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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."
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?
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 ...
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.
I was a bit skeptical when I'd first heard about this.
What I hope happens is that they start off focusing on commercial applications like parking lots and drive ways.
That will give the technology time mature and the price to come down.
otherwise yeah, I suspect we'll be rebuilding a lot of roads as they work the real world bugs out.
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
That is, in fact, their plan.
Read about it on the "Vision" page of their website: http://www.solarroadways.com/v...
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I really hate to be skeptical, especially with a project with goals as desirable as this, however I just don't see it happening. Road surfaces receive an enormous amount of wear. The current state of materials technology just isn't able to deliver the properties that such a surface would need to have to provide the described functionality.
Don't get me wrong, I really, really want this to succeed. It's just that we still can't make a solid bitumen road resistant to cracks in the long term, so how can we hope to make electronics and other far more fragile components match or exceed that level of durability without making the costs skyrocket to the point that it is not economically viable. Airports, with their massive budgets, have runways with *some* of that functionality, and they already require regular maintenance. The $ per square meter spent on a runway at an airport is more than a few orders of magnitude more than that spent on public roads.
Anyway, let's watch and hope.
I hate printers.
Cost doesn't matter if they pay for themselves. "If" being the operative word here. But if it's true, it makes no difference how much more expensive they are than asphalt.
Even if they do cost more than asphalt after factoring in the electricty they produce, how do you place a cost on avoiding all the human misery that will come about from climate change?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
They address this on their website:
"What are you going to do about traction? What's going to happen to the surface of the Solar Roadways when it rains>
Everyone naturally pictures sliding out of control on a smooth piece of wet glass! Actually, one of our many technical specs is that it be textured to the point that it provides at least the traction that current asphalt roads offer - even in the rain. We hesitate to even call it glass, as it is far from a traditional window pane, but glass is what it is, so glass is what we must call it.
We sent samples of textured glass to a university civil engineering lab for traction testing. We started off being able to stop a car going 40 mph on a wet surface in the required distance. We designed a more and more aggressive surface pattern until we got a call form the lab one day: we'd torn the boot off of the British Pendulum Testing apparatus! We backed off a little and ended up with a texture that can stop a vehicle going 80 mph in the required distance."
Not sure how true or relevant this is but they do address it.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
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.
Maybe for four-wheeled vehicles, but I dread encountering such a surface on my motorcycle when there's rain about.
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?
From the Solar Roadways FAQ:
Since our system is modular, repair will be much quicker and easier than our current maintenance system for asphalt roads. 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.
What they're saying is that between reduced cost of paving, filling potholes, etc, and the reduced loss of productivity that results from less construction/maintenance, the system should pretty much pay for itself. (Also, it might make sens to factor in reduced healthcare costs and legal costs from fewer accidents as a result of better nighttime visibility, etc).
Initially the cost will probably be huge, especially accounting for the 'things they don't know they don't know' that will bite them during initial deployments. But I think in the end it will be a net economic benefit, especially since it's also an opportunity in many cases to bury vulnerable overhead lines, install additional data communications backbones, and possibly even reduce carbon footprints significantly. Besides 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' - big ideas like this are how civilization advances.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Looking at their business plan, they are headed straight for failure. Reason is actually very simple. Roads are a key part of basic infrastructure. As a result, we need many of them, and they need to be cheap to construct and cheap to maintain.
Their idea of a road is extremely expensive to build regardless of mass production or technology advancement in comparison to modern roads for very obvious reasons, and maintenance is unknown but likely also astronomically higher.
Essentially this is a choice of having the road network we have today, or having nothing but major intercity roads if even than and no other roads (because cost of these will swallow all the budget and then some).
Considering in Canada we don't even go a few years without normal asphalt disintegrating from regular weather I wonder how this stuff will hold up. Winter is a bitch, especially our rapid freeze/thaw cycles. -25C today +10C tomorrow is common.
Om, nomnomnom...
Yeah, but you're talking about summer snow falls here. What about winter?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I've looked at their costs, and right now there's not enough money on the entire planet to replace even a portion of US road network with what they have.
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.
It's just that we still can't make a solid bitumen road resistant to cracks in the long term,
If you made a road out of solid bitumen, then it would be resistant to cracks, but it would also be resistant to rolling. It would glue your car down to the road bed as you sunk into it.
so how can we hope to make electronics and other far more fragile components match or exceed that level of durability without making the costs skyrocket to the point that it is not economically viable
One of these things is not like the other. Solar panels are actually amazingly durable. I don't know of anybody driving over them, though. On the other hand, some of these fancy new kinds of glass are fairly astounding. On the gripping hand, what kind of additives do they require?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You missed the whole point of durability that I mentioned.
In Thailand, many of the roads in the southern areas use glass balls as lane markers. They don't get driven over unless a wheel is in on the lane marker, hence, only a small fraction of the actual traffic. Nonetheless, it is plainly obvious that they just don't last. They are chipped and damaged to the point that they don't fulfill their function.
Roads are possibly the most abused surface mankind makes. No type of glass that we have access to could ever stand up to long term road wear. It's just not possible with today's tech. I really think that this is a grant scam, which is unfortunate, because the politicians being scammed will be less favourable to green projects the next time a real idea comes around.
I hate printers.
math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glass/glass.html
When I said "solid bitumen", I was referring to traditional road materials, and not a bitumen only tarpit. Sorry for not being specific.
Also, "durable" is a relative term. We're talking about roads. Solar panels are durable when compared to, say, laptop screens. They are not durable in the context of road surfaces. Yes, there are amazing glass types around today, but once again, in the context of road surfaces, I don't think glass is, or could ever be, an appropriate material.
Bitumen+gravel is used because the stone gravel provides excellent wear resistance while the bitumen holds it in a flexible and self-healing suspension. It is still the best road surface material we have by a country mile.
I hate printers.
Bitumen+gravel is used because the stone gravel provides excellent wear resistance while the bitumen holds it in a flexible and self-healing suspension. It is still the best road surface material we have by a country mile.
I share your concerns, as well as your appreciation for asphalt road surfaces, but I don't think we can't do better. What is glass but a sort of artificial rock? I've got a nice big chunk of obsidian in my yard...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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 about if we pay for it with space cash?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Sorry, I was scrolling up and down the page, got distracted, and copied the answer from the wrong question. Here's what they say:
"How will you replace damaged panels in a highway?
Since our system is modular, repair will be much quicker and easier than our current maintenance system for asphalt roads. 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.
Each of the panels contain their own microprocessor, which communicates wireless with surrounding panels. If one of them should become damaged and stop communicating, then the rest of the panels can report the problem. For instance, "I-95 mile marker 114.3 northbound lane, third panel in, panel number A013C419 not responding".
Each panel assembly weighs 110-pounds. A single operator could load a good panel into his/her truck and respond to the scene. The panel could be swapped out and reprogrammed in a few minutes. The damaged panel would then be returned to a repair center. Think of how this compares to pot hole repair!"
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Glass (and obsidian for that matter) are crystalline in structure, making them hard and brittle. Exactly what you do not want in a road surface. Rock on the other hand is usually an amalgam of several materials, meaning that it can be scraped and chipped, but is less likely to develop cracks that propagate. Using regular ordinary gravel in asphalt also means that the rock pieces are not subject to localized large forces, as the exposed surfaces of the gravel stones flex away thanks to the bitumen. The twin properties of flexibility and a hard wearing surface are what make asphalt able to stand up to being hit with tonnes of force hundreds of thousands of times a year and still last decades between having to be relaid.
I agree that it's probably not the case that we can't do better, but the question is about current materials technology and economic viability. Could we do better if we spent $1m per square meter of road surface? Possibly, with those newly emerging exotic resins and fibers. Would a $1m/sqm price tag mean that the project has any chance of success? No.
I hate printers.
Current roads last a decade? Where? Seems round here the roads are resurfaced annually.
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.
Trying to figure out where the cheap inexpensive roads are that you're demanding? Current technology in road systems doesn't appear to have made any quantum leaps lately. Still hundreds of millions a year in America to fix existing roads. Seems like a worthwhile research project to even costs out for the infrastructure.
Current roads last a decade? Where? Seems round here the roads are resurfaced annually.
you must live in a land where the road workers union / mafia gives kickbacks to govt officials to pay for repairs of good roads just to flow down more taxpayer money to the mafia. welcome to how the real world works.
A major issue here is that standard glass can wear down through abrasion pretty quickly. Glass is fairly hard stuff, with a Mohs hardness of 5 it's comparable to steel which is why you need specialized tools like diamond cutters to cut it. However, quartz- one of the most common minerals on earth and a major component of most sands and gravels- has a Mohs hardness of 7, so a bit of sand and grit can easily scratch and wear standard glass. Take a look at a piece of glass that's been on a rocky beach and you'll see that it's been worn down and frosted by the constant action of the waves and stones; thousands of cars a day driving over a surface and grinding pebbles and grit into it will have the same effect. It will wear grind down any texturing, and frost the glass such that it reduces the amount of light getting through to the solar cells. There are harder glasses out there, like the Gorilla Glass that smartphone screens are made out of, but it's unclear whether they've addressed this wear-and-tear issue or not.
sorry man, if you're looking for constructive conversation or openness to new ideas then you have come to the wrong place. we put up new ideas in order to tear them down. i am interested to see how this develops, and since it is at the kickstarter stage no need to give it a rigorous tear down yet. a new idea is like a baloon. let it fly, see where it goes.
And, still, the power it supplies will be unable to compensate you for anywhere near the purchase price + installation cost + maintenance costs over its lifetime, let alone pay back the original investors from just the "profit" part of that payment to the company that made it.
Sorry, it's just a huge waste. I'm all for progress and advancement and science, but when it comes from ideas that are just poor commercial products to a handful of super-rich wastrels for the look of the thing, at the expense of ideas where you could easily make a difference, it really bugs me.
And, I invoke my golden rule: Call me again when I can buy it in a shop near me. Until then, it's all pie in the sky. And if you can't get that far - there's a reason for that. Maybe your idea just isn't that great?
Getting approval to replace even a mile of actual road with that stuff is going to take you decades before you even start.
The $ per square meter spent on a runway at an airport is more than a few orders of magnitude more than that spent on public roads.
I call BS on your assertion. Either that, or you can't be serious. A "few orders of magnitude" is like 4 or 5 or 6, but let's say for the sake of discussion that you mean the lowest possible value of "few," which would be 3. That's still 10^3 = 1000. And then you say "more than a few orders of magnitude," which would mean at least 10^4 = 10,000. In any case, there's no way that the dollars per square meter spent on a runway at an airport is 1000x— let alone 10,000x — more than that spent on public roads.
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.
That's the point of this. Until somebody installs the material it's hard to say how it's going to do in real life. But, because it's so risky, it's hard to get funding to do the experiment. So, they went to Indiegogo to get the money and hopefully it will work out well.
And this is a parking lot, they get some wear and tear, but probably most of it is simply from being out in the elements. I've never seen a parking lot with grooves in the road from all the traffic and it's relatively easy to engineer a road for cars to just sit there.
Just wait until an 80,000lb truck going 60mph starts flipping up those tiles like flapjacks.
I'd have to agree that I think THIS will be the real test involved. But considering we give millions away on bullshit at the federal level, at least this has a goal that people can recognize.
It is so funny how little the average nerd understands the concept "perfect is the enemy of the good." e.g.
AC: Tesla can cat FIRE!
JoeSlashdot: No shit, so does gasoline. Which one catches fire more frequently and under what conditions?
AC:No man TESLAS CATCH FIRE!!!!
Or
AC: Glass be slippery!
JoeSlashdot: The coefficient of friction is an empirical measurement.
AC:Glass be slippery!
Your windows break every year do they?
You mean, the same pothole repair that can be done by one uneducated worker with a shovel and a pickup truck full of gravel or asphalt? Yeah, just think about how it compares.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Are they flush or do they rise above the surface? Just about anything that protrudes from a road is going to get beaten on pretty hard. This stuff is flat so the force is not going to be vectored but compression.
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
Look into pyrcrete (sp?) by Lonestar, it was developed from geo-polymer concrete. Made from basically pourable limestone. The inventor thinks it was how the pyramids where made. In Desert Storm we landed C-130 aircraft on them 48 hrs after pouring. The pyramids are up to what ~5k years old. That is pretty fucking durable.
What would be interesting to see is the cost comparison of heating the panels to keep them ice/snow free and how much we spend in snow removal and time lost to traffic.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
*see fundamental attribution error.
Because he is a single car commuter who lives in the burbclaves he is unaware that sometime roads are empty.
You mean the military industrial complex? Those fuckers hold onto their cash tight!
In the rest of the normal world we have this thing called 'bad weather' and all the money possible can't keep up with fixing the roads.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Actually, I live in California, and our roads are bad because of the mafia kickback program. At least, here in Lake County. It got out of hand though, and now they kind of have a hard-on for the latest gang of thieves, who did an unacceptably bad job. It's always been bad, but this last time through was agonizing.
In fact, the rest of the country gets money from California to fix their roads, while we can't afford to fix ours, because of the way taxation works and the way the funding is distributed afterwards. My pet peeve in this area is that we have big wells in the road for our reflectors while states like ohio have fancy reflectors that only require a small recess, because they have ramping to handle snowplows built into them. They are made by 3M and cost substantially more than the little crap we use these days.
Between the corruption and all the states that hate us stealing our money, there's no way we can maintain our roads here in California.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What are you going to do in -20 degree C temperatures or colder (many places in the US have this, including Idaho), when snow plows catch the edge of a tile and rip up yards of it at a time, when studded tires or sand laid down scratch the shit out the glass... in northern areas sand is used not salt for icy roads, it is too cold to use salt. Embedded cat eyes are not used because they get torn up by plow blades and lines on the road have to be repainted every spring where there is any significant winter season; cat-eye-like strips that get torn off early in the winter are used, but like I say, they need to be replaced because they are torn away. People who live in the south never seem to think of these things (keep that in mind when California car magazines review tires and their traction results for another example). And I have to think that these entrepreneurs looking for financing are betting on this. In more general, how about how stones in treads will scratch the shit out of it, in general and especially when traffic from construction sites drive on it? Roads are built knowing they have significant wear and that they have to be continually resurfaced. Who in the U.S. hasn't driven on sections of interstate that basically have shallow ruts in the concrete. I'd think clear diamond would be more appropriate than glass. How much would that cost?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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.
Really. Because for price of one single long road of theirs, you'd have to dump half our current road network. Mathematics are brutal in this regard.
Wouldn't be enough even with that. We're looking at costs of replacement that dwarf GDP of the entire planet.
Yes, it's that silly.
Asphalt. In some cases, concrete. In some cases, gravel.
All several orders of magnitude cheaper.
When you say "several hundred millions a year" you simply do not understand how much roads there are in US alone. Or the fact that the asking price in this project would dwarf GDP of the entire planet to replace just US roads. This not even talking about maintenance, which is bound to be monstrous in its own right, as their idea for getting decent traction is to (hold on to your seat) make patterned glass.
Which means that when pattern wears out, you have to replace the whole thing. While fiberglass is more durable than tyres in general, it's not going to last longer than a few years in road use if it's patterned. So replace the whole thing every few years, maybe every decade if we're generous.
You were afraid of hundreds of millions to maintain the current road network. Wait until you see the price tag on THIS maintenance.
Windows don't have to deal with frost heaves.
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.
That is a myth. The main reason very old glass is generally thicker at the bottom is that the manufacturing process produced glass with a thicker edge and was installed with that thicker edge at the bottom. It did not flow that way it was installed that way.
What Dr. Neuman and Labino is saying and is that if glass flowed, all the glass that comprised antique windows should be thicker at the bottom, but we know that is just not true.
Oh cool, they put out a cost analysis? I hadn't thought they were putting it out until July.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
You mean, the same pothole repair that can be done by one uneducated worker with a shovel and a pickup truck full of gravel or asphalt? Yeah, just think about how it compares.
No worse, in other words. Except it is better, because in a major metro area the roads are never actually empty, so they have to close a lane (two guys deploying cones), keep it closed (guy sitting in truck with big flashy arrow sign mounted on the back and huge shock absorber deployed), dump asphalt in the hole (aforementioned guy with shovel), compress asphalt (guy driving one of those mini roller things), and let's face it, it's the highway department, so there's at least 5 other guys standing around not visibly doing much. Let's be generous and assume one of them is an inspector, or something.
These tiles are better. Around here we have quite a bit of nice shiny relatively new concrete highways. But inevitably, they still develop potholes. We get snow and freezing conditions and a small flaw gets magnified by constant traffic and in the end, you get a hole, even in otherwise excellent quality roadwork.
So they patch it. Precisely as I described. Guy with shovel dumps asphalt in it, another guy compresses it, etc. A month later, the patch is gone and the hole is back and growing again. Asphalt patches in concrete have a tendency to shred right out of the hole they're supposed to be filling. So do you do the whole thing all over again? How about we replace the malfunctioned tile, but we'll do it realistically, instead of the optimistic grandparent's way. Lane blocker guys, check. Guys prying the existing tile out of the hole and locking the new tile in place. Two of them, because 110 lbs exceeds OSHA's one-man lift limit, check Nobody to run the mini roller thing, or drive the truck towing the trailer it came on (one of those 5 guys standing around). We saved one laborer! Success!
More to the point, the new tile will still be in place and functioning next month. The asphalt patch isn't. No, the initial repair isn't particularly cheaper than the way it's done now. The benefit would be the longevity of the repair. If it works. They're going to spend a few million dollars and find out.
They address it - but they're naively assuming that the glass won't wear down over time to a nice sheen by all the grit that will be constantly grinding away at it. And that it will apparently remain optically transparent while doing so.
Working on day 1 is easy. Working several years later is a much trickier problem that I don't believe they've even come *close* to addressing. Not to mention that replacing these tiles is going to cost orders of magnitude more than cheap asphalt.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
What's gong to happen when 5 ton rocks fall on them in mountainous regions? With pavement you clear the road and might have at worst only very minor repair work. I someho don't see this as being quite as straightforward
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
The difference between our viewpoints is that while either of us might be correct in some aspects, at least I'm willing to see as much spent on this research as finding out how Chinese hookers get drunk. Just saying.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
http://www.geopolymer.org/news...
That's what I was saying. The drips are the result of the manufacturing process not flow. But your quote does not take into account viscosity. Either way matrix or liquid it is not a normal state of matter.
I was being a smart ass.
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.
No. The energy doesn't disappear. When it's used in electrical systems, it eventually gets dissipated. As heat. Why do you think your CPU has a big heat sink on it? Even if we power our entire civilization off of solar energy, the heat still gets into the hydrosphere eventually. It just does a little bit of useful work along the way.
They put up price per tile. You don't even have to do the installation costs. The price per tile times approximate surface of the road generates jaw-dropping numbers.
It is an amorphous solid and therefore viscosity is irrelevant and is neither a matrix or a matrix or a liquid but a third normal state of matter.
um, you do know glass doesn't allow water to penetrate it for freeze/thaw to become a problem right?
You do realize that there are seams between each panel right? And all it takes is the tiniest amount of moisture to get into something to start it heaving, fracturing and breaking.
Om, nomnomnom...
So you missed the part where it's designed to shunt water away right?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Amazingly, the designers actually have heard of this thing called rain and have heard of things like flooding and then they actually designed around that.
Not used to intelligent design are you?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I think that we don't need to spend million USD to find out that this project is hilariously too expensive to ever become viable. There are far better projects to put one's money into if you want to do good.
That is my main problem with projects like this. They suck up money from people who want to do good by promising something that sounds good to someone who has no understanding of the subject. This money could have been donated to many projects that actually have a chance of success.
So you missed the part where it's designed to shunt water away right?
Really doesn't matter, I'm guessing you don't live somewhere, where flash freezes are a reality. I've seen the temperature go from 15C at 2pm to -25C by 8pm on the same day.
Om, nomnomnom...
What happens if the initial failure is in the structure supporting the panel? How easy and fast would that be to fix? With a conventional road it would require dumping gravel in the hole tamping it down and covering it with asphalt. I think the process would be much more complex and expensive with the panel system.
You got a link to that?
They keep claiming "We are not yet able to give numbers on cost."
I'm having a feeling they will come up with some bullshit estimate along the lines of "as the efficiency of solar cells increase, more power will be converted - ergo it will pay for itself."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Have you ever seen a road that is perfectly flat for any reasonable distance? There are hills and valleys everywhere and on every hill there will be small edged that stick up. The edges will cause roughness and driving noise. They will also cause impacts that may greatly shorten the life of the panels.
And it will work after grime, dirt, leaves, etc. all seap into things too right? Or are the roads where you live a *lot* cleaner than the ones I drive on?
"Designed to" does not mean "will work as planned." These two seem waaaay over-optimistic in their approach. I love the idea of these for parks and such though. But for roads I think they're just tilting at windmills. Not only do they have to solve all of the problems that having a tiled-roadway entails (uneven stresses, rocking back and forth, etc.) but they also need to keep these things optically clear otherwise the "solar freaking roadway" will just be a "glass roadway." Solar panels aren't great under the best of circumstances and these two have decided to put them in the *worst* of circumstances for some reason...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
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; }
All the ***** in the world can't wash away your dreariness.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Oh, look at the amazing counter-point you came up with. Let's scrap the whole thing just because of something that rarely occurs in just a very small percentage of places. After all, if it's not good for the outliers, there's no possibility it could be good for any where else right?
BTW, I live in Canada.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Um, you know they talk about heating the tiles to prevent ice buildup so no frozen water.
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They describe this. A lot of the grime won't stick. Skid marks just brush off. They're also talking about adding a coating of titanium dioxide which would cause a lot of the grime to break up when exposed to sunlight. They also discuss the loses due to dirt and grime and say it's about a 9% loss of power when coated in grime.
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There are many forms of glass. Some types of glass are a lot tougher than other types. They describe the testing that they have done and how it holds up to wear and tear and how they're designed to handle loads as high as 250,000 pounds.
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If you read their site one of the things they plan to do is do away with snow plows by having the ability to heat the tiles.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
According to their site they have tested their tiles to be able to handle loads of 250,000lbs. I doubt a 5,500 lbs car would do much to them.
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If this tech is ever adopted, I doubt every single road would be replaced with them. Even now, not all of our roads are paved with asphalt, some are concrete, we still have some old brick ones, we even have roads that are just dirt. If this tech proves reliable, it will get installed in places where it makes the most sense from a cost/benefit perspective.
I think you should still be sceptical - here's an interesting critique.
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
My glassblowing instructor was pretty adamant that it was a matrix.
How do you figure that?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
A glassblower has the ability to manipulate the glass not define what it is. Would you rely on a welder to define what a plasma is?
Considering the panels are capable of melting snow... this could very well mean that they would not have to deal with snowplows or sand. That would be interesting to see, and is easy enough to test using a parking lot. Imagine a Walmart parking lot that always has the snow cleared. If successful, the next benchmark would be monitoring the physical condition of the panels, over a few years, for durability.
Are you referring to the estimate from 2010? Other than that I can't find any numbers.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
The math doesn't add up. 8 short winter hours of sunlight is required to gather and store enough energy (batteries lose ability to store electricity the colder it gets) to heat its own substrate and accumulated snow from say -20 to +1 C, and keep the water liquid till it is drained somewhere. Yes the water has to go somewhere, not just the side of the road unless you want skating rinks there that gradually move toward the centre of the road as it accumulates. So you have to keep it liquid a long time and distance.
Since parts of this are devoted to outputting light, only part can be devoted to solar cells if any. Or are they going to power it from the grid? How much will that cost. Probably more than keeping existing road building materials and plowing and sanding as needed.
This... I have worked with equipment that was built by southerners supposedly rated for 40 below. When it got cold, it failed and we had to rebuild the equipment to work as needed. Considering we spent nearly a million dollars on the particular piece of equipment (a gas analyzer shed), altogether it sucked. This is just one example of many.
I like the idea. I don't think it is anywhere near enough thought out. Nor do I think we have materials that can meet the environmental requirements for places with any significant winter. I think if it works it is better suited to desert and semi arid hot environments.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Just replied to the same response you had. :)
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Very simple. Take the cost of their "tile". Do the math now much it takes per kilometer of road.
Then look up how many kilometers of roads there are in US in total. Multiply one by another, than compare to world GDP. It will come short.
That + the currently ongoing university research project in Netherlands that these people are apparently aping. Unlike "give us one million" guys, those people have actual bike and pedestrian roads already laid somewhere in North Holland. The costs are astronomical even without the "modular" and "fiberglass pattern than can carry trucks and yet provide decent grip" which are the main differential between these two projects as far as I can tell.
Here's the video of the Dutch project with english subtitles: http://vimeo.com/91641192
"Engineers design around it" - this is why we never get things like frost heaves or potholes or road damage due to moisture seeping in cracks due to ground movement then freezing, etc...etc??????
And you buy that without evidence? What other glass-based material has grit and grime just "brush off?" Nevermind "doesn't scratch overtime by being worn down by grit and rocks."
It's *barely* cost effective for companies to line rooftops with solar panels which have clear glass, are tilted towards the south, and are maintained. And these folks think it will be worth the cost to bury them in roads and compete with asphalt for price? There's just no way. It's a really stupid idea. Line the side of the roads with solar panels if you want to generate electricity. Plant them in the ground with pretty blinkenlights if you want to cheat thousands of people out of money on indiegogo.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
That is a worst case scenario. Ideally, the process of repair could be automated. Since the tiles are standardized, it shouldn't be too far of a stretch for a specialized truck with flashing lights that drives over the malfunctioning tile. The driver stops. The truck brings down a clamp that pulls the malfunctioning tile and inserts a new functioning tile. The truck then initializes the tile. The driver then takes the truck back to the yard to load up for the next repair. Look at the automation that has happened with garbage delivery. A single driver can now cover 3 or 4 times the number of homes than two guys could do back before the trucks were installed with giant robot arms.
Even better would be that since the tiles are already wireless transmitting, there is no reason that an autonomous repair vehicle couldn't go out, identify the malfunctioning tile and do the entire job without any human at all.
If the substructure of a road is failing, packing gravel in the hole on top isn't going to work as a long term fix.
My guess is that the job would still be at least as fast, since the tiles could be pulled relatively quickly, the substructure fixed, and the tiles relaid quickly. This is even assuming that the placing and removal of tiles couldn't be done by an autonomous vehicle.
Whether the area you live in can afford it, or deem it necessary, is a totally different thing.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
If you have any examples of widespread deployments of [winter] weather-proofed road deployments - is love to hear about them. I live in New Hampshire. I've driven as far both as Canada, South as Florida, and west as California. Have never seen one.
Try europe.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
No type of asphalt, bitumen or concrete that I've ever seen used stands up to long term road wear either - although you and I might not be using the same definitions of "stands up to" and "long term".
Are you making this claim as a materials scientist or engineer with glass as an area of expertise?
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
Yes, its not like anyone would put in a road made from modular hard materials. I mean, the cobblestone roads of Rome are only two thousand years old.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
I have seen many *stretches* of road that are flat.
There's no reason this tech has to be installed on *all* roads *everywhere*.
Its not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind.
Roads are not flat. All highways are curved with sides being lower when the center. Even the slightest inclination of the road will force to make an angled seem between the tiles, which will create a significant vibration in that place of the road. It will be destroyed in a matter of months.
There are so many obvious issues here, it is not even funny. What is funny, is that when you bring them up people go "oh, you are so negative"
Bitcoins
Why would you want to put solar panels where you're going to park a car on top of? This whole idea is bollocks.
How much wear did they simulate in the lab? Twenty years of heavy vehicles driving over it, wearing down the glass and depositing dirt, oil and rubber?
That sounds like it would be pretty expensive. And that's assuming just the panel is damaged and not the surface underneath it. This whole thing is pie in the sky and I'm surprised so many otherwise intelligent people have drunk the koolaid.
Exactly!
1. Make electricity with solar power.
2. Use electricity to make bitcoins.
3. Pay for solar power in step 1 with bitcoins in step 2.
4. PROFIT!
Finally! It all makes sense! They pay for themselves!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
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
The bumpy surface they have is going to be horrendous for noise pollution and suspension damage. An amorphous glass surface with a friction texturing is probably also going to cause more tire wear than concrete. They only vaguely guess at lifespan of the friction texture and don't address how it handles loading up (bits of rubber and car oil getting caught in the pores)
Further the bumpy surface will likely cost commuters more in mileage due to being a rough road than it will produce in electricity. It's an economy of scale thing where everyone loses a few tenths of a mile to a gallon, but that adds up quick over thousands of cars per day.
The implementation cost issues are being completely ignored. We use asphalt and concrete because of economies of scale. This technology is orders of magnitude more expensive per mile.
So you're admitting you're wrong? Good to know. Seems that my counter point is pretty good, after all if you do live in Canada you already know that it's not in a small percentage of places.
Om, nomnomnom...
Almost never happens here, especially after a precipitation event. The only time it's a problem is when you have long standing water because of poorly designed roads that don't actually divert water away. You know, kind of what this is designed for.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Unless and until all the other vehicles on the road are also autonomous because it's illegal to drive on manual in the city limits, I'm going to hope, nay, insist, that the repair truck be manned and not be alone. A blocked lane is a blocked lane. When large chunks of steel moving at high speeds are involved, I'd rather have a human in the loop to decide now is not a good time to block a whole lane, even if it is 2 in the morning. Especially here, just after a blind curve, in the rain and the dark. Presumably autonomous vehicles can be told wirelessly that they need to avoid that lane, but the merely human drivers probably won't be.
Yeah, that's why I switched to Linux.
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?
That makes no sense. Think about what we are talking about here. The modules have LEDs. If a repair is needed, the lane for the road wouldn't just be blocked behind a blind curve. The road would be striped for a mile before hand letting human drivers know that there is roadwork ahead. There is no way that a human could make the process more safe.
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
Maybe it's expensive but it would be the traditional way as well not to mention time consuming
Why aren't we doing the obvious? Next time you fly into San Diego or Phoenix checkout how many roofs are solar....zero
Each panel assembly weighs 110-pounds. A single operator could load a good panel into his/her truck and respond to the scene. The panel could be swapped out and reprogrammed in a few minutes. The damaged panel would then be returned to a repair center. Think of how this compares to pot hole repair!"
Not a fair comparison. I pothole is often caused by underlying structure failing (e.g., sinking). You would still need to repair the underlying structure before you could replace the panel. Panel replacement would probably be needed in addition to traditional pothole repair.
I'm really curious about what the underlayment of these panels is going to look like. You can't just throw them down in the dirt, and presumably if there is enough of a gap between panels to pull one out of the ground, then there is enough space for water to seep beneath it. How do they deal with drainage? How do you maintain the crown of the road to ensure proper shedding of water? I don't doubt the characteristics of the panel so much as I doubt the details of the implementation.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
To be fair, I think the intent is to put all energy into the grid and then pull energy out to melt the snow. You are absolutely right that it will take more energy to melt snow than these can produce so it would be a net loss of energy in the winter one would imagine. I don't know that you would make up for it in the summer either. You would save money not having snow plows so there is that, but that is likely nothing compared to the cost of these panels.
Maybe in warmer areas where snow is not an issue and where the days are longer and sunnier it might eventually be practical.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Hm. The other day I read an article about how Germany is reluctant to deploy more of ze "Fluesterasphalt" (basically an anti-noise road surface), because it only lasts about a decade, whereas conventional roads typically need resurfacing after about two decades
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I wonder if the hex grid might make it not matter so much that the ground beneath behaved like a rippling waterbed.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
The grid is a few inches thick and mostly of glass. I bet they are relying heavily on the underlying material to support the grid. Considering the panel is easily removable I doubt the connections between the panels are very strong.
OK, military airport runways I can maybe see being a few orders of magnitude more expensive per square foot than public roads. But not regular civilian runways.
Windows don't have to deal with frost heaves.
Yikes! I saw that in Vermont when I was up there years ago.
They get something like that down south, too, when it gets so hot that the asphalt starts to melt. Apperrently, not only does the underlayment support the surfacing, but the surfacing supports the underlayment.