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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[MiniMike]

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

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

Quibble

[john.r.strohm]

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

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!

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

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.

Re:You got to be kidding

[printman]

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

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.

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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.

Self Cleaning Glass

[earls]

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

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: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

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.

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

[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?

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

Re:Hacker's dream

[HiThere]

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.