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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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?

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

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: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

[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: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.

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

[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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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.