square miles...
How many nuclear plants could we build for that kind of money?

Re:Unsafe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I'm not the only person who was thinking of this... I'm a 24/7/365 motorcyclist... I don't even own a car now. Using a smooth/glass surface is a BAD idea.

Re:Unsafe?

[arielCo]

Glass as in your window or tabletop is slippery when wet only because it's smooth. It's not hard to imagine a texture grabby enough for tires: gritty like sandpaper, or a micro version of the "diamond" plate used in industrial catwalks.

Further, since it would be on the bottom of a mold at the factory, the pattern could be made quite deep so it'd take longer for it to wear down (plus glass is harder than asphalt or even concrete). Add the right grooves for drainage, and you're set. The only remaining problem is resiliency so it won't shatter when a semi truck eventually loses control and rolls on it.

Dang Good Idea

[Ferretman]

This is a pretty good idea, if it can be pulled off. Leaving aside the nonsense about climate change it's a Good Thing Anyway, though I'm a bit worried about overall durability compared to a layer of asphalt. I wish them the best!

The claims in summary = article + meshed/shortened

[virmaior]

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.

Where in the world???

[Anonymous Coward]

Where in the world--let alone in the U.S.A.--do you come up with 25,000 square miles of roadway to replace? That's 500 miles X 500 miles of roads.
I can haz assfault?

Re:Where in the world???

[setagllib]

Was elementary school hard for you, with math skills like that? Try to keep up:

500 * 500 = (5 * 5) * (100 * 100) = 25 * 10,000 = 250,000

Re:Where in the world???

[cbiltcliffe]

You do realize you're talking about a country that's over 3000 miles wide on average, right?
And roughly 2000 miles north to south?
And that's not including Alaska....

Add in all the little screwy subdivision roads, right up to major 4 lane highways.....I'm surprised it's only 25,000 square miles, to be honest.

According to Wikipedia, the US is roughly 3.8 million square miles in area.
25,000 square miles of roads means that roads cover only 0.66% of the surface area of the US.

That's not exactly a lot.

Someone should tag this "RoadsMustRoll"

[Anonymous Coward]

And everyone else should go read the story.

Coefficient of friction...

[SirCowMan]

Glass? That can not be safe, the grip issues alone would preclude it. One good jack-knife, and shards of road all over the place sounds pretty dangerous too. The biggest hang-up here is certainly not cost, but safety.

Re:Coefficient of friction...

[13bPower]

Yeah, anything that smooth will be interesting to drive on. Can't they dope the asphalt with silicon or something and do it that way?

Re:Coefficient of friction...

[arielCo]

Glass is not necessarily smooth and slippery as we have it in window panes, y'know. In fact, I guess a gritty or grooved texture would be even grabbier than asphalt, due to it's hardness. As for shards, I'm guessing tempering and/or scoring would control the size and shape of fragments, much like in windshields. Hey, why not add a layer of plastic to keep the little pieces together?

Re:Coefficient of friction...

[Anonymous Coward]

:) drive with care takes on a whole new meaning :)

Darwin Awards 2023 - The Winner.
Joe Dufus went a-drinking and then a-driving. At high speed, he stuck a pole, went sideways, gouging the SolarRoad open, and died in a shower of shattered glass and exploding gasoline (when the gas met the electronics). One idiot less for the gene pool...

Can you imaging the extra insurance you will have to carry to cover damage to road surfaces?

You got to be kidding

[schnikies79]

Road surfaces? You mean the same ones that get demolished every winter because of plows?

I was going to make more of a point, but I'm not going to bother...

Re:You got to be kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

They claim the Solar Roadways are self heating and shouldn't need to be plowed since the snow wont' accumulate.

Re:You got to be kidding

[AlexBirch]

Usually winter roads are destroyed because of the expansion of water that freezes inside it.
A friend of mine said that Minnesota roads are great because they're alway frozen during the winter (can anyone confirm this?)

Re:You got to be kidding

[_Shorty-dammit]

OK, even the SUMMARY contains a sentence that says the roads wouldn't need plowing in the winter because they heat themselves to automatically melt any snow accumulation. How exactly is it that you figure you would plow something that isn't there?

Re:You got to be kidding

[printman]

Yeah, since the roads will be glass they'll replace the plows with big squeegees.

Re:You got to be kidding

[0123456]

OK, even the SUMMARY contains a sentence that says the roads wouldn't need plowing in the winter because they heat themselves to automatically melt any snow accumulation.

So we're installing these fancy new solar panels in order to generate less electricity than will be required to heat them in the winter?

Re:You got to be kidding

[imikem]

Minnesota roads. Great. Umm. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge

I'll go with a "negative" on that confirmation, being born and raised in flyover land. There are redeeming qualities to Minnesota, but I won't list roads (or drivers) amongst them.

No way this stands up to the weather in Minny. How does it generate electricity to warm itself and keep free of snow when the sun is above the horizon for about 6 hours, and even then is hiding behind thick gray cloud from November to March? Good luck with that. Maybe somewhere the climate isn't as extreme.

The one thing I do like about the idea is that roads already represent despoiled terrain, so we're not increasing our footprint, plus they naturally lead toward population centers, minimizing extra transmission lines.

Re:You got to be kidding

[Kagetsuki]

I've engineered small electric heating and cooling systems before for various projects, and have dealt with solar panels. I'll tell you right now, solar panels harvest next to no energy in cloudy weather (common for the winter, yes?) let alone in the rain or snow. On top of that they amount of energy required to produce heat is incredible, and even rather efficient heat producing materials like ni-chrome wire would suck the energy out of a capacitor bank in no time - not to mention the distribution of heat required to continually melt snow would require a feat of engineering wizardry. Oh, and here in Japan the trucks put chains on their tires in the winter when it is snowing, even if the upper "protective" glass layer can hold up against normal tires in normal conditions a cold panel being driven over by a shipping truck with chains on the tires would most definitely demolish it.

Re:You got to be kidding

[H0p313ss]

OK, even the SUMMARY contains a sentence that says the roads wouldn't need plowing in the winter because they heat themselves to automatically melt any snow accumulation.

I strongly suspect the author of that statement have never seen a cold day in Minneapolis or Ottawa... where the temperature dips almost to -30 at night... and you don't see the sun for days.

Re:You got to be kidding

[macaddict]

I've lived two places that have very cold winters, with lots of cloud cover and large accumulation of snow (upper Great Lakes and the Great Plains) and I don't think it's as easy-peasy as they make it out to be. I'm guessing these people have never lived in a region that gets a ton of snow in a short amount of time. So lets ignore the problem of these panels collecting enough energy after a month of cloud cover to not only keep up with the daily accumulation (oh, and fulfill the original goal of providing power) but also melt the two feet of snow that got dumped by a blizzard overnight. The snow is not going to magically disappear. It turns into water. So where is all this water going to go? And what is it going to do when it flows off the toasty solar panel and onto, say, non-solar roads. It's going to FREEZE. So non-solar roads connecting to the solar roads will have a nice layer of ice forming at the intersection. So now rather than making quick runs up and down roads tossing snow out of the way, plows are going to have to deal with the icy death traps wherever ice is being formed in inconvenient places by the rapid melting of a large amount of snow in freezing temperatures (And as plows aren't exactly precision instruments, chances are the solar panels at these intersections will be hit). I'd prefer non-heated solar panels that can be plowed over ice rinks at intersections, thanks.

The panels would probably work great in the southern states (where any snowfall would be just a tiny amount), but it's laughable to think about putting this in places that get real winter.

Re:You got to be kidding

[cbiltcliffe]

I'm sure the next time it snows in Arizona, they'll all take your advice and immediately put chains on all the shipping trucks in the state. :-/

Re:You got to be kidding

[Kagetsuki]

I'm not sure you understood my comment. Nowhere did I give any advice to put chains on trucks. I was responding to a comment regarding how the developer of the solar road system claims the roads can heat themselves in snowy conditions. I had two points: Here in Japan (I guess they do it differently in America) the trucks chain up their tires when it snows, which would most certainly do a lot of damage to these kinds of roads. Also, to generate enough heat to constantly melt off snow from such a wide surface would almost certainly require far more energy than the panels could possibly produce, especially during the winter.

Re:You got to be kidding

[im_thatoneguy]

Yeah because Minnesota was the first place that came to mind when I was thinking of good places to install these... not Las Vegas or LA.

Re:You got to be kidding

[RJFerret]

Yeah, since the roads will be glass they'll replace the plows with big squeegees.

Actually, on glass roads, I'd leave the snow there to enhance traction!

Re:You got to be kidding

[cbiltcliffe]

No...I understood your comment.

And I realize it would be impossible to melt all the snow from a Vermont blizzard.

My point was, there was no mention in the article of putting these things in Japan, so what trucks do in in winter in Japan is completely irrelevant to the conversation.

I'm sure that if somebody actually thought about it, they'd figure that putting these things in North Dakota is stupid, and anywhere north of Kentucky is probably pointless.

However, there are a lot of roads in Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and the like, that will receive very little to zero snow, even in winter. Basically, there's at least 15 states that could completely replace their entire road system with this stuff, and generate enough electricity for the needs of themselves, and another 15 states.

Instead of snow ploughs, at most they'd need to be washed every 6 months or so.
Maybe they should put water pipes in a layer under the electronics layer, so that they could all pump water through them from the Gulf of Mexico, and be self cleaning.
Of course, that would also involve desalination....

Re:You got to be kidding

[Kagetsuki]

No...I understood your comment.

And I realize it would be impossible to melt all the snow from a Vermont blizzard.

My point was, there was no mention in the article of putting these things in Japan, so what trucks do in in winter in Japan is completely irrelevant to the conversation.

So trucks in America don't use chains in the winter? What do they use? If they use chains it's perfectly relevant.

I'm sure that if somebody actually thought about it, they'd figure that putting these things in North Dakota is stupid, and anywhere north of Kentucky is probably pointless.

However, there are a lot of roads in Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and the like, that will receive very little to zero snow, even in winter. Basically, there's at least 15 states that could completely replace their entire road system with this stuff, and generate enough electricity for the needs of themselves, and another 15 states.

Instead of snow ploughs, at most they'd need to be washed every 6 months or so. Maybe they should put water pipes in a layer under the electronics layer, so that they could all pump water through them from the Gulf of Mexico, and be self cleaning. Of course, that would also involve desalination....

So you are saying the should only put these things in places that don't have snow? But the company trying to develop these explicitly stated they could melt off snow themselves, which is what I was commenting on.

Re:You got to be kidding

[cbiltcliffe]

So trucks in America don't use chains in the winter? What do they use? If they use chains it's perfectly relevant.

A lot of places in the south of the USA don't have "winter" per se. Just a slightly less hot period during the cooler months.

So, no....they don't use chains in the winter.

So you are saying the should only put these things in places that don't have snow? But the company trying to develop these explicitly stated they could melt off snow themselves, which is what I was commenting on.

Well, like I said. A Vermont blizzard is pretty much a showstopper for these things. Probably the same with the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Montana. These are also the kind of places where you'll see snow chains. Although they're illegal in certain states, due to the damage they do to the road, even when it's regular pavement. Same in Canada.

However, somewhere in the area of Tennessee, Kentucky, maybe Missouri, will get a small amount of snow, that these things should handle just fine.

Then there are all the southern states that get no snow, or at most, a few flakes during a cold spell in January, that doesn't stick around for more than a night.

Ok, thought experiment here:

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the time, energy, and materials needed to make a transparent, wear-resistant glass roadway with solar panels, wouldn't it in fact be easier to stick to concrete/asphalt, and instead build roofs over every highway/interstate in the country? You could put solar panels on top of those, with existing technology, and not have to worry about things like grit causing erosion, oil spills, etc.

Because as phenomenally expensive and complex as turning the entire highway system into a shaded tunnel would be, it would still be less expensive than such a ridiculous melange of technologies. Roads should be durable and provide high grip. Solar panels should be kept clean and run at maximum efficiency at all times. Mushing the two together into some pathetic hybrid is just idiotic.

Re:Ok, thought experiment here:

[cbiltcliffe]

And on top of that, the roof would keep a lot of snow - non-windblown stuff, anyway - off the road, and you wouldn't have to plow it as much in winter.

Brilliant!

Re:Ok, thought experiment here:

[Anonymous Coward]

See, the problem with your solution is that you now have to pay for road, solar cells, a support mechanism for the solar cells, and lighting for the tunnels you've made. By the time you've done all this, there's no point anymore.

This guy's solution needs no support mechanism or lighting, and combines the road with the solar cells. He just has to come up with a drivable protective surface for the cells. And glass technology is probably advanced enough to be able to do that much cheaper than you think.

dom

Re:Ok, thought experiment here:

[HiThere]

You could be right, but it's not *clear* that you are. So it makes sense to check.

FWIW, if you're putting the solar cells on platforms up in the air, you'd use a different kind that are more efficient and less flexible. Also more expensive. So you'd use perhaps 1/12th as many to get the same benefit, but you wouldn't save all that much money, and you'd still need to pay for resurfacing the streets periodically.

I feel that people are reacting to the word "glass" and "solar cell" in a way that's quite peculiar. Remember that glass includes fiber-glass, and glass-bricks, and many other forms. This form seems to be a specially tailored glass brick cover over a solar cell. And the solar cell isn't some dainty silicon chip, it's probably one of the plastic ones. It's not that efficient, but it's got a large absorbing area, so if the cover gets a bit scratched it doesn't really matter. Any light that gets through will hit some cell, and get absorbed. If it isn't clear, no problem. That just means that it isn't focused on any one spot, but this kind of cell has a LARGE absorbing area. So scratches aren't any problem.

P.S.: When I was four I remember seeing some glass bricks in the sidewalk that were used to let light into the basements of stores. I don't think that people have done that for a long time, because they're slippery (and electricity got cheaper) but just the other day I saw some in the sidewalk. They'd been there a long time, and someone had covered them with asphalt at some point, but the asphalt had worn away and the glass bricks were still there and still unscratched. (A couple had been shattered, but scratches weren't a problem.) They'd been walked on by men with taps and women with stiletto heels, and were essentially undamaged.

Hacker's dream

[7-Vodka]

I can see it now. Someone will gain control of the LED functions and splash some geeky internet meme over 250k square miles of roads across the country.
Or some ascii pr0n.

Re:Hacker's dream

[skine]

The next Die Hard movie!

(As in it's stupidly impossible, yet most people won't know it. Similar to how any fat lazy Anime fan can find anything on any government website in less than ten minutes, and will still complain about how hard it is.)

Re:Hacker's dream

[HiThere]

That might pull in even more money than the electricity generation. Sell moving ads in the roadway. (ARRGH!!)

I can see the hacks now

[t0qer]

The end of the video talks about hacks. These things sort of remind me of LED walls..

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/20/giant-cowboys-stadium-led-wall-caught-playing-xbox-360-during-do/

That's going to be insane to see a 25,000 square foot goatse staring up at you.

Quibble

[john.r.strohm]

How will the oil drippings and the tire residue affect the panel output?

Re:Quibble

[igny]

Well it is easy to solve, just make the surface slippery enough so that nothing will stick to it and the wind will take car of the rest.

Re:Quibble

[Anonymous Coward]

Negatively.

Re:Quibble

[drinkypoo]

This is an obvious complaint, but it should be possible to basically run a gigantic floor washer down each lane every month in the middle of the night to do upkeep, and to deploy it as necessary for accidents and spills. Maintenance vehicles with basically gigantic hand scanners could make lane passes to determine when maintenance was necessary, and the cleaner could be deployed on-time. As vehicles get smaller (and go electric!) this becomes less of a problem anyway.

Re:Quibble

[Anonymous Coward]

They are going to use self-cleaning glass. Which does not work on oil. Which reflects UV light. Which is super smooth.
Don't get me wrong, I love this idea. But it seems that they have conflicting solutions to different problems. The answer to one problem is super smooth reflective coatings. The answer to traction is textured glass. How much usable light will get through a titanium dioxide coating for the solar cells? No, really, I love this idea and hope to see some realistic research in the area, but these guys smack of amateur nut job.

Re:Quibble

[apoc.famine]

And mashed critters....

Duh...

[AlexBirch]

They are going to cut 1/2 the greenhouse gases by getting more and more cars off the streets and into repair shops!

Re:Duh...

[The Wooden Badger]

It puts a whole new spin on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_windowparable of the broken window.

My first thought while reading the summary was "slippery when wet".

What a dumb idea.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

So, it snows like MAD, dumping a foot or so on the road in a few hours. Emergency vehicle has to get through, so they pop the chains on the tires.

So much for the solar panels when a 4 ton 4WD EMT truck rolls along on at 40mph.

RS

Re:What a dumb idea.

[chickenarise]

Tell me good sir, how fast does snow accumulate on a surface well above 0 degrees Celsius that has a source to keep it heated?

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a matter of the road having ice or not. Regardless of the surface condition of the solar road, inevitably, a different road that the vehicle has to travel on would necessitate chains for access.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[virmaior]

a basic problem is that it often snows at night, good sir. how do propose to power a solar cell at night in order for it to have the energy it needs to melt ice across its entire surface?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_fusion

we're looking 333.55 J/cm^3 of water. So at 16m^2 per panel, it's 1.6 x 10^6 * 3.3 x 10^2 = J/cm of water = ~ 5 x 10^5 kJ/cm of water ...

that's a pretty decent amount of energy not including the amount needed to heat it up to 0C in the first place.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[green1]

At -35c how much electricity would it take to keep the surface above 0c? and do you really think that the solar cells will be generating that much at night to ensure it stays warm enough?
I should also note that the absolute most dangerous roads are the ones hovering near zero because that means you're driving on actual ice and not snow, or worse yet, wet ice.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

1. as someone noted below, it often snows at night. So much for solar power heating the roadway then.

2. In an intense blizzard, it gets pretty dark out, so even then, your sun power is limited, and there's no way it can beat the accumulation. Just take average sun insolation (which will be reduced do to cloud cover) x 0.15 then x 0.(x) reduced efficiency to heat (2nd law thermo and all that) and divide that into the amount of energy needed to melt a foot of snow. Answer: not going to happen.

3. It only takes ONE truck with chains to make hash out of those panels.

Verdict: it's still a dumb idea.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

put our district heat under the pv. we would triple our efficiency (aka 40 yr of increases in consumption) of ~90% of our existing electrical generation. doubling the scope of this project has the potential to cut fossil fuels by 50 - 66%. even comining this idea at 10% of its potential with the other 10+, 7% wedges that have been identified we make a major dent in our problems while generating enough wealth to survive until the next century. in the long run (gen y lifetime) energy, directly, will be .3 to .4 of the entire global economy. The only distinction is whether you invest now to do very well, invest later to retire, or be totally retarded and have your wealth siphoned away by the rest of us.............

Re:What a dumb idea.

[chickenarise]

-35c? Yea, that sounds like somewhere they would build these in a heartbeat, what with the high latitude and all that sunshine... At any rate, wouldn't the road be connected to the power grid and draw when it needs it? Do you honestly believe they forgot that the sun doesn't shine during the night when they developed this idea?

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

This might not work in the USA, but whats this snow thing you talk about here in Australia. The lower half of your country probably doesn't see much snow, if any, so this sounds like a smart idea.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

the solution is in the problem. At night, the roads stop emitting energy, so we have to turn to non-green sources, which in turn causes a temporary greenhouse effect

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Gavagai80]

Read. The point of solar roads is that they heat themselves so that the EMT gets through faster without a need for chains.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I did read. You didn't.

1. Fact: There are times when it comes down faster than you can melt it,
1b. and in conditions and locations where it won't work, and eventually,
2. you will end up with some EMT truck rolling to save someone's life and it will have chains to get through the blizzard, and therefore:

3. your highway is hash.

Re:What a dumb idea.

[Phroggy]

The ambulance isn't going to stop to remove the chains when they turn off of a snow-covered asphalt-paved road to drive on heated snow-free glass-topped solar panels for awhile.

Basic thermodynamics...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't even read the article, but I see a major problem in the roads being able to heat themselves to keep off snow. If there were that much solar energy available, black tar roads would be able to keep the snow from accumulating on them.

  Clearly, this is not what happens in Michigan.

Re:Basic thermodynamics...

[AnonGCB]

But much of that energy is just dissipated when there is no snow, this can pull energy off the grid if it needs to, and store energy it gets from the sun to use specifically when it detects snow.

Re:Basic thermodynamics...

[0123456]

But much of that energy is just dissipated when there is no snow, this can pull energy off the grid if it needs to, and store energy it gets from the sun to use specifically when it detects snow.

If the heat of the sun isn't enough to melt the snow on the road, how is a 15% efficient solar panel going to produce enough heat to do so? Particularly at night?

Re:Basic thermodynamics...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first of all the sun isn't very good at melting snow because snow is reflective.

Second of all, 15% efficient solar panels are probably much closer to 100% efficient at heating themselves (or could be made to do that very easily).

It's basic thermodynamics.

Re:Basic thermodynamics...

[0123456]

Well, first of all the sun isn't very good at melting snow because snow is reflective.

The albedo of freshly fallen snow is around 0.7-0.8 (and I believe it's significantly lower for IR), so more than 20% of the energy from the sun goes into warming the snow.

Second of all, 15% efficient solar panels are probably much closer to 100% efficient at heating themselves (or could be made to do that very easily).

And they still collect less energy than the raw sunlight which is unable to melt the snow.

It's basic thermodynamics.

Indeed it is: perhaps you should learn some.

Re:Basic thermodynamics...

[floateyedumpi]

Because the bulk of the energy hitting that snow, at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, is reflected back into space?

Re:Basic thermodynamics...

[OpinionatedDude]

Ok, but what is the albedo of an albino?

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[Brian Gordon]

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

Overstatement? I doubt there's any truth at all to it. How much carbon do you think it takes to fabricate 25,000 square miles of solar panels? As if we even have the capacity to manufacture that much; entire facilities would have to be built from the ground up. We already have roads; tearing them up and replacing them would certainly be a loss compared to just putting up panels in the desert and leaving roads alone. Then there's all the infrastructure to process and distribute the power from the roads and water cool them.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

[Redfeather]

Another great idea just BEGGING for poor execution. Although I do have to say, the innovation aspect does sound interesting.

Vandals will LOVE this...

[terdog1]

Hack into the LED, obscenities, and worse rap lyrics IN the road. Worse still, 12:00, 12:00 12:00....

Reminds me of another project mentioned here

[erroneus]

There was a building designed with flooring that uses the energy of people walking on it to help power the place.

I think that solar power might be ridiculously expensive, but if they captured the hear from the road's surface and extracted the energy from that in some way, it might be quite effective and a lot less expensive. I can't speak for roads in other parts of the country, but here in Texas, walking bare foot on any paved way or even on sandy soil will result in burns in the summer.

Re:Reminds me of another project mentioned here

[Peaquod]

that heat is a clear indication of the amount of solar energy available. allowing it to convert to heat before capturing it would tremendously lossy. I also can't imagine how one might capture the heat energy effectively while still allowing traffic to pass over the road, so I'm skeptical about "a lot less expensive"

Re:Reminds me of another project mentioned here

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that solar power might be ridiculously expensive, but if they captured the hear from the road's surface and extracted the energy from that in some way, it might be quite effective

Uh...that heat is the result of the light hitting it...thus solar energy...

Re:Reminds me of another project mentioned here

[apoc.famine]

I'm from the NE, and you can burn yourself on sand and pavement around here as well. Granted, for much less of the year, but it's still possible. The issue with pulling heat out of the road is that you need some substrate to absorb the heat, and then move out of the road to where you can turn that into energy.
 
Roads are far from stable, and any sort of thing you embed into it is going to break with thermal expansion/contraction, heavy traffic, etc. The autobahn is heralded as one of the best highways in the world. However, the roadbed is something like 2'-3' thick, and completely solid. If you put tubes in this, it would severely compromise the structural engineering of the road. If you did that with a regular US road with all of 6" of tar, it wouldn't last very long at all.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[virmaior]

fair point.

I was just trying to imagine there was something other than marketing + hope in the website or blog post

the more i think about it the more i realize this project will only work if a new form of relativistic physics arrives that has hope as the magic term.

that's also what i think of the new health care cost plan, but that's for another thread.

just snow?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about dust? mud, leaves, how about rubber from the tires or just plain roadkill?, sure it's not that much but really ...

Epic Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it snows like MAD, dumping a foot or so on the road in a few hours. Emergency vehicle has to get through, so they pop the chains on the tires.

So much for the solar panels when a 4 ton 4WD EMT truck rolls along on at 40mph.

RS

You realize of course that no one is proposing you put solar panels in Alaska. 25,000 square miles is not the equivalent of replacing every road in America. The idea is to put the roads in dry, desert like areas.

Re:Epic Fail

[0123456]

The idea is to put the roads in dry, desert like areas.

How much snow do you get in 'dry, desert-like areas'? For that matter, how many roads do you find in such areas? For that matter, if this is restricted to 'dry, desert-like areas', why not, like, just build big piles of solar panels across the desert and forget the whole 'road' thing?

Re:Epic Fail

[shibashaba]

i like this idea. i'm sick of all these stupid traffic laws

Re:Epic Fail

[amRadioHed]

How much snow do you get in 'dry, desert-like areas'?

Not much.

For that matter, how many roads do you find in such areas?

Areas like southern California? We have quite a few roads actually.

why not, like, just build big piles of solar panels across the desert and forget the whole 'road' thing?

No ecological impact using already paved over land.

Re:Epic Fail

[gander666]

Actually, we get a 3" or so layer every few years in Tucson, Arizona, and it gets ugly. It can and does snow in the desert.

FWIW, I have solar panels on my roof, and love em, but I think this is a pipe dream

A dumb argument

[copponex]

There are multiple solutions to the problems you suggest, but I don't even have to mention them, because others have already.

The real problem is that you fail to understand that solutions can be found if you aren't too lazy to look for them. Yes, if the people who designed this system are absolute morons, they may have forgotten that trucks exist and are heavy. The difference between that group and you is that they are actually doing something instead of arriving at a problem, scratching their pits like their primate ancestors, and going back to throwing shit at a tree, or speculating on the NFL draft, or arguing with some lonely basement dwellers on a Friday night on the internet.

Am I doing anything particularly important or positive? No.

Am I therefore going to endlessly criticize those who are trying to solve it for me? Of course not. I'm glad they're working on the problem, and will be happy to benefit from it if they're successful. I'll even gladly give more money to projects like this out of my tax dollars, instead of wasting them to build F-22s at 3,000x the cost.

Fortunately for their team, real scientists and engineers will constructively examine his project and be very critical of it. Since they aren't like you, and will continue to look for a solution instead of giving up at each impasse, they will have a better product in the end. Even if the project totally fails, they may provide useful information to others who are also trying to come up with solutions to similar problems. This is the beauty of the scientific method. Please take your ape brain elsewhere.

Re:A dumb argument

[zero0ne]

I wasted too many mod points on the Literacy Revolution thread dammit!

Re:A dumb argument

[jtorkbob]

There is this thing, though, called snake oil. Politicians love it, these days even more so when it's 'Green Snake Oil'.

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

I'll even gladly give more money to projects like this out of my tax dollars, instead of wasting them to build F-22s at 3,000x the cost.

How about if you kept those dollars yourself, and spent them or saved them as you saw fit for your own purposes, instead of the government making those choices for you? Buy solar panels if you like.

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

Maybe we should call it "Snake Ethanol".

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[copponex]

Because unless a public outfit pays for it, the knowledge gained will be lost for anyone else to benefit from it. There's nothing wrong with a community pooling their money for investment for their own benefit, like there's nothing wrong with a family saving up for a new home. It should be decentralized and democratically controlled as much as is possible, but not eliminated for some ridiculous ideology that has no practical application. (I'm speaking of strict libertarianism.)

Either to a corporation who privatizes the profit and sues anyone who even copies the idea, or to a corporation who would rather bury the technology than have to compete with it, or to the failed corporation who won't be allowed to release the patents because their shareholders are a bunch of dickheads.

Do you think the internet would be here as quickly unless it had been freed from corporate shenanigans? It'd be just another version of a closed-off network, like AOL and CompuServe and Prodigy.

The reason America has all of this technology is because we pay hundreds of billions of dollars every year for it, under the cover of military research. Many projects are wasteful pipe dreams, but even those pipe dreams let us know where the dead ends are. Privatizing research is too expensive, not only for the raw costs involved, but because you end up duplicating too much work on very complicated problems. That's why no private corporations engage in pure research. Product research is the only thing they can justify to their shareholders.

Re:A dumb argument

[copponex]

Err, forgot to move a sentence. The post should begin with "There's nothing wrong..." and the second paragraph should be:

Because unless a public outfit pays for it, the knowledge gained will be lost for anyone else to benefit from it. Either to a corporation who privatizes the profit and sues anyone who even copies the idea, or to a corporation who would rather bury the technology than have to compete with it, or to the failed corporation who won't be allowed to release the patents because their shareholders are a bunch of dickheads.

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

Because unless a public outfit pays for it, the knowledge gained will be lost for anyone else to benefit from it.

Because patent holders never offer what they've patented for sale to the public, right?

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[blackraven14250]

Mod up!

Re:A dumb argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Some retards forget something - it is called research. They know the materials will fail. That's not the issue here. They are doing *REAL WORLD* testing to see how they will fail, how long it will take for them to fail and where improvements can be made.

You can't test everything in the lab. Sometimes it is easier to test in the real world than try to simulate real world conditions.

Re:A dumb argument

[copponex]

It depends on whether there's a profit it in or not.

So, if I hold a patent for an extremely efficient vehicle that never breaks down, am I going to sell the product and destroy the profitability of my company, or stick to the more inefficient products that already have a willing group of consumers?

The argument that the market leads to efficiency is exactly wrong. The unregulated market leads to monopolies, racketeering, and profit, usually at the expense of efficiency, because efficiency means less profit.

A well regulated market can lead to efficiency through genuine competition, but it's actually pretty rare. Take a look at the expenditure of energy for transportation across the world. Which market has led to massive inefficiency, and can only survive through colonial exploitation? It's not Finland.

Re:A dumb argument

[da cog]

There is this thing, though, called snake oil. Politicians love it, these days even more so when it's 'Green Snake Oil'.

There is a fascinating disconnect between your posting and the lack of actual politicians claiming that this particular technology is going to solve all of our problems, as well as a lack of companies selling this product in large quantities to a deceived public.

Granted, it would seem that some people are really enthusiastic about how awesome this technology could be if it pans out. I fail to see how this is a bad thing. Haven't you ever gotten really enthusiastic about a project before? Didn't this enthusiasm motivate you to get started and see how far you could push your idea, even while a little part of you knew that realistically it probably wouldn't live up to all of your expectations?

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

It depends on whether there's a profit it in or not.

You're starting to get the idea.

am I going to sell the product and destroy the profitability of my company, ..and then you go right off into the weeds again. This hollywood scenario of a better product being suppressed is nonsense. There is no 300 MPG carburetor.

The argument that the market leads to efficiency is exactly wrong.

Except in practice.

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[Anonymous Coward]

"ALONtm is virtually scratch resistant, offers substantial impact resistance, and provides better durability and protection against armor piercing threats, at roughly half the weight and half the thickness of traditional glass transparent armor, said the lieutenant."

http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=7223

So we can use something like this to coat the solar cells instead of glass, maybe

Re:A dumb argument

[copponex]

Who bought up mass transit systems across the united states and shut them down? Who has been lobbying for the prohibition of natural drugs, and profiting immensely off of the sales of their own derivatives? Who shut down their production electric vehicle line and sold the patents to an oil company once there was no state requirement to produce a zero emissions vehicle? No one's talking about imaginary carburetors except for you. I'm talking about the self-evident fact that unpoliced corporations will destroy anyone and everything in order to turn a profit, even if it means dooming their country to reliance on foreign resources or destroying local manufacturing by moving jobs overseas. Especially now that corporations are international, they will exploit anyone who allows them in, and if you think for a moment that Exxon or Microsoft or Bechtel care if there is a just and equitable society anywhere, you're just not paying attention.

The reason the market works sometimes is because there's competition. But there can't be competition without regulation. That's why the rest of the western world pays half of what we do for health care, transportation, and communications. That's also why they still have a middle class and less poverty, even in Germany, which absorbed it's communist half not even 30 years ago. In these countries, the rights and values of the society are more important than the private profits of corporations. This is due to active democratic action and unions, who are vilified by corporate culture for a very simple reason: they are the only check to corporate power, because they have the ability to influence the government and represent the will of people. (Not that they succeed in this goal all the time, or are innocent of corruption.)

I'm sure you're enamored with your quips, and at least the effort matches the quality, but you're failing to provide any interesting points. So provide me with the narrative. Show me where a corporation engaged in pure research, brought a product to market without government subsidy, and revolutionized the world. For bonus points, show me where they decided that the product was so beneficial they'd allow anyone to produce it for the betterment of mankind.

Re:A dumb argument

[sumdumass]

You sound like that guy who was attempting to justify the government grant for the rubber underwear to see if linings could change the smell of farts.

There are idea, good ideas, bad Ideas and stupid wastes of money ideas. This project falls into the later.

Re:A dumb argument

[im_thatoneguy]

If the government is already spending $10k per unit of road and this company thinks it's possible to deliver a product which will already be purchased by my tax dollars (road) but have added benefits then I think it's worth a little feasibility study.

This is:
Space already being used.
Money that's already being spent.
and delivers
Electricty
Infrastructure (Grid, Data etc)
and
Improved safety.

If it worked then there would be little down side except increased up front costs.

Do you want the government trying to get the most bang for your buck or just sticking to the tried and true without an eye for innovation?

Re:A dumb argument

[Myrcutio]

Show me where a corporation engaged in pure research, brought a product to market without government subsidy, and revolutionized the world.

*cough*Google search*/cough*

Re:A dumb argument

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise that Google was spun off from a university, and that universities get state funding, right?

Re:A dumb argument

[jsebrech]

You might want to give a practical example of an unregulated market that tends towards optimal efficiency.

The problem is this: the free market makes prices drop to marginal cost levels, so market agents have two incentives: (1) merge and acquire to increase scale and drop costs, so as to achieve higher profits, and (2) find ways to reduce market freedom so prices no longer have to remain at marginal cost levels. These two incentives combine to reduce market efficiency. Let any market run free, and it will rapidly tend towards oligopoly. Once the number of players becomes small enough, they start to cooperate to reduce market freedom and raise prices.

Re:A dumb argument

[ShakaUVM]

>>Who bought up mass transit systems across the united states and shut them down?

Man, I wish they'd shut down the mass transit in LA. Maybe then they'd finally get their heads out of their asses and expand the interstates that haven't been upgraded since the 60s.

And literally, yeah, LA back in the day decided they would solve the traffic problem by expanding mass transit instead of expanding the roads. The snarling mess of traffic that millions of people have to deal with every day is a result of this idiotic "green" idea. By contrast, Orange County (part of the LA metropolitan region) has been consistently working on their roads since the 80s. While OC still is no picnic, when you transition from LA to OC at 7:30 at night, it's like a breath of fresh air as you speed up from 35 to 75.

LA, by contrast, runs the entire I-5 down to a single lane in the busiest part of the road. (The I-5 is the main north-south artery for the entire state.) And it's been that way since I was born.

Re:A dumb argument

[msclrhd]

What is not clear is whether the real world testing is on the 25,000 square miles of road.

They mention having the funding to test a single 12ft by 12ft panel. The next step would be to test a small stretch of road (say 300 yards) in extensive usage (or expected usage for the roads that are being replaced) in different conditions (dry, wet, snow, heavy rain, night, thunder/lightning, earthquakes, dirty). And not just the road, but the side of the road as well (what happens to the water when it drains off to the side -- are there going to form a channel on either side due to erosion and insufficient drainage?).

What about people walking on the roads? And the visibility/glare of the LED "paint"?

This should definitely be tested and researched.

Another thing: if these roads are going to be warm and free of snow during winter, what is going to prevent animals from living on them?

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

. Let any market run free, and it will rapidly tend towards oligopoly.

You have that exactly backwards. The more regulated any line of business is, the more it tends to concentrate into fewer and larger organizations. Government is far and away the most prevalent means for excluding new competitors from a market.

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

Come to think of it, the textbook counterexample to your argument is airline deregulation. Back when the civil aeronautics board handed out the routes and set the prices, we had a handful of major airlines, and flying was a luxury. Since we rolled back the regulations in 1978, competition proliferated and prices plummeted.

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[n8r0n]

Oh please. Stop pretending that green this or green that is even remotely popular with politicians, or any other segment of our society. For every green endeavor you read about, there's 10x as many black ones (black as in oil, black as in coal, black as in asphalt, etc.)

Our government gives away far more of our money to big polluters than to all the pie-in-the-sky green projects put together. Go actually read the stimulus bill and then try to refute my point.

Re:A dumb argument

[floodo1]

Prices plummeted and they nearly all went bankrupt.

Re:A dumb argument

[jheath314]

Because scientific research usually costs more than most individuals can afford, yet doesn't always offer the immediate financial rewards necessary for companies to pursue it.

Fortunately for you (assuming you're American), there is a major political party out there which shares your anti-science, anti-tax values. They'll gladly gut our nation's R&D labs and throw away our future to save you a few pennies on your tax returns. Enjoy!

Re:A dumb argument

[Anonymous Coward]

[...]This is due to active democratic action and unions, who are vilified by corporate culture for a very simple reason: they are the only check to corporate power, because they have the ability to influence the government and represent the will of people. (Not that they succeed in this goal all the time, or are innocent of corruption.)

I thought your post was an excellent summation of human nature. Just don't underestimate how out-of-check unions can get. They're made up of humans, too, and while they usually start out with the best of intentions, they too need to be checked and regulated, lest they become more of the problem than the solution. Power corrupts - governments, corporations, unions, it makes no difference.

Re:A dumb argument

[Menkhaf]

Snake biodiesel would be closer to the original term, though.

Re:A dumb argument

[volkris]

Wow. Such ignorance.

Drop us a line if you ever come back to Earth.

Re:A dumb argument

[goodmanj]

It's better to do something than to sit around. But it's better to sit around than to do something stupid.

Two shipwrecked dudes are sitting on an island. There's a coconut palm. One sits on the beach, hungry, looking out for a passing ship. The other climbs the tree to get some coconuts. Mmm, coconuts. Smart move, tree climbing guy.

Now, same situation. One guy watches for passing ships. The other guy flaps his arm real hard trying to fly up to the top of the tree. Now who's the smart one?

Solar roadways are like the guy trying to fly to coconuts. Compared to our other locations for solar power (rooftops, for instance), highways are the worst possible location. They're filthy, load-bearing, wet, freezing, hot, and occasionally subject to violent impact. It's enough to make a mechanical engineer cry.

Re:A dumb argument

[copponex]

I can agree with a portion of your post. I would not give very much money to someone who claimed they had found a stone that could levitate any weight, and invest in building a bridge out of it. Since we spend 40 billion dollars a year on highway construction and maintenance, what is the harm in using even one billion of that for research and development? Do you think there's no chance of improving the way highways are built at all?

Your analogy is completely miscalculated. You can say that throughout the entirety of human history, no one has flapped their arms and raised themselves off the ground. However, it cannot be said that no one in history has ever produced a new material that could serve as a road. In fact, from stone, to gravel, to concrete, to asphalt, to steel bridges, many people have introduced new materials and methods of building roads. Exploring new options is not a bad thing, unless it's economically infeasible, or unless you hate progress. I do not think $100,000 of grant money is on the radar of economic malfeasance.

Re:A dumb argument

[jcr]

they nearly all went bankrupt.

You say that like it's a bad thing. If a business can't compete, then it should go bankrupt and lose its customers to those who do a better job.

-jcr

Re:A dumb argument

[Scrameustache]

Who bought up mass transit systems across the united states and shut them down? Who has been lobbying for the prohibition of natural drugs, and profiting immensely off of the sales of their own derivatives? Who shut down their production electric vehicle

The stone cutters?

Re:A dumb argument

[e_hu_man]

Haven't you ever gotten really enthusiastic about a project before? Didn't this enthusiasm motivate you to get started and see how far you could push your idea, even while a little part of you knew that realistically it probably wouldn't live up to all of your expectations?

yes and yes. and then she slapped me.

The Death of Slashdot

[GodfatherofSoul]

I've noticed that the quality of this website has slowly decreased to the point it's not my first look anymore. After reading all of the armchair scientists instantly shooting down an experiment with I'm sure they have an inversely proportional knowledge of the subject and hand, I've think I've finally figured out. The AOLers are ruling the roost.

Re:The Death of Slashdot

[virmaior]

well, i too think slashdot is getting worse, but i don't think the problem is in the comments section.

there's really been no work done on this project AFAIK. it's just hope, a dream, and a website so far. A couple napkin calculations and suggested solutions to the basic problems. Unfortunately, he didn't know that napkinning is a multi-person sport.

Re:The Death of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened like 5 years ago.

Re:The Death of Slashdot

[jtorkbob]

Don't(tm) forget(tm) a whole lot(tm) of registered trademarks(tm)

Re:The Death of Slashdot

[goodmanj]

I'll take armchair scientists shooting down an experiment over armchair reality TV fans smiling and nodding.

People here may be cynical and underinformed, but at least they're trying to *analyze* the news they hear rather than sitting back with slack jaws, nodding and trusting the boffins.

Slashdot sucks, but it's better than the alternative.

Re:The Death of Slashdot

[bhiestand]

I've noticed that the quality of this website has slowly decreased to the point it's not my first look anymore. After reading all of the armchair scientists instantly shooting down an experiment with I'm sure they have an inversely proportional knowledge of the subject and hand, I've think I've finally figured out. The AOLers are ruling the roost.

Clearly you don't remember the early days of AOL. If AOLers were ruling the roost, this place would be pretty much entirely dedicated to pedo-related activity.

slippery?

[dwater]

Wouldn't this be terribly slippery? It's bad enough for motorbikes when they cover the road in paint, even without rain, but glass? Seriously?

Re:slippery?

[apoc.famine]

Worse, it's going to reflect/refract light. Maximum light transmission to the solar cells will come at noon, through clear glass. However, at anything other than noon, at anywhere other than the equator, a fairly large amount of light will glance off. This is bad on tar or cement, which reflect a tiny percentage of light. With glass, it would be horrific. Plus, as you said, it'd be slippery.
 
Their solution is to rough up the glass. However, I'm very skeptical of this. The more you rough up the glass, the less light is going to penetrate, meaning your efficiency takes a nosedive. In addition, the more angles you have in the surface, the more chances for reflection/refraction you set up.
 
My optics background was always poor at best, but I really don't see how they will avoid blinding drivers at sunrise/sunset, and still get good performance out of their solar cells.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[Kagetsuki]

There are many different types of solar panels, composed of a variety of different materials with different photo-voltaic properties and different levels of construction difficulty. Unfortunately many of these materials are expensive, and especially in the case of thin-film panels a variety of not-so-nice materials can be used. While a constructed panel can be used enough to theoretically be worth its cost and cover its impact on construction (including the environmental impact of harvesting materials) most panels aren't repeatedly run over by trucks. If these actually get deployed I expect they'll all just get broken right away and you'll have a whole lot of potentially dangerous bio-waste to deal with.

I think all your missing is

[Shivetya]

able to leap tall buildings and being bullet proof...

I am not overly worried about its resilience, I am more worried about how the surface drains water and traction on when wet. Being an avid motorcyclist I dread new roadway compounds because half the time they forget that two wheelers exist. Rubber directional signs applied to road surfaces are already not friendly, I don't need more.

Re:I think all your missing is

[blackraven14250]

A slight curve on glass is likely to drain water better than the equivalent asphalt because of its smoothness, as water isn't going to get trapped in a small hole between rocks. As for traction, I'm not so sure, but having horizontal striped ridges (1/4 width of raised sections, total width 1/2 inchish, probably) in it would help out alot not only for motorcyclists, but also anyone else driving.

Think of the Applications

[nomessages]

I read "glass surface" and the friction episode of The Magic Schoolbus comes to mind. Unfortunately, I don't think a real-life application of the complete lack of friction would help us all (or the children).

Re:Think of the Applications

[russotto]

There's a lot of problems with this idea, despite what the polyannas and anti-skeptics are saying. But glass isn't a frictionless surface; far from it. It's typically smooth, but just because it looks kind of like ice doesn't mean you slide on it like ice.

Re:Think of the Applications

[BitZtream]

perfectly smooth surfaces are the best when they are dry.

Rubber on dry glass has a very high level of traction.

Rubber on glass with a tenth of an inch of water on it at 30 mph is pretty much like expecting tires to be useful on the International Space Station.

I could go into the reasons why, but theres no real reason to do so since this shit will never be rolled into production anyway.

Brilliant...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

The higher the traffic, the less sun they'll get.

Solar powered flashlight...

[Chruisan]

Here's my question regarding the panels melting snow. How do you get enough energy to melt the snow when it has been accumulating all night? No sunlight to get through the layer of snow to power the solar panels to melt the snow. You still need to plow or salt the road. Kind of like a solar powered flashlight.

Huge problems

[wicka]

Pricing is supposed to be competitive with concrete and asphalt? You just roll that shit down and it dries. Glass road surface? What sort of grip are you going to get on that? How about in the rain? What about potholes? There are almost certainly going to be gaps between the panels. What will happen when water freezes between them? I can't even be optimistic about this, it just won't work.

Re:Huge problems

[drinkypoo]

Pricing is supposed to be competitive with concrete and asphalt? You just roll that shit down and it dries.

Snicker, snicker snort. Says someone who knows nothing about concrete or asphalt, obviously.

Re:Huge problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously have no clue as to what you're talking about. You don't just "roll that shit down and it dries." Concrete doesn't dry. It cures.

Also, you don't roll it onto anything. It takes a lot more work to construct a road than saying "Hey, I'm gonna pour a shitload of concrete in a semi-straight line and then paint lane markings on it."

Re:Huge problems

[sincewhen]

One thing I'm wondering about is how the panels are fixed to the ground and/or each other and if there expansion gaps between each panel filled with rubber?
The FAQ or other pages don't seem to mention this. If so, the road would be annoying to drive on with these regular thump-thumps.
It also seems from the illustrations that the texturing would be regularly spaced circles - I hope not and assume this is for illustrative purposes only. Some sort of random pattern would be preferable to avoid harmonic noise.

Re:Huge problems

[drinkypoo]

The FAQ or other pages don't seem to mention this. If so, the road would be annoying to drive on with these regular thump-thumps.

The seam would almost certainly be superior to that already present in commonly-used concrete roads.

It also seems from the illustrations that the texturing would be regularly spaced circles - I hope not and assume this is for illustrative purposes only. Some sort of random pattern would be preferable to avoid harmonic noise.

Agreed. A too-regular pattern like this would also hold cars in too-straight lines. Of course, if the circles were scaled down towards tread sizes, it might be that the friction of glass combines perfectly with a rounded shape to squeeze your tires just right. We don't know, because none of us has ever driven on such a surface, which is why the naysayers are useless in this conversation. From their comments I am absolutely sure that none of them knows more than this company :P

Re:Huge problems

[wicka]

Yes because obviously I think asphalt/concrete only need to be rolled out, there's no way in hell I was just trying to avoid spending a paragraph explaining how asphalt/concrete roads are constructed. Fuck man, you'd think on Slashdot (as opposed to Digg or Reddit) one could avoid being straw man'd at every turn.

Re:Huge problems

[drinkypoo]

Fuck man, you'd think on Slashdot (as opposed to Digg or Reddit) one could avoid being straw man'd at every turn.

If you won't say what you mean, you run the risk of being criticized based on what you've said.

You implied that putting down traditional roads was easy. It is not; it's labor and energy intensive. It is also frequently ineffectual. What you get for your trouble is a big maintenance headache which provides no benefits most of the time, when the local roads could handle the traffic load. If something like this panned out, it would provide a benefit most of the time, e.g. when the demand for electricity was greatest.

In case you actually care, I think the idea of the road surface and the solar panels could pan out, but the idea of storing energy in the roads is unworkable and stupid. Who's actually ever even seen a super capacitor? Big cheap ones have been five or ten years away for a lot longer than ten years. It's also unnecessary, since peak demand occurs when peak supply is available. Perhaps they are envisioned as being the perfect companion for electric cars; you could have a wireless charging system installed at highly-utilized stoplights that would recognize your vehicle's ID and deliver you some power, then bill you automatically. But the cars can instead be plugged in when they get to where they are going (e.g. the office) and be charged over the grid from the solar roadways, and the cars can handle the power storage. They're already designed to do it.

DoT spending

[JimboFBX]

Somehow the DOT always manages to be run by idiots. How do those people get hired their anyways? A degree in something that implies intelligence doesn't appear to be a prerequisite.

I live in Boise, ID. A very significant portion of the population here visits the non-profit skiing and recreation area about 15 miles out of town. The road to get there is a long windy path that frequently gets icey and literally has steep cliffs along the side. Last year I went up there 5 times and saw 5 accidents on that road (1, 1, 0, 2, and 1 accidents respectively). I even have a picture of an SUV completely flipped over on my iphone as proof. To make things worse, the road is narrow and *very wide* ambulances often SPEED UP IT during the winter to help assist injured skiers. Last year I had an incident where I nearly scraped against an ambulance because it was barreling around a corner, taking up a portion of my lane, which itself was already narrow because ice had formed on the right-hand side and my car wouldn't go over any further. So when federal funding comes in for these road projects, do they spend any money putting up guardrails (yes, steep cliffs and NO GUARDRAILS), widening the road, or employing other tactics to improve safety? No, they blow that money doing a very crappy job indiscriminately resurfacing half the roads in Boise by dumping gravel on it, then the next day dumping oil on it, including ones that were repaved not even a year ago. The result is dings in our windshields and poor looking roads.

So overall, this sounds about on par with DoT spending. These people deserve to get fired, their incompetence with our money is a crime against society.

so a deer suddenly appears...

[Anonymous Coward]

and you jam on the brakes, does it tear up the surface? do you slide off the road leaving a black streak that can't be melted off with heat? What about blood on the array? As I remember, blood is very corrosive on many surfaces, not to mention very conductive to electricity...
 
have they really sold this to a bureaucrat? I have an idea to sell! hover boards for all! I will just go back to the future to get them! All I need is a Mr. Fusion and I'm set!

I hope they make the road surface out of diamond

[Junior J. Junior III]

Knowing how quickly the roads in my city turn into potholes, the upkeep on this is something I can't even fathom.

Re:yeah right . . . right-o

[runningduck]

I think the point is this solar panel roads should be cost neutral when compared to current roads. Current roads are not nearly as durable as one might expect. If they are able to achieve cost parity with current road technology then the electric power generation is a net positive benefit. If they are unable to get the costs down or durability up then this will be a no go.

I personally think the larger problem is surface contour and flexibility. Most roads are not flat. There are constant curves to match the terrain or embankments for safer curves. If we are to use fixed rigid road panels there would have to be many different types of panels increasing the need for precise civil engineering.

Once again

[mellestad]

The *brilliant* minds of Slashdot have come up with the questions that no-one would ever think to ask! I am *sure* the designers never thought of something like rain. Truly, this is the home of genius, and we should all be grateful that we can come here, and be saved from innovation! */sarcasm Maybe there might be answers to the obvious questions we are seeing. The guy at least wrote a proposal that convinced someone to give him 100,000k. Oh, right, everyone in the government is stupid, and can be easily conned.

Re:Once again

[mozzis]

"Oh, right, everyone in the government is stupid, and can be easily conned." Closer to true than you can imagine. The few that are intelligent sit near the top of the heap and will not have an effect on a project like this for political reasons to intricate to go into here. The young and stupid who are not qualified to make any real money are left to evaluate the feasibility of insanse ideas like this one.

I Hate to be one of Those People, but...

[denmarkw00t]

Seriously, this thought came to me sometime in 2007, when I proposed to a friend that asphalt could be paved with solar cells, thus turning the mostly useless highway system into a renewable energy source. Granted, the highway system isn't USELESS, but for the amount of space it covers and the expanse of the highway project, the US highway system has been extremely underutilized... I just hope someone else picks up on my highway Sheetz or electric train on the highway idea next. *Goes to file patents*

Re:I Hate to be one of Those People, but...

[nostriluu]

It was suggested by Kurzweil and Mirsky over a decade ago, though they mixed in kinetic energy.

Insignificant

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, $100,000 in funding!

That would pay for two new BMW 5-series driving down the road, or four new Ford Mustang GT's. It is drop in a bucket funding, it is not significant in terms of infrastructure spending.

The smart money is on solar roofs

[Animats]

A much more effective concept is solar roofs. Rather than putting panels on top of roofs, the panels are the roof. This has many advantages. Rather than paying for a roof and solar panels, plus the headaches of attaching panels to a roof, you only pay for one surface. Mounting roof panels to rafters is easier than mounting panels to existing roofs. The wiring is on the inside, where it's in a dry space. The panels behave better in high winds, since winds can't get under them. And you can mix solar panels and plain roof panels, using solar panels only on the surfaces pitched to get the most sun.

Roads are a much tougher environment than roofs.

Re:The smart money is on solar roofs

[dickens]

what he said... didn't know there was such a company

Re:The smart money is on solar roofs

[Anonymous Coward]

Roof over the _roadway_, with the same material. That way you're not covering up any more desert, probably making the roads safer, the solar panels do not have to stand up to such punishment, etc.
I propose naming the first one the Robert A Heinlein Memorial Roadway ( "The Roads Must Roll").

Re:The smart money is on solar roofs

[llZENll]

It sounds good, but I just don't see how it would be better than panels.

1) you can't change the pitch of your roof to align to the sun
2) you must use expensive roofing for your entire roof now that interlock with the solar roof tiles
3) if there is a problem with one of the solar tiles I'm sure its more expensive to have it repaired than if they were solar panels not integrated with the roof
4) you're moving almost all of the interconnection work from a cheap factory labor to an expensive, nonspecializing, contracted roofing laborer who will probably mess it up

The expensive part of solar panels isn't the roof or the panel infrastructure, its the solar cells. And you will be much more cost effective by maximizing your solar cell usage when putting them on panels that can be pointed in an optimal direction, or even able to rotate a small amount.

Re:The smart money is on solar roofs

[mdsolar]

What you want to look at is what is being replaced. These road plates are pretty complex and might be built to include wireless power transmission to the tires of long haul trucks allowing the replacement of expensive diesel fuel. The roof shingles need to be simple enough to replace much lower cost electricity. Rooftop solar takes off when panels become very cheap but this concept may go with little regard to the cost of PV since there is a lot more than just PV in its cost structure.

Re:The smart money is on solar roofs

[brad3378]

I'd love to have an electric car that used the solar roof concept as a giant electrical contact like they use for bumper cars.

Self Cleaning Glass

[earls]

http://www.pilkington.com/international+products/activ/usa/english/how+it+works.htm

Lightning...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just figure how to store the power from lightning strikes. A relatively small number of strikes could solve the energy crisis.

Ronnie said...

[OpinionatedDude]

Where we're going, we don't need roads. (The road to hell is paved with good intentions)

roofing instead

[dickens]

Asphalt roofing (what we use in the north here) only lasts 20 years or so. If you could make plastic roofing with built-in solar cells it could work, financially. A big subsidy for use in new construction would get the factories running. Then a smaller subsidy for upgrades and it could become the norm. Seems obvious to me, anyway.

Yeah, you'd have to heat it to keep the snow off just like the roads.

Re:roofing instead

[sincewhen]

I don't live in a climate which receives snow, so I'm just wondering - would it be more efficient to rotate the panels to vertical when it is snowing? This would require little energy, only need to be done infrequently, and vertical panels would still produce some energy, while heating the panels all day and night in a cold climate would waste much energy.

Re:roofing instead

[FrozenGeek]

I do live in an area that receives snow (Manitoba). I would be inclined to put the panels on a moveable framework on the ground rather than on the roof. Doing so would make it easier to clean the snow off them (moving them vertical during a snow storm is a good idea, but some snow will still likely accumulate on them). It would also allow you to adjust the angle for optimal power conversion throughout the year (the angle of the sun changes significantly throughout the year here). Mounting them on the roof would likely be a PITA.

I want... 100 BILLION dollars!

[Dreadneck]

I can see Dr. Evil sitting in his chair rubbing Mr. Bigglesworth's ears as he elaborates his plan for global domination. "I had an epiphany at the age of 9. I was playing with my new electric racecar set when it struck me like a bolt of 120V AC current..."

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[jcr]

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.

Sounds to me like they're comparing the full cost of the asphalt road (which includes clearing and grading the land, plus the underlayment, etc.) to the cost of the panels. Preparing the ground for the solar panels would have to cost the same if not more than preparing the ground for blacktop.

-jcr

If all we need is 25,000 square miles of panels...

[KarrdeSW]

Then why don't we just cover the tops of houses and other buildings? I'm not sure how much total area the nation's roofs are in comparison to roadways, but roofs definitely have the benefit of not normally being driven on.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[dickens]

Well consider that according to some, we don't use the most durable, cost-effective paving as it is. Political power wielded by the mob-connected construction industry lets the paving companies create the specifications, not the governments paying for the paving.

<remove pointy conspiracy-theorist hat>

Better Ways -

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we just use the existing space allocated for roads for overhead solar collectors? You could even run long solar thermal pipes that won't need to be replaced every 25 fucking years and stop working if you so much as sneeze on them.

The right concept is there, use the land we already have set aside for infrastructure for more infrastructure. The problem is what it's going to be replaced with. Glass? Are you shitting me? I don't care if it's transparent aluminum, that shit's gonna get dirty, scratched, and torn all to hell within a year unless no vehicles larger than a PT Cruiser are allowed to travel on it. The accumulation of dirt and oil alone will rape any ability this roadway material has to generate power unless it's cleaned daily, not to mention the fact that in high traffic, the shadows of the cars are going to stop that right away. If this was the roof of some kind of covered roadway I might be convinced to buy into this nonsense, but this has Green snake oil written all the fuck over it.

Just put the damn things in the medians or on the side of the road. Better yet, how about we do like another poster here said and put this toward solar roofs? Maybe solar roofs on every building owned by the federal government? We all know the Department of Defense uses a good chunk of our energy resources in the form of oil. How about they pay it back in the form of electricity? I still say running massive parabolic trough arrays on the side of all the interstates would be a better way to go (since the longer the pipe, the hotter the thermal medium will get, so you're going to have very hot stuff - hot enough for molten salt maybe - running some big generators along the way) but solar power generating glass roadways, that's beyond stupid.

Ok, it melts snow...

[tengeta]

...and then you drive on wet glass. Green, or just plain retarded?

Re:yeah right . . . right-o

[zero0ne]

back to the brick road days!

asphalt

[blackraven14250]

So, why again doesn't someone decide to use the thermal power from our asphalt roads....???

Brilliant

[Nethemas the Great]

Germany lines their highways with solar panels too. The difference is they don't drive on the damn things. They put them on the side in the already existing right of way. I don't get what the point of spending all that money so they can be driven on is. Aside from the obvious wear and tear, what about the fact that cars are covering up the panels? It's good that people are thinking outside the box but what happened to the reality check before we shell out money on such an impractical idea.

Re:Brilliant

[alnicodon]

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.

Re:Brilliant

[rally2xs]

With respect to cars never covering much of the panel surfaces, this is not true in high congestion areas such as around Washington, DC. Additionally, we are, supposedly, if you listen to science pundits, about 10 years away from the self-driving car that just has 4 passenger seats. Those cars will not be limited by human reaction time, and so will be able to travel virtuall touching each other with respect to following distance. Then most of the pavement _will_ be covered by traffic.

Much better to put the panels _over_ the roadway, sheltering it from rain and snow, and free them to gather energy directly from the sun with nothing in the way except a few birds.

Re:Brilliant

[alnicodon]

Ok, there may be discussion, and I'll even agree this raise a thousand objections and obstacles to be overcome. Still, I'll keep in mind that the idea of having a LED display under your car wheels sounds damn cool, and that forking a tenth of million dollars on that possibility might more rational use of taxpayer money compared to... well you know what I mean: hey, /. people! quit whining when (even though) a (very tiny by recent times standard) bit of money flows towards genuine engineering experiments, rather than f***ing massive scale financial experiments. Both have the potential of burning money, only bankers have grown outrageously good at it.

Please be bothered instead that this is, after all, not so much money, or, if you really need to stick to your whining mood, blame the funds granters and their nonsensical criterias

Al.

Not economically viable

[Herby Sagues]

The idea is feasible indeed, just not economically viable. These guys make their calculations based on one big error: they assume that the cost of making roads is 100% laying down asphalt. That is, that their solar panels (even if they could be built according to the specs and there were no other costs such as electricity transmission, monitoring or all that) can replace the whole cost of building a road. But the only part their panels can replace is the upper layer (and only partially, as they don't seem to be counting paint). All the digging, the leveling, the compression, the fences, the lighting and other components, plus design, layout, management and the like are perhaps 90% of the cost. So basically their project would double the cost of making highways. Or you could put it another way. If making a road with solar panels cost X, making it with similar materials to the solar panel's protective layer would cost a fraction of X (and a small fraction, as the expensive part in a solar panel is not precisely the protective layer). So calculating that the cost is zero is simply a scam attempt. And considering the headlines, a successful one.

Re:Not economically viable

[Herby Sagues]

By the way, they also make their calculations considering that roads last seven years, but they neglect the fact that after seven years they have to be resurfaced, not rebuilt. Typically roads last more than fifty years, so their comparisons are off by an extra factor of 10x. A real scam.

Re:Not economically viable

[Palpitations]

the only part their panels can replace is the upper layer (and only partially, as they don't seem to be counting paint).

You're assuming there would be paint.

FTFA: "The base contains power and data lines and is overlaid by the electronics strata that contains solar cells, LEDs and supercapacitors which would produce and store electricity while the LEDs would "paint" the surface with light."

I can't argue with most of what you said, I just thought I'd point that out.

Re:Not economically viable

[eharvill]

Wouldn't the roads essentially pay for themselves? In theory we would be buying electricity from the DoT instead of Power Company X. In reality we, the consumer, would never see any savings or lowering of taxes, but I would think enough revenue would be generated from this to pay for upgrades, damages, etc.

Re:Not economically viable

[iamhassi]

" 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?

Re:Not economically viable

[Beefpatrol]

That's not the only error they made. I can think of lots of potential problems with this, even though it might work on paper. One of the biggest problems would probably be simply keeping the surface clean enough that the photons that make it through the layer of scum on the surface would be numerous enough to generate a meaningful amount of power. After that, when we're talking about road panels that have lots of internal structure, (the article mentions power and data cabling, LEDs, electronics, and the fact that the panels themselves would be composed of a tough glass surface with solar panels underneath,) there are lots of places that water could cause havoc. Water on road surfaces would be pretty dirty with all sorts of corrosive solutes in it. The panels would have to have seals on them somewhere, and if any of them leaked, moisture would get in. Mold or algae could grow inside. Galvanic corrosion could occur. When the outside temperature drops below freezing, any parts that aren't successfully actively heated could have water freeze and break things. This whole system wouldn't be very fault tolerant. There are ways of improving the reliability of all of those things, but we would then be talking about panels that aren't even remotely simple anymore. I do think it is good that people are thinking about how to solve the energy problem in unusual ways. There are some ideas in this article that are probably useful. (Even embedding glass in the surface of normal roads to make them more durable might be a good idea although I'm sure that some of the material that is naturally present in the gravel component of an asphalt road is silica anyway.)

Re:Not economically viable

[Chuq]

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?

According to their website, businesses will be able to use their car parks, residences use their driveways, etc. to power their own sites.

I suppose the roads will power (apart from themselves) buildings without a lot of pavement space, like multi-story apartment blocks and skyscrapers.

Solar roadways interview

[Hangeron]

Here's an interesting interview of the inventor:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thespiritualenvoy/2009/03/12/The-Spiritual-Envoy-Eva-Ravenwood-and-Scott-Brusaw-of-Solar-Roadways

The solar roof conspiracy of silence

[Gary W. Longsine]

The problem is that you need about 30,000 square miles of solar panels, at current efficiencies of about 14%, to solve the problem. There are apparently only about 500,000 acres of rooftop. If these guys shoot for "solar roadway" and miss by a fair bit, they might wind up with "solar parking lot", which would solve a bigger chunk of the problem than "solar rooftops" could.

Re:The solar roof conspiracy of silence

[Krakadoom]

The actual problem is that you assume that all the power needs need to come from one source. Before electricity was effectively harnessed we got 'power' from a multitude of sources - what's wrong with doing that again? As long as you can generate X amount and feed it into the infrastructure, you're helping the problem. You dont need a silver bullet, you need 1000 trickles to make the river.

Re:The solar roof conspiracy of silence

[Gary W. Longsine]

The actual problem is that most of the people proposing non-solutions (like "1000 trickles") have no concept of the magnitude of the problem. I'm fully in favor of rooftop solar, as much of it as possible, as fast as possible. It only solves about 3% of the problem. You can't get electricity on the scale of a modern industrialized society from 1000 trickles. You need a few big electron sources (of which rooftop solar might be one) to feed the grid. At 3% each, we don't even need 1000, we need 34, but it doesn't look like we have even 34, yet.

Sure, there are several other promising potential technologies, but they won't all pan out, and frankly we are not doing enough, fast enough. One of the reasons is that many people think the problem is going to fix itself with two solutions -- wind and solar. It won't. It doesn't even get us close to half way. What's wrong with this picture is that we (as a society) don't understand the magnitude of the problem, and thus are poorly prepared to evaluate the options available.

Another big problem is that people expect things to change slowly, that there will be enough time for society, technology, industry, government, people and the economy to adjust. In the strictly abstract sense, this is true: the economy will adjust, and we will adjust. However, the recent financial collapse and recession should demonstrate to us that factors leading to a collapse are often invisible until it's too late. There is too much inertia in an economy to adapt overnight the day the oil runs out, or even the decade for that matter. We are likely to find ourselves "adapting" by being suddenly unable to grow enough food to feed the population. That's gonna suck, big time.

Another example... a great many of the eco green energy "trickles" proposed require tearing down and rebuilding every office, apartment, house, and government building, and rebuilding them with a host of "trickle" green technologies, to make them more efficient. Sure, we can do that, but it might take 300 years.

So, your argument has just been flipped on its head. The trickles might be necessary, but they are not sufficient. We need to spend a little more time thinking about the big parts of the problem.

Re:The solar roof conspiracy of silence

[Jeremi]

The problem is that you need about 30,000 square miles of solar panels, at current efficiencies of about 14%, to solve the problem.

Depends on what "the problem" is. If the goal is to serve 100% of our energy needs with solar power, that's one thing. If the goal is to reduce our use of non-renewable energy by adding renewable energy into the mix, then every bit counts, even if we never get to 100% solar.

If these guys shoot for "solar roadway" and miss by a fair bit, they might wind up with "solar parking lot", which would solve a bigger chunk of the problem than "solar rooftops" could.

Very true, but there's no reason people can't do both roofs and roads/parking lots. It's all helpful.

Re:The solar roof conspiracy of silence

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you just get those 500,000 acres of rooftop covered (as if!), and then maybe we can talk about nutty solar roads. At least home solar provides energy directly where you need it, and gives homeowners a measure of security from power failures, especially combined with a home battery bank which is also the best way to supply peak energy - far superior to the smart grid concept.

What about CEOs?

[copponex]

I'm sorry, I really have difficulty parsing these arguments sometimes, because one side is always lacking skepticism for whomever they're supporting.

I don't trust any politicians. Just like I don't trust any CEOs. But I can be swayed by rational argument.

Let's look at health care. On one side, you have politicians saying that we need regulation of health care to make sure people don't suffer. That's the claim - maybe it's populist, or naive, but there it is. The motivation for the politician is to get re-elected. As far as I know, the current Administration does not own industries that will benefit from this legislation. As far as I know, all the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and other organizations who are funding the hatred against single payer options are at risk of losing a lot of money. By default, whose position is more suspect?

There's snake oil out there called The War on Terrorism, and National Security, and the March of Freedom, and the War on Drugs, and so on. They cause a lot more damage and waste an incomparable sum compared to research on sustainable technology. So let's fix the dam break before we worry about puddles in the parking lot.

Re:What about CEOs?

[floodo1]

Actually we need health care reform because of the sky rocketing costs. This is the motivation to do something now. Politicians aren't nearly benevolent enough to do reform to keep people from suffering.

Re:What about CEOs?

[volkris]

Sure the current administration owns an "industry" that will benefit from these regulations. THE industry, these days: the Federal Government and all of the other governments who will benefit from being the generous philanthropists, handing out health care.... to those who cooperate, at least.

Pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and other businesses aren't funding "hatred" against single payer health care. They don't need to. People read the proposals and see their freedoms being taken away, see themselves being "strongly encouraged" to go in certain directions by a government seeking to force its philosophies and values upon us all, and they naturally reject the ideas. People can see the scumminess of this process and inconsistencies in political pronouncements without some evil corporation hilighting them.

The "hatred" for single payer options comes from a simple fact: people don't all agree that it's a good idea, and resent having it forced upon them.

Many ways to skin a cat. REALLY?

[Metathias]

Technology im much more interested in would be something like using thermal-eletric device plates concreted into road ways. As one person mentioned earlier black asphalt roads tend to get very warm. and the ground underneath somewhat cool. You could get a nice amount of current over and extremely large area like that. And you would'nt have to radicly change the way you construct your roads. Or an even more bold and interesting idea is to use pressure plates that when pressed on by overpassing vehicles would produce a decent amount of energy as well. or maybe both? Oh and neither of these technologies would be anywhere near as prone to damages or breakdown because they are baked in so to speak.

Two More Cents

[Anonymous Coward]

Build an A-frame (AAAAAAA) or 'covered bridge' like structure over the road surface. Elevate the road slightly, keep 99% of it covered. The roof keeps most water and snow off and is easily made with more efficient solar panels that do not have heavy vehicle traffic. An East-West route would only need to mount cells on the southern face of the roof. Gases would vent easily out the sides of the "tunnel" and could even provide views of the landscape (much like going through a Bridge). I would avoid prototyping or initial rollouts in the snow belt. Maybe a stretch of I-10 would work. This approach is agnostic to road surface and may even lessen the need for AC if run through Nevada or Southern Cal.

And enough with ideas that can solve ALL our problems or provide ALL our energy. Putting all the eggs in one basket is stupid and unrealistic.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[blindseer]

I don't think the idea is to tear up perfectly good roads to replace them with these solar panel. New roads are built all the time, use this instead of the traditional asphalt for the surface. Roads wear out and need to be resurfaced, when it comes time for that the solar panels can replace the asphalt, concrete, gravel, or whatever.

Simple math

[jklovanc]

25,000 sq/Mi * (5280 ft/mi)^2 * $48/sq ft = $33.454 Trillion dollars. If there is enough manufacturing capacity to create that much solar panel.

Re:Simple math

[Dunbal]

$33.454 Trillion dollars. If there is enough manufacturing capacity to create that much solar panel.

It's only just under 3 year's GDP for the US. But don't worry, we'll print some more dollar bills and send them to China (who seem to like them for some reason), in exchange for having their children make the panels for us.

I'm surprised I haven't seen this question yet

[desertfoxmb]

What about glare? It seems that this roadway would be a thoroughfare of glare. A nightmare of shine. The DOT counter to polarized shades.

Not such a dumb idea

[dbIII]

Four tonnes is nothing, if they want it for a major road it will be designed to handle the sort of truck that is used for carrying goods interstate. Also glass is a huge amount stronger than concrete. The trick is to get some tough enough to handle impacts, have joints to handle expansion, and then just have it thick enough to handle whatever force is going to be on it. As for slippery, it doesn't have to be smooth like a window. Nobody is looking through it and it doesn't matter if the light diffuses all over the place by up to 10 degrees or whatever if the photovoltaics are directly underneath it. Consider the rippled glass you might see on older buildings, it still lets just as much light in even if you can't see clearly through it. Make it rougher again like concrete with sand on top and you've got something with some traction.
As for the huge quantity, I suspect it's one of those "x of these can supply all the energy needs of the continental USA" things and not a serious suggestion. There is no "one true energy" - anyone that says so is selling you a single basket to put things in or has been tricked by salesfolk.
A similar idea to this that might make more sense is using it to heat water in pipes instead of photovoltaics, but it really depends on what you want the energy for and how many of these things you want. If you want to do something thermal you need plumbing etc and a lot of heat (thus a lot of panels) if you want to get electricity out of it but it scales up nicely (double the area and you get better than double the energy). Photovoltaics don't scale but they have the advantage that you can do something with a single small panel. You just wire it up and don't have to worry about needing x panels in the one place to get enough hot water, hot oil, molten metallic salts, hot ammonia or steam. Distribution of thousands of small electricity sources into the grid is not the nightmare it would have been in the 1950s.
The only barrier here is how hard it is to make the things in bulk and how much work is involved in installing them. That is the point where it gets compared with other things to decide if it is worth it or not. That comes after building a prototype, and due to the modular nature of photovoltaic panels that doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. You don't have to build a dozen and connect them up since one can work alone. That's really the point where it will become clear if it's a "dumb idea" or not.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[swell]

And let's consider their claim that an asphalt road needs to be replaced every 7 years. This is their justification for a long lasting (21 yr lifespan) solar road being cost effective.

When is the last time you saw a 7 year old road replaced? Roads around here are at least 30 years old and may get their potholes fixed every 7 years or so.

Replacing a 30 year road with a 21 year road that costs 3 times as much isn't cost effective.

And that assumes they are right about the 21 year lifespan and the 3X cost. The 7 year fantasy suggests that they are just lying and can't be trusted in regard to any of their claims.

Why does nobody mention THIS:

[Hurricane78]

Glass is extremely slippery. At least if you still want to get light trough, and don't want it to be sharp like a razor blade.

I just imagine a partially roughed glass surface, with some sharp parts breaking out, barefoot kids cutting their feet, and cars still either sliding or cutting their wheels.

Re:Why does nobody mention THIS:

[Hurricane78]

Are you freakin' kiddin' me?? I wrote this comment because of the *exact* point that there were no other mentionings of this at that time! Great work, moderloser!

Prototype/predecessor technology

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

This is old news. They did an early prototype -- without the power aspects -- just to establish feasibility back in the 60s!

Covered Roads

[Rsriram]

If we have covered roads, the roof can be used to collect solar energy. It will keep snow off the roads. And can be done with current technology. Is it feasible. Is it worth it? I dont know.

heat itself..

[marafa]

and how does it keep itself clean from road kill, grime and just plain dirt, rain and dust?

Forget this.

[Sebilrazen]

Put in solar cell bike paths and golf cart paths, less weight, smaller footprint and in the case of bike paths the users are a bunch of tree huggers anyway.

I actually think the perfect application for this technology would be the ground between railroad rails, easy transmission of the power, not a lot of wear and tear and if you suspend them slightly off the ground from the rails, some protection from the elements.

Re:Forget this.

[moosesocks]

Using the rails for power transmission would work well enough until the rails are shorted out by a large metal object (for instance, a train)

Of course, if you're talking about using the overhead catenary on an electrified railroad, yeah -- it's a fantastic idea. Of course, most of the long-distance freight railroads in the US are not electrified, although this provides a fantastic excuse to install electrification -- electric locomotives are currently the only economically-viable form of transportation that have the potential to be 100% carbon-neutral and renewable.

Re:Forget this.

[Sebilrazen]

Of course, if you're talking about using the overhead catenary on an electrified railroad, yeah -- it's a fantastic idea. Of course, most of the long-distance freight railroads in the US are not electrified, although this provides a fantastic excuse to install electrification -- electric locomotives are currently the only economically-viable form of transportation that have the potential to be 100% carbon-neutral and renewable.

That is what I was trying to infer, thanks for the clarification.

Missed a few things

[jklovanc]

They miss the very real issue of voltage conversion.

Since solar panels produce DC where is it converted to AC and to what voltage? Many of the roads are in open country where the power would have to be transmitted hundreds of miles before it is used. Low voltages are not good for that. What about large power users like aluminum plants?

Self cleaning glass

Self Cleaning glass works due to a titanium oxide layer. It requires UV radiation for it to work and the flushing action of water to remove the particle. It also only works on organics. Works great for vertical surfaces; not so well for horizontal. water has a tendancy to pool on roads. The process is relatively slow; a road would be completely covered before the action happened. This would block the UV from getting to the coating. Sand is not organic and would not be effected by this process. Since the glass would have a textured surface for traction it would have a tendency to hold dirt and not let water wash it away. Looks like we are back to street sweepers.

Medians?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about all that grass inbetween interstate highways? Could that perhaps have some solar panels on it?

A stupid argument in this case . . .

[Tanman]

Why don't you go out front of your house and try to replace the road with some other material of your choosing. Let us know how big the fine is and if there is any jail time involved.

Also, let us know how well it works with all the R&D you are able to muster on your personal budget.

Fact of the matter is that roadways are a benefit to everyone, and it IS the government's job to maintain them. If they can build a reliable roadway that also harvests energy and reduces dependence on fossil fuels, why the hell not?

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[HiThere]

Every year some roads are totally resurfaced. Every year some roads are built. You don't need (or want!) to do this all at once, even after it gets beyond the prototype stage.

Big, big brass ones

[mcrbids]

I was right there with you.

When I've pictured solar roads, I've pictures roads with a solar "roof" so that it's like you are driving on the bottom of a double-decker bridge. This keeps the road cool (saves fuel expenses on air conditioning) while not impacting actual driving. The only real cost is the scaffolding for the panels, which is usually dwarfed by the cost of the land the solar panels sit on. Since the road area is effectively free (or dang cheap) this is a win-win situation. Drivers don't have to roast in hot (Western US) sun, and the grid gets lots of juice at the time of day they are most likely to need it.

But the road itself!?!?! There are so many issues with this I don't know where to begin:

1) Dirt/grit/oil/grease. Ever walk barefoot on a road? Your feet are black within MINUTES. Ever walk barefoot on a freshly paved road? Not so much. Roads are nasty, dirty places with noxious dust from brakes, oil sling, grease droppings, and an occasional tire screetch smear. I can't imagine more than 50% of the light getting to the road in the first place, what with all the silt, dirt, sand, and the like. You want this to be see through?

2) Abrasion. So you have a road, covered with a fine layer of silt. Sandy, dusty, gritty stuff. And then, for good measure, you grind it all in with a 75,000 pound semi every 30 seconds or so. You still want this to be see through?

3) Expansion/Contraction. In the summer, the road surface hits 140 degrees. In the winter, it hits 10 below zero. With traffic, and snow plows - another big knife blad, with a 35,000 pound tractor behind it. Uh, yeah.

4) Accidents. So a semi crushes a small import at high speed. Pieces of metal go flying in all directions, and the chassis of the import becomes a 1,500 pound, 6 foot long knife blade being ground into the road at 65 miles an hour by 75,000 pounds of angry 18-wheel semi. Normal asphalt would have a nice groove in it 3/4 of an inch deep that would cause a "tick" noise as you drive over it. But what's that going to do to a PV road?

I'm not one who normally encourages negative responses to engineering challenges. But this strikes me as fundamentally... stupid. It's like using a hummer to drive fuel tanks of alcohol across the US and calling it "green shipping". Good luck getting anything north of 5% efficiency over 5 years.

Build a scaffold. Put the panels up above. And enjoy 50 years of quality cheap electricity, while making it cooler for the drivers and saving fuel to boot.

Interesting, but ...

[MattRC]

Sounds like an interesting idea. However, it might be cheaper to build less durable, higher-yield solar panels ... and then to simply put them on top (as a roof) of our roads, perhaps blocking only 50 or 30% of the light from hitting the road itself. You would, in addition, most likely: 1) produce more energy per area of solar panels - no cars driving over them, less degradation 2) shade the cars driving below. I suspect AC energy usage in cars is, overall, greater than energy usage for heating the car. This would reduce AC uses, perhaps resulting in less fuel being burned overall. 3) reduce the intensity of the sun shining into the eyes of drivers in the morning and in the evening. Some of the time, at least. Perhaps this could reduce accident rates somewhat. Additionally, while I liked the idea of running cables through the road at first, the more I think about it the less I like it. Damage to the road could result in power or data service loss. Upgrades and maintenance could prove annoying, lacking sufficient redundancy.

Re:Interesting, but ...

[cheros]

I like the idea, but then you're looking at building an elevated support system. However, that may be cheaper than making the panels capable of handling the weight of a truck (not to mention how lethal it becomes when it rains - ever been on glazed tiles that are wet?).

I have a simpler solution: LINE the road with the panels. Don't stick them IN the road, stick them next to the road.

Easy, done. Until they get stolen..

And what tires do you have?

[SuperKendall]

Never mind snow being melted off (at what kind of power drain), any water on this Inviciglass and you are SCREWED no matter what kind of tires you have - never mind normal driving even, where glass would offer one of the poorer surfaces for traction.

Re:And what tires do you have?

[Myrcutio]

actually theres probably no power drain on the grid to produce that heat. It's only generating electricity at 15% efficiency, that means that a significant portion of the other 85% is being lost as heat energy. Maybe all of that 85%, i'm not sure what other types of energy loss occur in photovoltaics.

Re:And what tires do you have?

[atamido]

85% of the loss on the photovoltaics is being released as heat. But with asphalt it is 100%. The only way these are going to be any better at melting snow is if you can send electricity back through them to heat them up.

Do you even know what chains are?

[SuperKendall]

Four tonnes is nothing, if they want it for a major road it will be designed to handle the sort of truck that is used for carrying goods interstate. Also glass is a huge amount stronger than concrete.

Yes we already read all that - for normal trucks.

Now take the whole weight of that four tons, compressed now into a bit of metal about 1/10 the size of the tire patch, brutally slamming against the roadway at 40MPH. Front and Back, in case there was anything left not broken by the front pass. Repeatedly That is an EMT with chains, and I don't care how you temper the glass - it is screwed.

Re:Do you even know what chains are?

[dbIII]

So then you get little bits spalling off in chips. One trick to improve bulk toughness is to add things in that stop cracks from going very far by using a second material within the main hard material. The crack gets that far and follows the line of the interface or the other material instead of getting deeper, then joins up with other cracks until a small bit comes off the surface. You lose the surface but there's plenty more below. Think of how a car windscreen does not crack all the way through to the inside due to the crack not making it through a second layer, and then consider that applied on a microscopic scale. Window glass would be unsuitable but that is not what I'm writing about here.
Look up "free machining steel" for a good example of this behaviour.
Another way is to just use a polymer like polycarbonate instead - it would handle your suggested situation without any problems at all (it's bullet proof "glass" remember) but would abrade away more quickly under other situations. There are a few polymers used in the mining industry in places like chutes for crushed rock but I don't know if you could make any of those transparent.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[quenda]

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.

It also makes the silly assumption that interest rates are zero, rather than ...[googling current US interest rates]... oh, I see.

Keyboard... How quaint.

[muharizj]

Transparent Aluminum (the fictional kind) should do the trick ;)

Calculation Problems

[trydk]

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).

Re:Calculation Problems

[jklovanc]

The outcome is correct but the formula written is incorrect. The correct number is 9.19 Trillion Watts or 9.19 Billion Kilowatts

Re:Calculation Problems

[trydk]

Drat!

I caught one error only to trip up later :-(

Re:Calculation Problems

[Dunbal]

Sheesh, you have to understand a few things:

1. The math was done by a wall street bank
2. This is the only way to get federal funding
3. The $100,000 is only the cost for the prototype solar panel, however making, installing and overseeing successive solar panels (not to mention a 20 year maintenance contract) will probably cost at least 3 trillion dollars - can the federal government print some money for us, too?

And traffic jams?

[IdahoEv]

Oil drippings and tire residue occluding the glass was my first thought.

And my second thought, given that I live in Los Angeles, is that during the best-sunlight parts of the day, bumper-to-bumper traffic covers a lot of the road surface a lot of the time.

That said, if it DID work, this would be an awesome technology, since it means not paving over *another* huge fraction of the countryside to lay solar panels. But I fear the efficiency won't be what the theorists hope.

Will these kill more people?

[tomohawk]

An estimated 20% of traffic fatalities in the US are currently correlated with inadequate road surface friction. This is usually the asphalt roads, which can become very slick when wet, when hot, or when exposed to heavy traffic. Killing 10,000 people a year because the gov't doesn't want to fix the roads is pretty serious. If the gov't isn't doing what they can about the current roads, what are the odds that they will have their eye on the ball with this new 'green' tech?

A couple of years ago, a large fuel tanker crashed on I95 between Baltimore and Washington. It caught fire and caused all kinds of mayhem. If I95 was also a power generator and a transmission line and a communication trunk, that mayhem would have been greatly multiplied.

Currently, road repairs can be accomplished quickly with low tech to get traffic moving, then a more permanent repair can be done when traffic is lighter. This seems much more finicky.

Re:Will these kill more people?

[Dunbal]

An estimated 20% of traffic fatalities in the US are currently correlated with inadequate road surface friction.

      This brought to you from the "numbers out of the ass" department.

      Seriously, are all of these people who try to take corners at 100 mph? I could counter that 99.9% of traffic fatalities in the US are correlated with people not keeping an adequate stopping distance for the weather conditions. The other .1% would be the idiot who tries to take the corner at 100mph and dies due to lack of "friction"...

      I'm being sarcastic but there's an important point I'm making here. Don't blame the road, blame the driver.

Re:Will these kill more people?

[tomohawk]

And I suppose your comments are from the "I like to use rhetoric instead of facts" department. Seriously, here's a recent report on the topic:

http://www.trb.org/Main/Public/Blurbs/On_a_Crash_Course_the_Dangers_and_Health_Costs_of_161951.aspx

Re:Will these kill more people?

[Dunbal]

And I suppose your comments are from the "I like to use rhetoric instead of facts" department.

      No, it's called logic and critical thinking.

      If friction is the sole cause of 1/5th of all fatal traffic accidents, then I must assume that 1 in 5 people are sliding off the roads into trees, bridges, etc. and killing themselves that way. However if you have TWO (or more) vehicles involved (the likely case) then separation is FAR more important than friction. The less friction there is, the more separation you need, and you avoid the collision. You know I happen to be from Canada and I know what it's like to drive on pure ice yet not everyone crashes. Mis-judging the road surface and stopping distance is probably being "lumped" into your 20% group.

      I guess it's just over your head that BAD SCIENCE exists everywhere, including - no, ESPECIALLY in government "statistics".

Re:Will these kill more people?

[tomohawk]

Logic based on a faulty premise still gets you to the wrong conclusion. At the risk of confusing you with the facts, here's the start of the executive summary of the research paper I linked to. Nothing about pulling things out of asses here. Just hard research based on facts. Worth a read if you care to educate yourself instead of pontificating.

While considerable research has been conducted over the past 50 years quantifying the significant roles motor vehicle design, drunk and drugged driving, speeding and non-use of seatbelts play as factors in the number, severity and economic costs of motor vehicle crashes in the United States, this is the first national study in many years to examine the role and consequences of another major factor in these tragic incidences--the physical condition of U.S. roadways.

The study finds that the cost and severity of crashes where roadway conditions are a factor "greatly exceeds the cost and severity of crashes where alcohol or speeding was involved, or the cost of non-use of seatbelts." Among the study's key findings:

Roadway condition is a contributing factor in more than half--52.7 percent--of the nearly 42,000 American deaths resulting from motor vehicle crashes each year and 38 percent of the non-fatal injuries. In terms of crash outcome severity, it is the single most lethal contributing factor--greater than speeding, alcohol or non-use of seat belts.

Motor vehicle crashes in which roadway condition is a contributing factor cost the U.S. economy more than $217 billion each year. That is more than three-and-one-half times the amount of money government at all levels is investing annually in roadway capital improvements--$59 billion, according to the Federal Highway Ad- ministration. This societal cost includes $20 billion in medical costs; $46 billion in productivity costs; $52 billion in property damage and other resource costs; and $99 billion in monetized quality of life costs.

American businesses are paying an estimated $22 billion of the annual economic cost of motor vehicle crash- es involving their employees in which roadway condition is a contributing factor. This includes almost $10 billion a year in health-related fringe beneft expenses for insurance ($6.0 billion) workers' compensation claims ($1.2 billion), sick leave ($1.7 billion) and Social Security ($920 million). These crashes cost government (taxpay- ers) at all levels $12.3 billion

Re:Will these kill more people?

[Dunbal]

The study finds that the cost and severity of crashes where roadway conditions are a factor

      What does this mean, specifically?

Roadway condition is a contributing factor in more than half-

      Again, what does it mean, SPECIFICALLY? Was it raining? Were there potholes? Did they compare a stretch of unmaintained road with the same stretch of unmaintained road 20 years later? THESE WORDS MEAN NOTHING. But they are very good for marketing - my wife is a market research manager, she uses these vague unspecific terms all the time. It sells product. Did you know that products with the word "natural" in them outsell other products by a fair margin? EVEN THOUGH THERE'S NOTHING REALLY NATURAL IN THE PRODUCT? Feel free to live your life by other people's words. Me I resist all ideas until they are proven to me.

      I can postulate that VELOCITY is a factor in 100% of roadway collisions, because even if you are sitting in a parked car, the car that hits you has to have had velocity. Therefore I can conclude that velocity is responsible for $217 billion in economic damage per year, and I can go on and write a doctoral thesis about this (no thanks, I already have one). THIS DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. In fact, it's kind of stupid. But it's 100% TRUE!

Rule #1 of any logical discussion: DEFINE YOUR TERMS.

"Roadway conditions" is such a broad term that it is meaningless. Wait, if it's night time, does that affect "roadway conditions"? Or are we just talking about the coefficient of dynamic/kinetic friction? What about the grade of the road? The camber? Curves?

Sorry to be picky here, but when I publish a study I make damned sure that the parameters I am evaluating are precise and well understood, and I do a REAL statistical analysis to determine if my results show any significant variation from the control group. However some idiot bureaucrat in some office coming up with the idea that he can put a fairly accurate (to the nearest billion) dollar amount on "roadway conditions" fails to convince me. But hell, I'm not even American. Feel free to vote for them - your tax dollars at work, I guess. Me, I keep a lot more distance and slow down when I'm driving in wet/icy/poor visibility conditions.

Another minor issue

[Krakadoom]

Lets for a minute pretend that glass is durable enough, and that you can somehow devise a plan to keep it clean enough to actually admit enough sunlight to be panels...

...there's still the issue of DRIVING ON GLASS - what happens when it rains? There will be very little friction to keep you on the road I assume? You could of course rough up the surface of the glass a bit to improve friction, but that would impact the light it admits to the panels, wouldn't it?

It's a neat thought, but honestly, just put the solar panels on the SIDE of the road and stop trying to combine things in ways that are hugely impractical, when you already have the space to do two separate systems - one for driving, one for energy generation..

Re:Another minor issue

[Dunbal]

there's still the issue of DRIVING ON GLASS - what happens when it rains?

      Well it can't be any worse than driving on ice. Just make sure you wear your chains on your tyres oh wait...

rooftops

[hey]

Yeah, roads seem like a really hostile environment for solar. Lets fill up the rooftops first.

Isn't a $100k grant...

[chrispitude]

...simply enough money for the team to figure all this out themselves? As far as government grants go, that amount is the equivalent of "You boys go out and play, and be home by dinner!"

this will work

[BroadbandBradley]

the only reason we're not already doing something like this is the huge infrastructure in place ... the way it's always been done. instead of bailing out banks we should let them bite the dust and spend about a trillion dollars on subsidizing solar to make it cheaper than alternatives (imagine solar roof being cheaper than traditional materials for new construction) Throw down some solar roads to upgrade the grid and soon the surplus electricity would be so cheap that it would no longer make sense to drive gasoline automobiles. With cheap power, savings spill over to most every other type of industy, and we can start keeping money in this country instead of sending it to oil companies overseas.

in reality, rich oil companies control all the worlds governments, we're all doomed.

If some people

[Dunbal]

in the UK actually steal the asphalt from newly laid roads, and other people around the world steal copper wiring from telephone cables from the damned telephone poles, I can just imagine exactly how long this "solar paneled highway" will last...

Hey where did the road go?

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[virmaior]

try googling the municipal bond rate.

I want to hire.....

[Anonymous Coward]

the guy/gal who wrote the grant proposal.

They are either a genius or somebody's well connected offspring.

I'm so glad I grew up around an engineer...

[Nakarti]

It's always a wonder when some entrepeneur says something stupid like "it would only take 25,000 square miles of road to power the US three times over" without doing the basic f-ing math and realizing(considering a road width of 28 feet) that is over FOUR MILLION MILES of road!

It's a great idea. It would be cool if all the roads were replaced with it, wonderful if it really held up to the 2 feet of snow and 20 degrees below weather some places get. But it would have to replace a hell of a lot of road to approach the numbers in the article. Even if you say six lanes, that's still over a million miles of road to replace!

Re:I'm so glad I grew up around an engineer...

[mdsolar]

Fortunately for the article, there are 4 million miles of road in the US http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2002/html/table_01_01.html

All of it gets resurfaced from time to time so it is not as if there is no replacement schedule. If the task is too daunting, how did all that road get built in the first place?

Occam's Razor

[abarrow]

While it might be technically possible, it seems to me that the simpler solution would be just to work on making existing systems more efficient and putting them on the side of the road. I'm in the middle of a road trip across the US, and if Interstate 40 is anything to go by, it would be a cold day in hell before they made this system strong enough to survive just a few weeks of the sort of traffic I've seen.

Most of the major highways have pretty large center divides - just put the solar arrays there and stop with the fancy stuff already!

Build a roof instead

[BlueParrot]

Build a roof of solar panels above the road instead. It has loads of advantages:

a)You don't get a load of dirt all over the cells thus reducing efficiency

b)The cells would actually help protect the road from rain and snow, thus reducing wear and tear on the road surface substantially.

c)The cells would be easy to clean since there is no traffic blocking access to it. You could even automate it by having a robotic vehicle drive on top of the roof without disturbing traffic. This is probably a good reason why solar cells could actually work if built this way. One of the huge problems they have elsewhere is the cost of the systems to clean the cells.

d)Reduced accidents due to super-cooled rain not hitting the road surface

e)It would most likely be an order of magnitude cheaper than the article's brain dead idea.

Re:I hope they make the road surface out of diamon

[ceoyoyo]

Sapphire would be a good choice. It's already used to replace glass when you really don't want it to scratch, like in high end watch faces. With MASS production we could probably make sapphire reasonably cheaply too. And as a side effect, we'd all have cheap, scratch proof surfaces!

R.A.H.

[rossdee]

The roads must roll.

Reminds me of Heinlein's future history stories...

A whiff of BS?

[sribe]

... and the solar roads would heat themselves in the winter to keep snow from accumulating.

Snicker. See, solar panel output tends to drop way down when they're covered with snow. And in snowy climates it gets cold at night, and sometimes cloudy for days. There's no way any panel is going to stay warm long enough to keep melting snow through a multi-day storm and nights.

Re:A whiff of BS?

[Chuq]

Although I agree that the project has a whole has a lot of question marks over it, it would be nice if people were a bit less sarcastic and cynical.

The Roadway would be a completely interconnected-grid. It doesn't snow everywhere all the time. Power from the sunny parts of the grid is transmitted to the snowy parts of the grid to emit as heat.

Yeah, I'm sure there is a lot more to it than that (the cost of transmitting, the demands from other parts of the grid) but you can express this without the attitude.

not a bad gamble

[arielCo]

Don't think I'm getting political if I point out that a Black Hawk helicopter costs 6 M$ just to build, and a missed/practice shot with a Tomahawk means 500 grands thrown into a mountain somewhere. So, if the DoT bets 100 grands or a million or two to a bold idea that might yield some new techniques even if it doesn't fully deliver, I'd say go for it!

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[Anonymous Coward]

Roads need to be resurfaced all the time, and new roads will be built. Who said anything about ripping up perfectly good roads, these roads can just replace the old roads as they need replacing and be used when new roads need to be built.

Use the median

[Sanksa Wott]

I've always wondered why someone hasn't made better use of the medians of US highway systems. I used to think that they could be utilized for low-maintenance crops or some type of agricultural effort, but drainage, accessibility, and a bunch of other reasons would make that pretty difficult.

However, they sound like a great place for a massive solar array. We keep our existing road infrastructure, using asphalt etc, and the solar collectors go *beside* them in the median. The collectors can then use basically whatever technology makes them most efficient, and we can focus on how to rebuild our roads using technologies that make them more efficient (and easier on the environment). Is there any reason why highway medians aren't used for something constructive? On 95 around Philly/Delaware there are gas stations and fast food "islands" in there.... why not a solar station?

Fantastic Idea, easy to repair highways too

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a fantastic idea and not so crazy. Its about time all that surface would be used for energy production. Accidents, breakage and wear can easily be addressed by just replacing the highway road panel. Think about it, the lane strips could be leds as well as special instructions to drivers. Great idea!

I met Scott Brusaw, founder of Solar Roadways

[noxid]

A couple of colleagues and I personally visited and interviewed Scott Brusaw, founder of Solar Roadways, at his home in Idaho. He's a great guy, down to earth, smart, humble, and interested in doing the right thing. It seemed that he's simply following his nose on this and is constantly looking for reasons why it won't work. Then he talks to experts and, at least so far, has been able to discount enough of the "why it won't work" arguments that he still thinks it is worthwhile to keep going. I have to be honest, when I traveled to Idaho to interview him, I didn't know what I'd find-- perhaps some crazy scientist? Or a hermit? Neither were true. He's an absolute upstanding citizen and I really enjoyed meeting him. The kind of guy you'd like to have as a teacher to your kids. Knowing Scott, I expect that he'll examine this entire thread and gradually figure out answers to all of the previously unanswered questions, then post them to his website. I've posted the interview that the YERT team (of which I'm a member) created from that interview. I think it gives a solid summary of how the whole thing works, and gets into some of the financial aspects as well, not to mention a cool 3D computer animation of the Solar Roadways. And, of course, you'll get a sense of the "down to earth" nature of Scott, too. I hope you enjoy... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3PeSm6_hTE Best, Mark YERT.com Co-Founder Your Environmental Road Trip

Re:I met Scott Brusaw, founder of Solar Roadways

[systemeng]

Mod this one up. noxid has a great video and it's actually a primary source on the subject matter!

Great idea. But not a good solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

While in interesting approach to the solar collection and conversion to electricity, the promise of this approach depends on a means to get the electricity to users. Wiring roads to the local distribution systems seems straight forward, but it creates the need for providing integration along some form of control into the power generation scheme. And is someone working on the practicality of transporting power from rural and remote generation? That question isn't specific to road-tricity alone.

The ability of our power generation industry to be stable economically is to have predictablity on supply and demand variables. A weakness in all hopes for solar be-all solutions exists because the sun doesn't always cooperate and the implementation of the technologies so far attempted have fragile short-comings of a material or economies nature. What shall provide power during those cloudy periods? With that uncertainty, how can other power generators and the grid operators maintain an efficient power market with such an unreliable/predictiable competitor on the street (pardon the pun).

As an augmentation or dedicated use strategy, road-tricity may displace the need for roadway illumination (or those attractive and interesting billboards littering the byways) to draw from the grid, but that puts dependency on storage strategies (or, heck, go ahead and light 'em up while the sun's out).

As with wind conversion, I hope someone is looking at what the impact will be from diverting energy from these natural systems away from where it going now. Wind systems moving across the earth or the sun heating the crust are contributing to something now. When we begin to suck the energy from these complex systems will we damage our ability to grow food or increase the severity of weather overall? This isn't alarmist-talk. Just some sensical inquiry.

The attempt at supply-side innovation should be the focus. Thinking outside the coal-burning furnace should be recognized as important and encouraged. Naysayers abate. But in the end, this might make power available to roadside communication and conveniences that assist public safety. How about instead of the entire road surface, we replace the shoulder and lane stripes with the collection surfaces. While we're at it, use the same arrays on the tops of all agricultural irrigation and natural gas pipes and any other stationery surface. A network of nine inch wide unobtrusive collectors avoid the need for complicated and hair-brained workarounds suggested here.

Good day.

Solar power panels as a road surface material.

[Count_Froggy]

Whether the idea of using these panels on major, truck-carrying roads flies or not, the technology to make rugged, relatively low cost solar panels has a lot of value. Many commercial buildings have asphalt roofs, top floors of parking garages are often exposed all day, and there are lower use roads in many places around the country. Even if this is only used to power the streetlights and traffic lights (and sewage and waste water pumps), this could be significant savings to local government. If you did those things, even the AC/DC argument fades to insignificance as the usage is local and generally not current-type dependent.

Instead of electric solar panels...

[Lazarian]

Why not just embed plastic pipes in the ashphalt and collect heat by circulating water? The collected heat energy could then be used to generate power, and using flexible pipes would not require a lot of changes in asphalt road engineering. In southern climates, snow coverage wouldn't be as much an issue, and it's possible that ashphalt roads could be made to last longer if some of the heat baking them under the sun was carried away to do useful work.

I have an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some pretty good arguments on either side...
so...
let's give them $100k for a test project and see if it works...

Oh wait, we are doing that...

My god, it's full of tires...

[goodmanj]

In addition to all the engineering nightmare problems people have already mentioned...

You replace your car tires every few years because the rubber has worn off, right? Well, where did the rubber go? You smeared it all over the highway. A lot of it turns into fine dust, but some of it gets literally welded onto the road surface, even in normal driving when you're not skidding or burning rubber.

All that black rubber is covering the road. The dust filters into the cracks and crevices that allow the road to grip tires in wet weather. The smeared tire goo sticks to everything. If you've ever seen a concrete highway roadbed after a year or two of heavy use, it's covered in black grime.

One of the biggest problems people have been having with rooftop solar panels in long-term use is keeping them clean. They get dusty, birds poop on them, etc., lowering the efficiency dramatically. Highways make rooftops look as clean as a hospital in comparison.

That said, this looks like a good use of $100K. That's chump change for government research. Have these guys make a roadway solar panel, stick it in a real roadway for a year or two, and see what happens.

I'm willing to pay $100K of government money to put a bad idea to bed.

Solar parking lot would be bad

[Fencepost]

The advantage of roads is that the vast majority of roads are uncovered most of the time. Parking lots, not so much so - they get covered with cars that just sit there.

The site also talks about transmission of power from areas receiving sunlight to areas not receiving it, but that's complete nonsense - transcontinental transmission of power would be a hugely wasteful joke.

Big Brother

[Anonymous Coward]

This technology caught my eye back in 2007, so I sent an e-mail off to the company. I got the following response:

"Thanks for the interest and the suggestions. Although sensors will be embedded in each Solar Road Panel, ice cannot accumulate (the panel surfaces are heated) and water will be drained off/through the panels. Law enforcement - for both speeders and drunk or erratic drivers - is already incorporated into the system, but we don't advertise that: people tend to panic at the "big brother" concepts behind an intelligent road. This can all be done without RFID technology. One feature we have considered with RFID technology is a tracking device for parents of driving teenagers or spouses suspicious of their partner's whereabouts. A third party service would be available on the internet to see the current whereabouts and history of the vehicle's route and time spent at each location. Again, "big brother" and all of the paranoia that comes with even the mention of such features."

Unfortunately this is being buried deep in the comment system and will probably never be noticed - big brother is always a huge hit with the slashdot crowd!

And an dumb reply

[miketheanimal]

Google started as a PhD research project at Stanford, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google

An Example.. with bonus points!

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me where a corporation engaged in pure research, brought a product to market without government subsidy, and revolutionized the world. For bonus points, show me where they decided that the product was so beneficial they'd allow anyone to produce it for the betterment of mankind.

The seat belt! The three point seat belt was developed and patented by Volvo, but they allowed anyone to produce it as it was such a huge leap in safety over the previous belt designs.

civil engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

As a civil engineer that designs roads for a living it is hilarious to see a computer science view on the design of roads (some of you guys are shockingly off base while others have the basic concept) . The cost estimates for this product lack the cost of preparing the base for the solar panels. This material would most likely work like modern concrete in that it would need a stable sand subbase and 6 to 14 inches of crushed stone in order to support the traffic loads while not shoving into the ground. It would also act like concrete in the way concrete usually fails, pumping action across joints creates voids under the joints and after repeated loading on the joint, the concrete cracks and settles into the void. I'm sure these solar panels would fail in exactly the same way except the entire panel would most likely shatter. Another nice though by some college professor or grad student that doesn't work in the real world.

It doesn't hurt to try.

[Socguy]

Reading through many of the comments on this site, it has become apparent that many of you are dead-set opposed to this idea. I find that a little bit surprising with all that this idea has going for it. I must confess that my first reaction was: this is a brilliant idea! Are there potential issues here? Of course, but it has so much going for it that it would be foolish to ignore it.

Lets look at some of the problems:

Durability
Can glass stand up to punishment? We're not talking about house glass here. Anyone who has been to a hockey game knows how much abuse glass can withstand. Truth be told asphalt requires a ton of maintenance or it quickly deteriorates. Snowplows? Of course they will do some damage, but the question is: how much? They're already very hard on asphalt roads. Dirty? Well, we may find that street sweeper technology is effective. Having said that, if we do decide to implement this idea, I suspect that we would end up with a hybrid system. It would be foolhardy to suggest that one solution should fit all. I suspect that concrete or something will take the majority of the punishing loads with these panels along the shoulders or in parking lots or sidewalks. This idea may be more suited in certain climates and not others. At least to start.

Cost
Yes, this is more expensive than asphalt. But what are you getting for your money? If the inventor is to be believed, this surface would last 3X as long and would also incorporate the energy infrastructure of the nation. When people throw out trillion dollar numbers in regards to redoing the entire country, that's a bit of a scare tactic. Much of that money will have to be spent anyway repairing what we already have. If you eliminate some of the ideas such as the ultracapacitors and LED lighting, the costs could be brought down further.

Future Possibilities To me, the most exciting aspect of the solar road is what sort of possibilities it opens up.
1. The electric car is coming. Imagine cars that charge while they drive, or at least when you park at a mall!
2. By incorporating the energy infrastructure into the roads, you eliminate the need for overhead power lines and the associated battles that accompany the building of new lines. Power lines are crucial for other renewables such as wind.
3. If done right, you start to build the mythical 'smart grid' Certainly there are an abundance of problems that may occur, but, I haven't read anything on this site that is not solvable. Everything required to make this project work is already a proven technology. The only question-mark is if they can be combined and if governments and business will embrace this idea.

Re:It doesn't hurt to try.

[mdsolar]

I agree about future possibilities. With a complex road bed, it should be possible to charge car and truck batteries on the move. Tires, for example, are close enough to the road to allow wireless power transmission such as you find in a rechargeable electric toothbrush. This makes long haul electric road transport more convenient than using fuel. Adding sensors to indicate the presence of vehicles, people or animals stopped on the road should be easy as well.

One place where we are starting to have a complex road bed is at controlled intersections. Sensors help to determine when a light needs to change. These intersections tend to be a lot bumpier, perhaps because maintenance in complex. The present proposal might help to get a better more durable surface where a complex road bed is already needed for other reasons. Hope they can get rid of that slick white paint that causes my tires to spin out at wet start.

Solar parking lot would be freakin awesome

[Gary W. Longsine]

Wrong. Most parking lots, most of the time, are mostly empty. Don't put the solar bits within 50 feet of most big box stores, and you have a huge functioning solar collector, most of the time.

Solar railways

[MasaMuneCyrus]

You can't pick the concrete up and work on the road surface underneath it. You may well be able to do that with an engineered roadway which is laid down in segments. Since most roads seem to fail due to inadequacies of the roadbed or the surface beneath it, this could make a big difference. An engineered roadway which was thick enough might actually help a great deal in this regard, because when it spans a hole it might adequately cover it where concrete (with no self-healing) or asphalt (whose self-healing abilities are limited and pretty well restricted to hot weather) would simply be pressed into the hole and broken; on the other hand, it might also be a liability because it might hide that kind of defect in a roadbed until it becomes a major problem.

It would be a lot smarter to build solar railways, with solar panels between the rails, and forget about this interstate highway bullshit.

That's actually an incredibly good idea. Someone should throw that idea Japan's way.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[quenda]

try googling the municipal bond rate.

Still less than 1% for 2-year AAA. Of course its the 10-20 year bond rates that count for this project, and it would have to be federally backed.
e.g. 2.5%pa over inflation over 14 years is a factor of 1.4. So spending $1 now, is like $1.40 in 14 years on resurfacing.

But its totally beyond me how can US interest rates be so low, with the county haemorrhaging $2billion/day in oil imports. Its either some desperate plan like this, or trade in the SUVs for motor-scooters.

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[virmaior]

i'm not sure where you're getting your data: http://www.municipalbonds.com/ seems to be somewhere between 4-5%

Re:The claims in summary = article + meshed/shorte

[quenda]

from http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/index.html
I read 0.83% 2-year yield. The 2.5% figure is for federal 'Inflation Indexed Treasury', whatever that is :-) The US economy is all voodoo to me.

Is this absurd?

[avtchillsboro]

What a waste of money...I want my flying car & lower taxes from road maintenance savings.

security

[JumpSocial]

I'm sure nobody would ever think of stealing the roads if they can generate electricity.

Shoulder?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just put the panels on the shoulders of the road? Less wear and tear and constant sunlight? Plenty of shoulder room on just interstates alone.

Use the rest of the right of way?

[ResidentSourcerer]

Right now most of the right of way isn't covered with road, it's covered with grass, bush and weeds. This may make more sense for such a venture.

* People don't drive (often) in the ditches and median.

* By putting them on angles, we could eliminiate the snow sticking issue.

* In the latter case, the land underneath would go to shade tolerant species and the land would still be available for soaking up rainfall.

Perhaps a better alternative would be to enclose the roads in snow shed like structures (roofs on posts) This keeps the roads dry most of the time, and allows a cheaper less sturdy alternative photocell.

You still end up with your power being distributed in long thin lines.

According to one book I have on landscape design alternatives, half the impermeable surface in urban areas is roof. Seems to me that putting cells on roofs (and in Canada on south facing walls) makes a lot more sense:

* No one drives on roofs, other than parking lot roofs.

* The average transmission distance is way down: Your customer is often quite near.

Or How about putting them up in nice neat rows in a desert? Hmm.

* Doesn't need paving grade cells.
* Can tilt to maximize light absorbtion.
* The power is in much more concentrated locations, making it easier to tie in to the grid.
* Not nearly as much driving to fix things.
* Less worry about casual vandalism.

What a great idea. If I weren't so selfless I'd run out and patent this today before someone else thinks about it.

The Devil is in the details on Highway 666!

[itsybitsy]

Further analysis: Repairing roads that lasts for over 22 years (solar road panel expected to last 21 years)

100,000 square yards costs $784,000 = $7.84 per square yard

Hot-In-Place Asphalt Surface Recycling Single Pass Method

http://www.smoothroads.com/psi/hot-in-place.html

Costs Analysis:
http://www.smoothroads.com/psi/images/enc_1615_2.jpg

solar road panel of 13m2 = 15.5 square yards x $7.84 = $122 resurfacing cost compared to $10,000 for the same surface area of solar road panel that generates $0.38 worth of electricity per day.

It would take an estimated 4.8 billion solar road panels to cover all of the roads in the US according to their crazy plan.

4.8 billion x 10,000 = $48 TRILLION which equals $137,000 for every single person in the US

Americans can't even afford to fix all of their roads for $7.84 per square yard so its an impossibility they could afford $48 trillion for such a pie in the sky project.

Besides, after 21 years they would need to spend another $48 trillion to replace to old solar road panels which up to that point would have generated $2,912 in electricity leaving $7,087 debt per panel. That's assuming they have 100% reliability, in reality they would probably all break down long before that.

Yes, the devil is indeed in the details and he's traveling on highway 666!

(Thanks to SR, the devils detailer, for his insights).

Here come video ads, right on the road.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just static ads, but video. The whole road, one big video ad playing just for you. And since your car of the future can talk to the road, it quickly tells the road some basic information. The road then checks a database which in turn relays your buying habits back to the server and in a second flat the road shoots back to you a 5 mile video saying that its been 3 days since you last ate at McDonalds and you need to go back to McDonalds for another Quarter Pounder and you can exit for one in 18 miles and get a 15% discount.

Is this really necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more than enough uninhabited land in the Southwest US to power the entire country with solar. The southwest US receives receives more solar energy from the sun than any other part of the country and has little else in terms of natural resources.

Why do we need this expensive solar road when you can just drop big solar arrays out in places where they won't be eyesores?

I think a piezoelectric highway is a much better idea than a solar highway anyway. With a piezoelectric highway you wouldn't have an exotic (or at least unusual) material as your road surface. It would look and feel like a normal highway, and it would generate power regardless of weather or time of day.