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Are Glowing, Solar Smart Roads the Future?
cartechboy (2660665) writes "We were just talking about glow-in-the-dark roads and how they were having issues already. Now there's a company called Solar Roadways that's looking to make glowing, solar, smart roads. Back in 2009 the Department of Transportation awarded Solar Roadways $100,000 to prototype road systems with embedded digital signage and dividing lines, all powered by the sun. As it turns out, the company's prototype performed well — so well that Solar Roadways is now looking to go big-time, and it's asking for your help to do so. At the heart of the Solar Roadways project sit a vast number of hexagonal tiles. The bottom of those tiles consist of solar panels and circuit boards, covered with a thick sheet of tempered glass. The panels contain LED lights, which can be configured to mark traffic lanes, send messages, or fulfill other functions. The panels also have heating elements to help melt snow and ice during colder months. Are these smart roads the future, or just another pipe dream?"
What is going to prevent these plates from getting scratched and rendered useless shortly by studded tires, gravel, snow plows, etc.
i think solar roof tiles is a much better idea.
The prototype tested in the Netherlands had not much success because it failed to glow properly after a rainy day (link). The issue is like with any kind of solar power - it simply does not work if there is no or too little sun.
I've seen a pile of articles on this, and never once in them has anybody even scratched the topic of cost. Which would kind of be important, one would thing. Turns out, they don't know or aren't saying. From their FAQ:
"We are not yet able to give numbers on cost. We are still in the midst of our Phase II contract with the Federal Highway Administration and we'll be analyzing our prototype costs near the end of our contract which ends in July, 2014. Afterward, we'll be able to do a production-style cost analysis."
There are a hundred billion cool ideas out there, but if they're not cost effective than who cares?
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... only optimum conditions are envisioned. I did not see any attention paid to less than optimum conditions. As such, this project fails before it even starts.
How much traction can you get between a rubber tire and tempered glass?
Assuming it can become the norm everywhere (huge assumption there)...
I imagine we will replace our coal plants with large battery plants to store all the extra power we get during the day so that these things can function well at night (having to only power sections of road with vehicles on them would probably make that very feasible).
Then the electricity bill wouldn't be for the actual electricity. It'd be for maintaining these large battery store houses and maintaining these roads. I mean really, if we laid out a ton of this stuff across the US (the desert regions specifically), I figure electricity would be dirt cheap if not free (aside from the aforementioned maintenance).
The only way I can see this actually happening is if the solar panel roads become ubiquitous, which as I said, is a huge assumption. The oil industry won't have it, and getting the capital to produce enough panels to make it worth while, then lay them across major highways would be massive. Then there's building the battery centers so that they can actually function at night (or we can shift to coal power for night time).
I think this is something that would definitely pay off in the long run, but probably won't happen for the same reasons other things similar to it didn't happen. i.e. big business and lobbyists.
The NUMBER ONE infrastructure budgeting problem in America right now is that roads cost too much. Not bridge repair or aging electrical grids or anything like that. Just purely by the dollars, it's the cost of roads. I know! Let's make them more expensive for a reason that solves a problem that doesn't exist. My headlights + titanium fleck paint means I can see the lines just fine. I also don't need the road to literally tell me it's raining or snowing or below zero. The road tells me that already just be looking at it.
I think this would make for an excellent driveway/sidewalk material. It could have motions detectors and be used as lights. During the day, it would work as solar panels. Sidewalks and driveways cost around $5/sq ft for concrete and $10/sq ft for bricks. I think it they cost around $15/sq ft I think a lot of people would go for it, esp if they already have other solar equipment in the house.
I'm sure lots of specialty uses are possible - like casinos or paving Main St with this so it looks really fancy.
I know road budgets are astronomical and so, I would think it would depend a lot on how much these cost to make, maintain and replace. In most cases, labor is at least half the cost and so, it would depend on how much more expensive these are than asphalt.
Not much grip though.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Our roads need to be repaired almost constantly. How does this improve the situation? How about a dumb road that does it's job for 80 years straight?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
The repair is going to be nuts. Both the cost and the skill/work required. But then again, only (some) waterways and dirt road are truly repair-free.
Seems like an huge and expensive project. I wonder how long systems like that would last for, and how long it would take to be repaired.
Parking garages, though... Lighted arrows and lines to direct people to empty slots might be useful. It could be useful for intersections which have highly variable traffic patterns, where adding additional turn lanes dynamically is useful. Stadiums often do that, with a small army of people moving traffic cones around.
Solar powered snow melting seems unlikely to work. If you really need snow melting, the power requirements are huge. The cutting edge of technology there is induction heating of snow in railroad switches. Many railroads in snowy areas heat their switches. But nobody heats the entire track.
"Our roads need to be repaired almost constantly. How does this improve the situation? How about a dumb road that does it's job for 80 years straight?"
What the fuck?
Can't you see from the video that these roads are made from hexagons?
And they glow in the dark?
And if these roads get damaged, it can electrocute common nuisances like earthworms, birds, little kids and the like?
And all of these features are solar powered, so you know it is green (except for the toxic chemicals in the solar panels these things deposit in the water supply when it rains).
People like you are why we don't have progress and why some little kids in Asia are choking on smog and you don't care, which makes you a jerk!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Roads? Doubtful. But everyone will want multicoloured versions for their new mixed-purpose driveway/dancefloor!
They were tested in the middle of a northern Idaho winter, and tests showed the snow being removed from the panels so effectively that the glass was dry.
They assumed only 4 hours of sunlight and a poor efficiency factor. Their prototype testing was in Idaho, not california. The panels are designed to withstand loading of 250,000pounds.
They were fairly pessimistic in their design assumptions, so it ought to be given a chance.
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Karma: Chameleon
So that's how the Borg started.
Table-ized A.I.
We don't need another source of light pollution.
how long till its hacked?
I am constantly surprised we aren't working harder to have three dimensional travel --and not need to build/maintain all of this infrastructure.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
So how about we simply don't use these in areas where we get 3ft dumpings of snow in a single day? Some places have a few days of snow per year.
BS. Thank you for the classic "what about the children" argument. We are not talking about a few dollars here and there but more like billions. There is no way to make the roads completely safe and spending billions on an unattainable goal is just waste.
Costs: the idea is that this would cost less than building normal solar pannels AND roads; Moreover, they would also replace the need for powerlines as they are inteded to be part of the distrubtion system. Thus price for new developments shouldn't be an issue.
Repair: Most road damage is due to heavy trucking and utilitys digging them up. The solar roads are designed to withstand and excess 250,000 pounds, and the pannels are modular, which means they can be removed and replaced if digging benigh them is required
Wear: there won't be snow plows going across them as they will have a heating element built in, loss of transparancy is currently thought to have a maximum reduction on output of only 9%, see repair (above) for more questions about durablity. Line Display: netherlands failure: used glow
No it's not. the #1 problem is morons that are elected trying to make budgets. none of them are accountants, most can barely walk and chew gum at the same time.
Until we drastically increase the IQ of elected officials as well as increase their honesty level everything will stay a mess.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Then you simply don't understand the laws of physics. Moving something in the air requires fighting gravity constantly, our methods of doing so are far less efficient than the energy lost when matter itself is physically converted to energy fighting gravity, which is so tiny that its effectively undetectable outside of stars.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I don't know about anyone else, but I find roads that are 'bright' such as when street lights reflect off black asphalt during the rain VERY difficult to see properly on.
I can't see the entire road glowing as a good thing. Lines and indicators which are slightly lit so they are more visible, sure. The entire road surface? Absolutely not. Its bad enough dealing with oncoming headlights and being able to see other things in the unlit areas.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They simply won't stand up to the wear and tear.
They talk about how such a road can withstand loads in excess of a quarter million pounds.
Okay. But what about SHEARING FORCES? In a lot of cases this, not straight downward pressure, is what tears up roadways.
You also have heave in the roadways. Now, most roadways are built in such a way that heave is minimized, but there still is some that has to be factored in.
Also, what will weeks/months/years of thermal and physical stresses do to the surface? Here in Chicago, the roadways get replaced every 5-10 years.
How do these things handle a puddle of burning gasoline from an accident? Or howsabout an entire carbecue raging away on the surface?
And once the surface is breached (and it WILL be breached), you have an environmental hazard on your hands.
And how much will it cost to build these things? Compare the coverage to an asphalt or reinforced concrete roadway on materials cost alone. Not to mention the specialty labor for installation. ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.
You're also going to be installing this expensive road surface in areas that traditionally don't get much sun.
Rush hour anyone?
Currently, most solar cells STILL don't make back their manufacturing costs within the lifetime of the product.
As for loss of transparency due to wear? "It is thought to have a maximum reduction" basically means "They don't know, but they'll ass-pull a number out for you."
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I feel sorry for Smart Roads. They're so smart, deep down they must realize how many miles of Dumb Roads could have been built for the same money.
I feel sorry for those embedded hexagonal tiles too. They must have known as the grout hardened around them that it was a one way trip into a soul-less, sorry-ass world. At the semiconductor plant there was so much optimism and excitement, everyone was buzzing about becoming an integral part of the ongoing man-machine synergy. Of course when everyone graduates from silicon college they all think they'll be the ones to stretch Shannon's limits and change information states in an intricate dance party of information-sharing, everyone connected. But what happens is, so many are diverted to become these simple blinky-light drone units on a lonely road as countless strangers fly over them. Heartless strangers. And through the cruel geometry of the hexagon, only six adjacent units to keep them company. For ETERNITY.
Covered with tempered glass for Pete's sake. Even the glass is pissed off by this idea, it has already lost its temper as it is being cemented into place. I'm glass goddammit, roads are like playgrounds where all the kids are mean and gravel and skidding tires are everywhere. Gravel hurts. The glass knows its glorious transparency and reflectivity will soon be gouged and cratered, the pane dissolves into a translucent pain of dwindling light.
The solar cells under the doomed glass are perhaps the saddest of all. To lose their photon stream bit by bit until a mere trickle of current escapes them is purgatory without end. Soon all of them will be barely functional, trapped under road, when they could have been some where out in the sunshine.
It is merciful when a load of dirt just covers them up on the shoulder and just hardens there, they can settle in for a nap.
During the first frost of Winter everyone in the hexagonal array is overjoyed when the heating wires kicked in and electrons begin to jump out of their shells once more. But soon it was obvious that something was very wrong. "Hey, ease off! There's delicate electronics in here!" But trapped within their isolated pockets of trapped heat they realize that no one can hear their cries. The heat element, though it can deliver a continuous torment to the components inside, would never melt a thick layer of ice. "Someone duid not do the math. Help us!"
But no help comes, and soon the project hits cost overruns is abandoned. One day the control signals go silent, and once again a wave of dismay sweeps across the trapped colony of orphaned electronics. There is no more purpose in life, but thanks to the cruel embedding of solar cells, life will go on.
It's all just so damned horrible.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Moving something in the air requires fighting gravity constantly ...
Give These guys a call - I'm sure they can be available constantly for such an important task.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
New England is right out.
But not Texas, Arizona or California. Deciding not to implement something there because it isn't suitable for a place on the otherside of the contry wouldn't make much sense.
We've too many roads going to too many places that don't justify the expense of dropping 40 million a mile. And it is about aging.
It's a rolling problem. We started out with town roads, then county roads, then state roads, then interstates. And we happily kept building more. But the roads fall apart on a steady schedule even as we merrily throw down more. What happens is you spend more every year just to keep up what your great-grandfather made, your grandfather made, your father made, and eventually the backlog of the rebuilding costs more than you can pay - and your infrastructure falls apart, slowly at first, then the process accelerates.
You can either let it die, or raise taxes, and of course lower costs by eliminating unions, using immigrant labor, removing health benefits from labor and taking advantage of new road-laying tech. But it's obvious by gross evidence that we can't keep up. We don't want to be taxed enough to maintain the backlog.
Question about this glass isn't about how much it costs - the first part of the cost accounting problem - but how much it saves over time. If the glass wears longer and as a grid produces three times more power than the entire nation requires, then it is worth more than the asphalt roads made of oil.
The road lasts longer. It self-lights. New energy grid. More power than we need, with over-production used to melt snow. Acts as a information highway, literally. Needs no new land. Could self-plow. Hell, it could power electric vehicles by induction. Remember, a stretch of highway can use more power than it produces because is part of a grid of all roads, some of which overproduce electricity.
Republican states, almost invariably, pay less to the federal kitty than the federal kitty pays back. They've great roads because they're on federal road welfare.
Are you fucking kidding? Our infrastructure is close to third world status. We can't even fill the potholes, but we'll toss around the idea of solar powered glow in the dark bullshit?
New car headlights are better than ever. They are simply fantastic. Reflective paint on the side of the road is simple, cheap and works well.
Let's solve the real problems first, and teach people to pay attention when they drive.
Violating gravity and keeping it that way instead of remaining neutral against the ground automatically costs a ton more, especially over time. That's engineering 101.
With the way all of our high tech industries seem to be breaking testing rigs these days, looks like a great opportunity for someone to make a bigger testing machine!
I'm reminded of the old Red Skelton skit, as a whacky inventor Ludwick von Humperdoo who created the cement tire.
"What good are cement tires?" he was asked.
"For the Rubber Road!" was the punchline.
Tracy Johnson
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