Slashdot Mirror
Solar Roadways Project Beats $1M Goal, Should Enter Production
Lucas123 (935744) writes "It appears an Idaho-based company that created prototype panels for constructing roads that (among other features) gather solar power, will be going into production after it exceeded its crowdfunding goal of $1M. ... Solar Roadways' Indiegogo project has already exceeded $1.6 million. The hexagonal-shaped solar panels consist of four layers, including photovoltaic cells, LED lights, an electronic support structure (circuit board) and a base layer made of recyclable materials. The panels plug together to form circuits that can then use LED lights to create any number of traffic patterns, as well as issue lighted warnings for drivers. The panels also have the ability to melt snow and ice. Along with the crowdfunding money, Solar Roadways has received federal grant money for development."
The greatest thing since Solyndra?
They can melt snow, as long as they're not covered in snow and can receive solar power..
Seriously though, roads of rock and tar are already expensive as it is, how much is it going to cost to produce an entire road of these tiles? Is it really worth all that to read markings off the road directly instead of looking at signs?
This sounds so prohibitively expensive to build and maintain that I don't see how any energy gained from the solar panels makes it worth it, especially since they are going to be covered by cars for a large portion of the time.
Please explain how this is better than asphalt?
Isn't it impossible for solar cells to melt significant snow?
The black road surface will effectively capture almost all of the sun's energy. In the northern U.S. and Canada, roads routinely get covered in snow.
The solar cell can capture a portion of the sun's incoming energy, and potentially use it to power heaters to melt the snow. This approach has several problems. Firstly, the solar cells / heater mechanism is less energy efficient than a black road surface. Secondly, if the snow falls when it is dark, the solar cell will stop working (unless it has some big batteries are present, and even they won't last long in a heavy snow fall.) Lastly, the best sun occurs in the summer, and the snow hits in the winter, when less solar energy is available.
About the only way a solar cell can keep up with incoming snow is if the solar array is much larger than the area of snow being melted. However, even then, you still have the problem of the solar array getting covered in snow ...
Just wait until an 80,000lb truck going 60mph starts flipping up those tiles like flapjacks.
Sorry to go there with what looks like a very interesting idea (and one the likes of which we've been reading about in futurist manifestos for years), but *a lot* of potential issues come to mind here.
Who's going to produce this at a scale necessary to cover all roads? What's the cost/benefit there in terms of initial production and pollution related to producing these panels on that scale? How is the power stored, how efficiently *can* it be stored and what additional infrastructure is involved there?
Those are just a few questions. But, best of luck to this project!
This notion appears cost-prohibitive and I don't believe they mention cost studies in their video presentation. In addition, we don't seem to be maintaining the road infrastructure we have, which is based on a much simpler technology. In practice, this new solar road infrastructure would appear to require considerably more than we are unable to devote now.
The Verge had a good article criticizing this project. The article doesn't break down the project completely, but points out why their goals are far-fetched, and people should not get too exited.
Also note that when looking at the project, it's not initially clear that a connection with the main electricity grid is still necessary. At night, displaying the signs and defrosting the road is done with electricity from the net. During the day, the solar panels can transfer electricity back to the grid. Their current implementation doesn't include batteries to store electricity locally, and this wouldn't be very environmentally friendly anyway.
They will literally die before this can ever pay off.
Their kids would die before this can ever pay off.
Solar does NOT work well in such passive conditions. Solar is TERRIBLE for such uses, in fact.
The cost to lay one road of reasonable size is INSANE. Not to mention these things will be OUTDATED by the time one road is finished. (again, reasonable length, not some back-alley roads. which would be terrible at that)
These panels will have an effective use of between 9am and 3pm at best because of how bad solar panels are in regards to direction. And the efficiency drops off bad after that.
Do they SERIOUSLY think they can get enough energy in these things to heat snow off? Will they hell. They will get enough heat to make dangerous icy roads!
We haven't even went in to the massive amount of storage required, the HUGE amount of wiring required, not just wiring, COMPUTING, all at the sides or under roads (I forgot which)
NOPE. Not happening. It isn't even an opinion.
You want to know what would have been better? Laying miles of heat absorbing pipes right under the tar and adding a few exchangers.
That would actually work. Wouldn't work well, but it would be CHEAP for a start.
You can semi-automate a bunch of the work:
Truck with dual-saw cutting up the road in a little slice.
Another with a pneumatic head digging up the middle section.
Workers to dig those bits out and clean the cut.
Another truck comes along and unrolls the wire in to it with people helping guide it in to place.
Another behind that laying replacement ground materials.
Stain the whole road dark.
Instantly more useful than this awful solar road.
You can put a damn hose and heat exchanger in your back garden for pennies / cents in comparison to this.
This solar idea does not scale well at all.
I LIKE solar, but it isn't happening, this is one place solar should never be used. It isn't efficient enough to offset the STUPIDLY high cost to place it on even one road of worth.
It could work better in so many areas. On top of parking. On roof tops.
They could have made a sliding panel on top that has a lens that sends the sunlight at a better angle for more of the day and tracks the sun, cheap to build, not expensive like having a huge tracking system (dish) like typical installations, so many others.
Maybe come back in a few decades when metamaterial solar panels exist, that might be worth it.
This? This is free money from delusional people. Sorry, but it is true. Such a wasted idea.
Honestly this seems too good to be true. I see this endeavour never making it past a trial phase as per the below:
Disclaimer: I haven't done too much research on the subject past viewing that video that went viral a week ago.
1) Capital Cost: Looks expensive. Think of all the trenching/corridors that would need to be built. Never mind the electrical infrastructure which I think would need to be upgraded. The incremental cost to add all this to existing and even new road development is intuitively high. Especially since those corridors need to be accessible by humans. Now you need to talk about regulations, air quality, distance to exits, etc etc etc.
2) Maintenance Cost: Ever wonder why there are deep gouges along the roads? Some of them are from broken axles which have a tendency get jammed into the pavement. Other times its caused by overloaded trucks dragging the corner of a low trailer through the pavement for 100's of miles. One truck could potentially destroy hundreds of thousands of these panels in one trip.
I also have a feeling that you will need more maintenance crews to maintain such roads.
3) Magic is Magic: This whole fad solves all the worlds problems including cancer. (Sarcasm). Sounds too good to be true. Generally it is.
I have a lot of technical concerns as well relating to electrical infrastructure, performance of cells, required cleanliness of cells, vehicle safety and so on. I have a nagging feeling this idea was peddled to most investors who dismissed it on the same above grounds and the inability to monetize this idea. It seems by approaching an optimistic (hopeful) and uneducated public they found a million dollars worth of sucker money as I don't see this project fulfilling its claims.
However, just because I am skeptical doesn't mean I want this idea to fail. Someone needs to take steps to save the planet.
Dream on,
- gov
When I see articles such as this, showing the advances being made in capturing energy from the sun, i think it's only a matter of time before it will become widespread. And my layman thinking believes it would be great, to see us harness us the sun in such a way, and be able to give up humanities need for fossil fuels.
What I wonder is, what effect will this have on the planet. I mean once the technology becomes good enough for us to capture most of the energy that hits the earth from the sun, what will happen to the planet when it's being siphoned off?
Would this cause some kindof "global cooling"? Apologies for using such a phrase as I know the furore behind global warming, but it does make me wonder what the repercussions would be in the future. It seems that we're in a constant battle with the balance in nature, and no matter which energy we harness there will always be downsides to the change in equilibrium it produces.
Apologies for being off-topic, obviously this technology isn't cost effective nor practical, but it's a great idea.
Solarroadways looks like a ripoff of solaroad (http://vimeo.com/91641192 ). Solaroad has even an actual live implementation.
But can it handle melting a heavy snowfall? I ain't talking about california weather here, I'm talking about Canadian weather. If it can't handle melting 30cm of snow that fell in 1 hour or so, it ain't worth it.
Test it parking lots first as some real year round traffic and weather will show where things like this will fail.
How much are these going to add to the light pollution problem? Lights pointing straight up are not what we are looking for.
suck
Maybe for four-wheeled vehicles, but I dread encountering such a surface on my motorcycle when there's rain about.
Is that normal plastic?
How strong will the grip be in different weather?
How will it react to the occasional spill of fuel?
I'm not trying to destroy the project, I do not know how the various materials react and I'm just asking...
L
So a company wants to try out some new idea/technology and with public funding is able to scale it up enough for a more serous rollout.
Succeed or fail, I'm excited that people continue to try and innovate.
It's not your tax dollars being wasted if it fails, so why not let innovation (man-made evolution) veer off in a new direction and see where it takes us.
The Feds won't fund a national MagLev.
One is feasible and lowers carbon footprint.
The other is too costly and uses enormous amounts plastics.
Hey i'm testing and i thing that this good jobs !
Iron Force Cheats, Tricks, Guide and Strategies: Iron Force Cheats
Ever seen one of those police chase videos, where the cops are chasing a car that's riding on it's rims? White-hot, throwing sparks, and literally tearing up the road?
Now imagine this happening on a rainy night, on a glass roadway that has a powerline built into it.
ZAP.
Infrastructure-wise, it's awfully hard for terrorists to blow up an entire road so that's nice. But, what the hell kind of solar panel can be driven over by multi-ton trucks for 50 years? And if they break down, aren't solar panels made of extremely toxic materials? Plus, it's hard to melt snow when when it falls faster than it will melt and cuts off your power absorption. Plus, the sunlight is the weakest and carries the least energy in winter. And when does it usually snow? When it's cloudy! What if it snows at night? There goes your power the next morning because it's all covered in snow. I doubt it can be salted or the salt powder would stay on the solar panels. Then there's the fact that dust and dirt make black roads not black in a hurry so there goes a percentage of your absorption. This is so stupid of an idea.
The current method being expensive has no bearing on whether or not this method will prove futile or at least overly expensive. Especially because the costs are never-ending and many roads in the US are beyond their intended life. It's quite obvious that the hullabaloo over this idea is that it will mean maintenance costs are negligible (this is the idea at least) in comparison to current roads (where complete reconstruction is needed) and the roads themselves become energy capital! It's quite obvious to anyone aware of the costs and the process involved in road maintenance that our current method is not sustainable nor efficient. That's why some states use tolls and others just say "you deal with it" through adopt-a-highway programs.
What is the measure of success here? As many posters have pointed out, there are a lot of barriers and problems to be overcome before these will a reasonable asphalt/concrete replacement. This is something that may be twenty years off, requiring new technology and materials.
But think of the advancements and problems that can be solved just by attempting this! If, in five to ten years this results in a new surface for my driveway my kids can play basketball on, and a surface for my patio that powers my house I will consider this an outstanding success.
The should do the simple tests first.
They claim that the glass cover panels can hold up to traffic and provide sufficient traction. Why not mount just the glass covers over a stretch of road and see how it behaves? Until they get the covers right, the rest is irrelevant.
Once they have the ability to make a glass roadway, then they can deal with the question of what to put under it. How about just LEDs for traffic marking? Will they work in the day time? Will they put out too much light pollution?
Once they have the traffic markings working, they can get the heating elements needed for installing where it might snow. I'm under the impression that they have to melt the snow because the panels won't stand up to snow plows. Maybe it will make more sense to run pipes with heated antifreeze solution instead of direct electric heat. Maybe it will make more sense to redesign the glass covers to stand up to snow plows.
Once those are solved, putting in solar panels is a no-brainer that helps the economics of the project work.
In the end, once all the technical issues are solved, it's a matter of economics. What is the cost of a road made with the panels over 50 years as opposed to a traditional asphalt or concrete road when all the maintenance is factored in for each road type?
Considering all the above, I'm convinced that it makes much more sense to put solar on rooftops.
One economic test would be to compare the price of installing the solar roadway with the cost of building a cover over the roadway with solar panels on it.
I knew they were on to something big. I fully support and encourage everyone to check out what these solar panels will do. Talk about improving on an idea. This should be the only roads allowed moving forward.
Some good points, but if you're going to post such a long rebuttal to the concept you should first watch their videos and read their faqs. A lot of these points have been covered, though there are undoubtedly lots of things that need to be tested and the kickstarter is apparently to help them hire those kinds of experts. I heard about these guys some years ago and am delighted they made so much progress, so I'll take a few minutes to reply (since I just read their faq, watched the videos, etc.). p.s. they completed some Federal Highway Administration tests and raised I think 1.7M dollars, and manufactured a test pavement so it's not bullshit. They appear to be honest, thoughtful and stubborn enough to get this far.
- Regarding "thermodynamically impossible" previous poster wrote, well they did it so it's not impossible. The key points seem to be that power is sent to the grid (or flywheel storage on the highway) and pulled back at night. They did a test putting IIRC about 70kW while panels will generate about 50kW, and got the surface warm to touch when they only need maybe 35F. Anyway, it's not freezing across the country the whole time, but they note it is something each community will need to consider since there will be some latitude above which it doesn't make sense. So people might pay for electricity from elsewhere on the road or a nuclear power plant if it reduces fatalities, if they save money from plowing, etc. but worst case some people might even use sand.
To quickly respond to your questions:
- Regarding weight, it handles the heaviest oil refinery trucks I think a quarter million tons with no problem. The glass is really tough. It is probably going to be anchored into an existing road. I don't know how, I suppose by driving steel into the road. They build a concrete container with utility conduit trench that runs up the whole road and carries off rainwater and cables. But it gets paid off by selling energy. They don't have all the numbers but think it will pay for itself.
- Haven't done a test with a car flying through air. They did think about what happens in earthquakes. Basically they airlift in some panels and hook them back in where the hole is. They want to help people in disaster areas.
- Frame bent? Don't know if they have frame, seems like you are asking about the above question. Chop it out and drop in replacements.
- Have they done AASHTO? How the heck would anybody on Slasdhot know that? They have done some tests and will do more. Perhaps you'd like to help?
- Pulverize concrete, see above.
- Car burns, see above. Same for hazmat.
- Cop chase, car is driving on rims for 20 miles and the rims weld themselves to the rotor, half inch groove? Well I honestly have never heard about things like that, sounds like fiction. But since you have experience I'll say I believe you. in addition to the above, the undisturbed panels around the groove know which panels are broken and the rest of the road is unaffected. They report which panel IDs are dead and know exactly where they are, and they get fixed. If the road is so resilient then you could chop out a whole chunk and cable around it. Might be quicker than fixing a similar problem with an ordinary road.
- Heavy objects falling? Same thing, perhaps. But obviously a lot of things will get figured out as they do more tests.
- asphalt 20 years - they say aiming for 20 to 30 years. That was my first worry, will it wear out because solar panels don't have a long lifetime. But they do say they would use new materials as they are developed and talk about the institute that does that. So maybe lifetime would extend. Anyway beyond 30 years you get a road that hopefully still works and can sense deer on the road but just won't generate power. But it gets power from grid still.
- System screams money and labor. It does, doesn't it. They say this is a good thing as it will give jobs and they want jobs to stay in the U.S. which is why kickstarter not VCs yet. It might not be good for everywhere. There might be better ways to
I would rather see more businesses and individuals install PV into their local locations, that are either grid-tied with failover to standalone when there is a grid power outage, or standalone.
No need for solar roads, when most people and businesses have plenty of square meters on their property that could have PV. Over roofs, over driveways, over parking lots, and such.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
We've learned that in the U.S., over $160 billion is lost each year in lost productivity from people sitting in traffic due to road maintenance.
No, it's time that would've been spent at home scratching your ass. Tesla pulls this same crap too in their marketing, by claiming your time spent pumping gas is wasted income. Your time is only worth something if you actually would've spent that time earning money. Why else do you think we call it "free time"?
Road delays do waste fuel, but that's more easily solved with improved vehicle technologies, rather than expensive pie-in-the-sky tech roads.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I was curious so I added up all the crowd funding levels for this project. I came up with some interesting numbers.
1. The sum of all funding levels is $1.37M and not $1.75M. Where does the other $400K come from?
2. 80% of the contributors gave $50 or less resulting in 35% of the contributions.
3. 1.2% of the contributors gave $300 or more resulting in 22% of the contributions.
I wonder how many of those big contributors have a stake in the business and want to make it look good.
Considering all the above, I'm convinced that it makes much more sense to put solar on rooftops.
We're not even remotely close to running out of places to install PV panels, where they'll never see the business end of a vehicle tire. PVs are presently just too damn expensive, even when you're not engineering them to withstand being constantly run over.
The news story here is really that fools are still being parted from their money.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Roads are not flat. I realize that is an extreme example but roads are not always completely flat. They go over hills, through valleys and weather causes them to buckle slightly. All that has to happen is for an edge of one of these panels to come up a bit and you get a permanent bump in the road. Conventional roads can handle this as the bump just wears or is ground down and the road is fine again. With these panels any protruding edges would receive stresses at different angles and be prone to breakage. To fix it would require the road bed to be re-built. Going over crests will be an issue as the road will curve. A major cost in construction will be making the road bed rigid enough to not move and displace the panels. Add that to the cost of the panels, electrical connections, de-icing power costs, etc and you get a very expensive road.
The biggest difference is in repairing road surfaces. When conventional roads get bumpy we can lust add another layer of asphalt to even it out. This can be done a few times before we need to rebuild. With those panels we would have to re-build every time the road bed went out of alignment.
I like the statements about panel replacement being so easy. Potholes are generally caused by the road bed failing causing a failure in the road surface. Replacing a panel, as easy as it might be, will not fix the underlying issue and the new panel will fail quickly.
These panels may be useful for sidewalks and parking lots in certain areas that do not have extreme weather but I doubt they will be useful for roads or highways.
I'll just leave this here.
Why The Solar Roadway Is A Terrible Idea
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This reminds me a bit of Heinlein's early solar powered, car-less, roads. It has taken 75 years to get solar conversion effeciency up to the point it could be done.
Thunderf00t summed up a lot of arguments why this is futile and/or a scam in this video. From the summary:
(And yes, he's got a PhD in chemistry, so I trust he might have more of a clue or two what happens when a truck hits the road than an electrical engineer(!)...)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Can I plug my Tesla into this? Cars that require no "refueling" are the future. Is this the start?
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
The way I see it is that the panels can be installed in parking lots, where cars come in, slows down, turns into a parking bay, and brakes, and stops.
The wear-and-tear for tarmac on parking lots are much less than those on a roadway, and furthermore, you don't get gravels or lose rocks falling down from who-knows-where and then runs over and crushes by the tires --- and I seriously do not think the panels can withstand such punishments
The reason snow sticks is because the ground is below freezing when it hits. If you can maintain the ground slightly above freezing, you don't have to melt the snow, because it won't form in the first place. It could easily be a week or a month before the snow gets plowed in outlying areas, which means a week or a month of more sunlight. Even if a road takes an hour to be plowed, in a high traffic area, that could deal thousands of dollars in economic damage, nevermin accidents and energy wasted spining tires. The solar roads won't be isolated cells, they will be attached to the greater relay network.
My feeling is this will not be viable as a road replacement due to the cost and staggering number of roads in the U.S.
However, there exists a place where you maybe could convince the city it would be useful by designating parking, directing traffic to local events, pretty colors....
It would fit this cities image to a tee.
They should try to pave the main drag in.....Las Vegas!
Seriously, It would fit the cities image, could be useful is some ways. Would prove the technology (or not) and give Las Vegas one more thing for the travel brochures.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H901KdXgHs4
How do these things deal with flame, and how about fumes?
http://singularityhub.com/2010...
Commercial solar panels are available at 18.5% efficiency, if we replaced all the highways in the lower 48 states with solar panels of the same surface area then we'd get about 14 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. That's roughly three times what the US uses each year, and about equal to what the world consumes each year. The cost? Brusaw is aiming for each road 12' by 12' panel to cost around $10,000 and for the average lifespan of the panel to be about 20 years. There is roughly 29,000 square miles (~800 billion square feet) of road surface to cover. We need roughly 5.6 billion panels to cover that area. That's a price tag of $56 trillion! Brusaw points out, however, that at current retail electricity prices the road would pay for itself in about 22 years. Quicker if we used panels with greater efficiency.
He also says that asphalt roads aren't that much cheaper. He supposes that an asphalt road costs about $16 per square foot and lasts for 7 years. If the solar panel road lasts for 20 years, it would be about the same cost per year.
He's not quite right about that. First, $16 per square foot is about right for highway strength asphalt roads. Your average residential roadway is much closer to $2-3 per square foot , however. Also, many roads (highways or otherwise) aren't replaced every 7 years, but rather every 10 to 20. In any case, even if we accept Brusaw's numbers ($16 per square foot, 7 years versus $10,000 for 144 square feet every 20 years) the solar cell road is still about 50% more expensive ($3.47 per square foot -year versus $2.29 per square foot-year). Now, if petroleum prices continue to rise then maybe asphalt roads will be as expensive as $10k solar panelsâ¦but right now that's simply not the case.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Combine these folks' ideas with Google's self driving car and some work that is being done in Europe and Japan on charging electrical batteries for cars and you get an interesting scenario.
You get into your car, tell your GPS where you want to go. It connects to the roadway's computer and takes you there, continuously charging as it goes, (for no additional cost). When you arrive your car toddles off back home, or finds a parking spot, then returns and picks you up when you call.
Why not just put the PV panels on a roof over the road? Much cheaper, and you don't have to plow snow on the road. Kind of like that rail line in Belgium; they didn't use solar panels as ties for the tracks, did they?
For this to happen, it cannot occur in the public sphere. There are too many rice bowls involved. Not to mention the decade long fight over which party gets credit or moves their agenda along by NOT allowing the other party to take credit.
No, this would have to occur using a local coalition of the willing:
A place where those with cash can see and drive over it.
Some place you can destroy the existing infrastructure without a bunch of NIMBYs blocking construction. Maybe a new development or a re-development.
Detroit has massive infrastructure problems, but do they get enough sunlight?
Can San Francisco quite fighting long enough to allow construction?
Maybe Texas who couldn't give a darn about their environment but has a lot of tech industry types with business ties to the area?
Long term: This could be the "smart grid" we heard so little about in 2010. For this to work, you have to generate enough electricity to keep the roads clear during a harsh winter. Think big snowstorm from a slow moving low pressure system.
We will need electricity generation in far flung sunny states and countries in the same way LA needs most of the Western US' water supply. Electricity must be able to travel transcontinental distances the same way cargo and people do now.
We will need large amounts of electricity storage. I don't know what that would look like. It could be batteries. It could be fuel cells using hydrogen and oxygen from desalination plants or captured rain water from spring floods -- oh that's an idea! Build massive conduits to divert excess rainwater into the West's emptying aquifers. Is it practical? I have no idea.
A project like this will require a skilled workforce and decades to complete. Sorry Southern US. Your hatred of "schoolin" and your love of cheapness and a romanticized agrarian fantasy still won't bring or keep jobs to your towns. Maybe once you see the rest of the country has moved a century past you, we'll see a Great Vote Out occur and you can join the 21st century. As a Southerner I hope but don't believe it's possible outside of our few successful cities. There's a reason why poverty is still such a major part of the South, and it's entirely our fault.
So while I think solar roadways are a great idea. We can't rely on our leaders to facilitate this conversion. This will have to occur bottom up while those at the top have to leap out of the way. Good luck to this endeavor!
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Why aren't we doing the obvious? Next time you fly into San Diego or Phoenix checkout how many roofs are solar....zero
Next to my place of employment is an outdoor amphitheater with about 20 acres of wide open parking lot. 95% of the year it is totally clear of cars during the day, as most of the shows are at night, and they only have 2-5 all day shows each year.
How much electricity can they get out of 20 acres of treeless parking lot?
How easy is it to change the parking spaces for the times they have 2nd & 3rd stages in the lot?
Can it stand up to hundreds of drunken idiots trying to get in and out at the same time?