France To Pave 1000km of Road With Solar Panels (solarcrunch.org)

An anonymous reader writes: France is planning on a project to build 1000 kilometers of road with specially designed solar panels. This project will supply 5 million people in France with electricity if it is successful. Though many solar experts are skeptical of this project, the French government has given the go-ahead to this venture. According to France's minister of ecology and energy, Ségolène Royal, the tender for this project is already issued under the "Positive Energy" initiative and the test for the solar panels will begin by this spring.The photo voltaic solar panels called "Wattway" which will be used in the project are jointly developed by the French infrastructure firm "Colas" and the National Institute for Solar Energy. The specialty of "Wattway" is that its very sturdy and can let heavy trucks pass over it, also offering a good grip to avoid an accident. Interestingly, this project will not remove road surfaces but instead, the solar panels will be glued to the existing pavement.

Comments

What could go wrong

[kamapuaa]

So basically the plan is to cover the pavement with glass, that will need to stay clean to let the sunlight through. I see no possible problem with any of this.

Re:What could go wrong

[rudy_wayne]

Also, there can't be any traffic on the road because vehicles will block the sunlight, greatly reducing the amount of electricity generated.

What a wonderful idea.

Re:What could go wrong

[fustakrakich]

Yeah really, they should give the road a piezoelectric surface. Put the solar on the shoulder.

Re:What could go wrong

[ceoyoyo]

The vehicle-covered to not covered duty cycle on a rural highway is pretty high.

Re:What could go wrong

[R3d M3rcury]

I was just going to say that we, here in LA, were going to try this on the 405, but it's always covered with cars.

Seriously, I would imagine that this wouldn't make sense for a high-traffic freeway. But I could see it, maybe, making some sense in a rural area where people are put off by "ugly" solar collectors. Place it in the road--it may not be as efficient but it may be efficient enough to power the houses along the side of the road in a rural area.

Re:What could go wrong

[Rei]

Meh, there's a solar bike path in the Netherlands and they don't seem to have excessive problems with dirt. Because rain exists. They got significantly higher generation than they were expecting - only about 1/3rd less than what you'd expect from rooftop mounted panels.

I too have criticisms of the "Solar Freaking Roadways", but let's start with common criticisms that aren't well grounded:

1) They'll scratch up: first off scratches can reduce light transmission but solar panels don't require good "optical quality", only transmission; the light is free to scatter on its way in. It's the same thing that applies to greenhouses - you may have noticed that many greenhouses use "fogged" plastic that you can't see through, yet still lets the vast majority of the light in (in that case, the scattering is actually seen as advantageous). Beyond that, in the case of roadways, I'd think it a given that they'd coat them with a an anti-scratch coat (aka harder than Mohs 7 / quartz sand, the hardest common natural material))

2) Traction: Traction glass exists - it's just surface texturing. They use it for semi-transparent flooring, it's nothing special.

3) "Glass would break and then shred tires": It's easy to make glass bear purely compressive loads (solid objects on both sides of it) without fracture - that's what it's best at. It's shear and tensile loads that glass is bad at, but these aren't applicable when it's flat on a hard surface. And lamination, like in windshields, prevents dangerous shards from coming off in the event of a fracture. This is not an actual limitation.

3) Shadowing: Go to Google Maps satellite view and look up random roads. The overwhelming majority of road surface is completely unshadowed at any point in time. Even in-city roads are overwhelmingly unshadowed. Shadows are practically irrelevant in the countryside except in wooded areas.

4) Costs: The costs of the materials for a road are a minority of the costs of the project, and continue to be a minority of the cost of the project under any realistic pricing for large-scale production of paving panels. A key driver for affordability, however, would be scale: this means large scale production (so road panels are similarly priced to rooftop panels plus the extra glass costs) and continuous paving systems. Anything smaller scale would have elevated costs.

5) "They'd be better on roofs": the main problem with roof installations is there is no way to do mass-scale continuous install (the sort of possibility that paving gives). Each roof has to be handled on its own, with its own engineering issues, with its own project overhead, its own inverters, etc. The key issue to cost reduction these days is getting rid of the overhead; panel production costs themselves have gotten quite low and keep going down. Furthermore, with a road you get "two birds with one stone" - a driving surface and a power generation surface built at the same time in the same space, sharing the same project overhead. It's fine to sacrifice some panel efficiency to glass, shadows, dirt, etc if it reduces your overhead costs.

All of this is not to say that I think they're inherently some sort of great idea that we should dump billions of USD into right this moment I simply think that they do deserve more development and testing, and I have issues with some of the criticisms that have been levied. On the other hand, I do have some issues with the "solar freakin' roadways" people. Number one on my list is the snow-melting concept. It takes five minutes to run the numbers on that and find that it takes way more energy than could ever be considered reasonable. You could melt thin layers of frost off the surface, but nothing of any relevant mass.

If one wants to pursue an anti-snow approach, my personal alternative is having an air bl

Re:What could go wrong

[Rei]

I assume that's a joke.

It's one of the "solar freaking roadways" peoples' concepts that makes me sigh out loud, even though I actually think that the concept of solar paving warrants further research. Having roads have "give" and generating power from that is like making cars constantly have to drive uphill. You're just stealing energy from the cars. Very inefficiently.

Re:What could go wrong

[NEDHead]

Perhaps we could bring back the under carriage neon lights to keep the road illuminated - makes it work at night too!

Re:What could go wrong

[Rei]

Even in heavy traffic, the overwhelming majority of the road is exposed. And yes, that's the 405, in a high traffic area.

Re:What could go wrong

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's a good thing that this has been tested before they asked you.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

Re:What could go wrong

[ShanghaiBill]

The vehicle-covered to not covered duty cycle on a rural highway is pretty high.

The duty cycle on rooftops is a lot better, plus there are no trucks driving over them there. I could see looking for alternatives once all the rooftops are full, but they are less than 1% covered so far. Ségolène Royal has a long history of advocating crazy policies with little thought about how to pay for them.

Re:What could go wrong

[oic0]

What about the fact that as they wear, the surface texture is gone and they do indeed become slick as glass, especially in the rain. Need some sort of resurfacing technique.

Re:What could go wrong

[ShanghaiBill]

I was just going to say that we, here in LA, were going to try this on the 405, but it's always covered with cars.

Here in San Jose, we have solar panels over many parking lots. They generate electricity while providing shade for the cars.

Re:What could go wrong

[currently_awake]

On most highways the cars only cover about 20% of the pavement. Unfortunately that's as good as this idea gets. It only makes sense to put solar panels where the cost of the panel is less than the value of the electricity, and roads isn't one of those places (armoured glass is expensive, they get scratched and dirty). Better places: a roof over the road (massive reduction in snow/ice removal costs, you can use cheap solar panels), on house roofs (you can use cheap solar panels), deserts (cheap land, lots of sun, cheap panels).

Re: What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

230 feet of bike trail? Logic?

Re:What could go wrong

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Even with "shadowing" it's not like the shadows are areas of complete darkness without photons.

Re:What could go wrong

[jblues]

The duty cycle on rooftops is a lot better, plus there are no trucks driving over them there.

Trucks are constantly driving over my roof, you insensitive clod. I'm one of the last surviving trolls, and live under a (now solar paved) bridge.

Re:What could go wrong

[knightghost]

How about not at all? With solar 6x the cost of standard electricity, you're just shifting (and increasing) pollution further down the supply chain.

expensive green = brown

Re:What could go wrong

[Rei]

Like how hold concrete becomes slippery? Yep, just like with concrete, you need to resurface. But one expects them to use anti-scratch coatings, which would significantly reduce the rate of wear. The aggregate in typical concrete can be up to Mohs 7, but the cement is only Mohs 2-5. Raw unprotected glass is Mohs 5-6,5, but scratch resistant coatings can raise it to over 7 to avoid being scratched by quartz sand.

Re: What could go wrong

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

According to the armchair critics on this site that project was going to fail, instead the testing proved better than expected. Testing?

Re:What could go wrong

[mikael]

Many roads now have solar powered signs. The solar panels are placed up at the height of a truck container, so there's not likely to be much light lost.

Re:What could go wrong

[fahrbot-bot]

So basically the plan is to cover the pavement with glass, ...

Sounds like *bunches* of fun in rain, sleet, snow, and ice. Guess they don't have studded tires in France :-)

Re:What could go wrong

[vel-ex-tech]

But why roads? Of all the places we could put solar panels, why roads? I mean, I just can't comprehend how this is even a proposal in the first place. I haven't been able to since the first time I heard about the idea, and I still can't. There are too many things that can go wrong, too much engineering involved. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine. The solar panels are better on my roof and in my backyard. If we want solar power from roads, then why not just mount the panels on poles along the roadway?

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how most advocates of so-called 'renewables' (which is a mathematical impossibility) completely ignore all of the toxic waste that is produced in the manufacturing and in general all of the waste solar panels leave behind at the end of their short lifespans...in comparison to nuclear that is.

http://solarindustrymag.com/online/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazardous_Materials_Used_In_Silicon_PV_Cell_Production_A_Primer.html

" The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change considers sulfur hexafluoride to be the most potent greenhouse gas per molecule; one ton of sulfur hexafluoride has a greenhouse effect equivalent to that of 25,000 tons of CO2."

So much for green energy...

Re:What could go wrong

[fahrbot-bot]

Yep, just like with concrete, you need to resurface.

No worries, that can just use those pavement milling machines - oh wait...

Re:What could go wrong

[hey!]

You'd think that the engineers designing this system would have thought of that, but apparently they aren't as smart as us random people on Slashdot are.

Re:What could go wrong

[jabberw0k]

on the 405

On the Interstate Highway 405 "freeway" where "freeway" is a Californianism for expressway? So, that would be the part of I-405 which is a limited access highway, just as "on the Main Street boulevard" would be on the part of Main Street which is a 4-lane divided street -- but because I-405 is an Interstate Highway, that's all of it, so what do you mean? Surely you simply mean "on I-405." (Brought to you by your local grammarian. Practice safe conjugation!)

Re:What could go wrong

[Elfich47]

Any given winter will have 50-100 freeze thaw cycles. Once you suggested air blower fails all of the nooks and crannies will get filled with snow and then the freeze/melt expansion/contraction cycle of water will destroy the piece of equipment. I have yet to see a piece of equipment that can stand up to repeated freeze/thaw cycles from a New England winter.

Next up: Snow plows and everything the snow plow pushes in-front of it. A snow plow lumbering along at 20 miles per hour can clear a path 15' wide and a foot deep (often more if it is the truck at the end of plow gang). Any odd ball things in the path of the plow get thrown aside - car parts, baby carriages, clothing, building supplies, will all be thrown aside.

Any portion of the solar panel that doesn't give a clean path to the plow will be destroyed. Any thing dragged along by the snow plow will leave tracks until it is thrown away. "Textured" glass designed to give better traction will get chewed on by the snow plows. If the snow plows leave chips, cracks or divots in the glass: the freeze/thaw cycle of water will attack those imperfections and widen them over the course of a winter.

Until someone demonstrated the ability of those things to survive several seasons of snow plows and freeze/thaw cycles I don't expect to see them where I live. Roadways are designed to be robust and not need a lot of maintenance (exceptions for specific specialty items are to be expected- bridges and tunnels come to mind).

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The duty cycle on rooftops is a lot better, plus there are no trucks driving over them there.

Trucks are constantly driving over my roof, you insensitive clod. I'm one of the last surviving trolls, and live under a (now solar paved) bridge.

I have some mod points today, so be careful about making admissions. :-)

Re:What could go wrong

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Yeah, because Piezoelectrics wouldn't be stealing the energy from the vehicles or anything...

Re:What could go wrong

[bfpierce]

Yeah, I mean it's not like street cleaning vehicles exist right?

Getting sick of all them dirty roads, they better get on that.

Re:What could go wrong

[rmdingler]

But why roads? Of all the places we could put solar panels, why roads? I mean, I just can't comprehend how this is even a proposal in the first place. I haven't been able to since the first time I heard about the idea, and I still can't.

Well. If a practical method for harnessing the many, many existing square kilometers of road surface into energy generation could be practically implemented, we could probably stop burning anthracite, bituminous, and lignite for electricity.

Re: What could go wrong

[guruevi]

The problem with putting regular panels next to the road is space especially in rural areas where the roads are often already cutting through previous private lands captured by the government. Capturing more land for use by city slickers' energy production (smart farmers will often already have solar panels) will not go over well and may be more expensive in buyouts and legal issues than developing brand new technology.

Re:What could go wrong

[Rei]

Unfortunately, as we know, there's absolutely no ways known to man to texture glass that could be fitted onto a truck.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Placing solar panels on the road and coating them with a material hard enough(and still translucent) to withstand the daily wear and tear of cars and trucks is going to cost more than just paving the road and putting solar panels elsewhere.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably one reason for doing it in France, they don't get a lot of snow there. Sure, they get some, but nothing like the blizzards that many North Americans have to put up with.

Re: What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If you set your expectations to almost nothing, it becomes exceedingly easy to surpass them. That's nothing new.

In reality they spent 3.7 million dollars on creating 230 feet of utter eyesore which produces laughably little power. 3 kWh over 6 months? For 3,7 million in initial cost, and who knows how much in maintenance? That's your "success"?

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to this some additional corrosion caused by salt used during the winter.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stupid, even if for no other reason than the solar panels being occluded every time there is a traffic jam. If you want to cover a road in solar panels, build a structure that elevates then several meters above the road surface.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What else is there that much of that's publicly owned for the goverment to piss away 12 batrillion dollars on in a ridiculous green energy make work project?

Of course it makes more sense to cover all the rooftops before we dick around with building solar panels into roads... But, you know, society and government and all that..

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be a grammarian all you want, but in grammarian school they learn that actual usage trumps artificial grammar rules. In the overwhelming number of cases in Southern California the interstate highways are referred to as "the 405", "the 5", etc.

Re: What could go wrong

[orlanz]

We could put it on all downhills in a certain grade range. Steal power from the brakes.

Also local roads with traffic that burn gas inefficiently should be ok too. They don't run the engine efficiently so stealing some excess power should be ok.

Re:What could go wrong

[fahrbot-bot]

Unfortunately, as we know, there's absolutely no ways known to man to texture glass that could be fitted onto a truck.

That's crazy talk. :-)

Re:What could go wrong

[Kohath]

3. Glass is not really a danger to car tires.

Re:What could go wrong

[TheReaperD]

Well, this falls under the "further research" category. Both this and the US project have reached the stage of they just need to lay down a stip of it and see how it works over time under real world conditions.

Re:What could go wrong

[jblues]

Yup, that was part of the joke. I'm a funny troll. It is an evolutionary adaption, like moving to Twitter.

Re: What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that anything like an elevator that only goes up?

(After writing my "snark" I realized that the idea of "directional lanes" imply that you could simply pave the downhill side of traffic assuming people always drive on the same side of the road)

Hey look! A self-correcting jackass... on the internet! Quick: Somebody file a patent!

Re:What could go wrong

[JaredOfEuropa]

Re. Point 4, the key factor is how durable the solar panel surface is compared to regular roads. Servicing roads comes with a ton of hidden costs in the form of increased traffic jams or long detours when a road is (partially) closed. If solar roads have to be resurfaced much more often than regular roads, it quickly becomes an unattractive option.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You're pretty smart! I like the cut of your jib!

Re:What could go wrong

[Kjella]

A bike lane is nothing like a 50 ton truck in an emergency stop. Asphalt is extremely simple and can't be damaged in any meaningful way. Texturing and coating wears off, asphalt just wears down and if you're going to provide lots of traction as you must then there will be lots of wear. And you can't just make the wear layer thicker without reducing the optical properties. And if the foundation isn't rock solid these slabs are going to start wobbling and crack up like driving over giant tiles. And you can't rally patch a hole with a bit of cheap asphalt, the whole tile must out and be replaced. Cost is the big killer, it's why we don't use more solar today it's not like we covered everything else in solar panels and roads are our last resort. So they produce 1/3rd less energy, involve a ton of tempered, textured, laminated glass encased in concrete with high maintenance and low robustness. Where can I sign up?

Re:What could go wrong

[Firethorn]

A solar car port makes a lot of sense if you're going to be making a car port* anyways because the solar panels can be the roof itself. The displacement of the roofing materials makes the solar panels a relatively cheap upgrade.

As for 6x the cost of 'standard electricity' - you need to update your figures and realize that not all electricity is that cheap. It's under 2X for competently done installs even before rebates and such.

If you have semi-frequent outages the reduction in generator load(during the day at least), makes it even more economical.

*In this case a 'car port' is a partial shelter option for a car. IE a roof, maybe a side panel. Intended to keep the rain and sun off of cars in areas normally hotter than temperate. Not a complete shelter.

Re:What could go wrong

[PopeRatzo]

Why would you want to spoil a perfectly good Slashdot comment anti-renewable energy freakout by introducing facts?

People here would rather talk about practical technology like a manned mission to Phobos. Solar energy is just a fantasy that can't possibly ever work.

Re:What could go wrong

[rubycodez]

yeah my artistic hippie uncle who likes to sandblast rock and glass shouldn't be strapped to a truck, there's just no way

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, not every criticism from the peanut gallery is well founded, but solar pavement is just such an obvious boondoggle of an idea that it is hard to do anything except tear it down. (As an aside, that's probably why these stories get posted; the editors are driving user enragement).

Vanilla, can't-run-over-them-with-a-snowplow-or-fully-loaded-semi solar panels are just entering the realm where they make economic sense in some markets. Paving roads with solar panels increases costs and introduces difficult new problems to address a problem that we just don't have. Solar adoption isn't slow because we don't have space to put up the panels, it's slow because existing panels are too bloody expensive relative to wind, natural gas, and coal.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the levelized cost of energy from those panels? I'm happy to pay a few extra cents per kwh to get my electricity from a renewable supplier, but there are limits. Yes, it is technically possible to build these sorts of projects. In practice, they tend to make no economic sense and serve no purpose other than a kumbaya moment where we all congratulate ourselves because we are Doing Something about Climate Change. (And I say this as a tree hugger who pays extra to buy from a solar supplier, albeit one that puts up conventional panels in a desert. Indeed, let's do something to cut carbon emissions, but let's spend our money where it makes the most difference)

Re:What could go wrong

[techno-vampire]

They've also covered all of the parking lots at the big VA hospital in West LA. How much electricity they generate I don't know, but at least you don't have to worry about clearing snow off, and I'll bet that they're built to handle the high winds we get down here.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the last surviving trolls

The rest of the French would object to that, while ze othair half could care les, oui? At least it ees not cement tires and rubber roads.

Re: What could go wrong

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It produced more power than they predicted. Yes, success, now they have an idea of what the actual costs would be.

Oh, and testing costs a lot more than production. But you're smart, you know this already, right?

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The requirements between the two projects are not remotely similar. I hope you don't work in engineering.

I could ride a bicycle around my house and probably see little to no damage to my floor tiles. A semi truck? Not so much.
This really shouldn't even need to be stated, you need look no further than the near constant road work our highways require compared to the minuscule upkeep of a bike path.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an engineer. I see numerous problems with the idea, as do many other engineers. It may or may not prove itself as a viable project but countless engineering projects have failed because of a lack of forethought.

Despite the fact that auto companies have huge engineering teams they still screw up, people still miss things. Even Tesla, which no doubt attracts much brighter engineers than the people working on this project, has made mistakes. There are also plenty of other engineers on this board, not to mention the physicists, mathematicians, and average people who may or may not be more clever than some or all of the engineers working on this project.

You keep trusting in people you don't know instead of thinking critically though, doesn't seem like you'd have much to add to the conversation anyway.

Re:What could go wrong

[AchilleTalon]

How slippery is glass under snowy or rainy conditions? This idea to cover roads with solar panels is plain stupid. It is not like there isn't a lot of other locations you can put solar panels.

Re:What could go wrong

[geoskd]

The duty cycle on rooftops is a lot better

True but with rooftop, you pretty much need one inverter per rooftop, which adds substantial amounts to the cost. With these paved roadways, you could probably get the equivalent of 10-20 rooftops with only one inverter, thus significantly reducing the cost of installation. Plus, under most circumstances, installers wont fall off the roadway, thus creating a *very* expensive insurance liability. The cost of liability insurance is a very large (~20%) part of the cost a given rooftop solar installation. Playing around on roofs tends to kill and maim people with rather frightening frequency.

Re:What could go wrong

[Citizen of Earth]

6) It would make bankrupt France would be even bankrupt-er.

Re:What could go wrong

[Jeremi]

I see no possible problem with any of this.

I don't either. Either this road proves workable, in which case the world now has access to a new, proven technology -- or it turns out not to be workable, in which case the technology is a failure but all the costs will be paid by the French.

It's not quite win/win, but at least it's win/neutral.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the LA area had freeways/highways before the interstate system. I boldly drove on those roads in the 70's. There were old signs for "The San Gabriel Valley Freeway", "The Imperial Highway", "The Santa Monica Freeway", etc. Maybe people got used to saying it that way. Southern-Californianism.

Re:What could go wrong

[hey!]

Well, golly, I'm an engineer too, so I know engineers aren't infallible. In fact we can be downright stupid. But usually not so stupid that people outside our field understand problems in our field better than we do.

Re:What could go wrong

[Jeremi]

With solar 6x the cost of standard electricity, you're just shifting (and increasing) pollution further down the supply chain.

I think that logic only makes sense if you're looking at prices that include all of the externalized costs of the generated power, rather than just the direct costs. Otherwise, for example coal-based electricity seems cheaper but actually isn't, because the nominal price does not include the expenses incurred by the resulting pollution.

Re:What could go wrong

[zieroh]

The duty cycle on rooftops is a lot better, plus there are no trucks driving over them there.

There are a lot of naysayers here worked up about the potential for cars to block the sunlight. To which I say So What? It's an experiment. Someone is trying a different approach to solar, and that's actually a good thing. While I can think of potential drawbacks to this approach, I can also think of quite a few potential advantages. The exact ratio of disadvantages to advantages is the important part here. Pointing out the obvious -- that cars will occasionally block some of the light -- doesn't serve any useful function.

Again, it's an experiment. Accept that you might not actually know everything.

Re:What could go wrong

[gl4ss]

and in both cases we already know it will not pay for itself, WHILE if you just put them even upright at the side of the road, it would pay for itself(and reduce road noise).

oh and it would be cheaper.

solar freaking roadways is an extreme case of a solution looking for a problem. even if you COULD make the roads out of it, it would still make no sense to do so before all the sides of the roads, roofs and buildings were full of panels. it's basically the LAST place you want to put solar panels on, due to various reasons.

I guess you could use them as detectors for tank movements or some shit like that though..

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

But what would Jeremy Clarkson say about this? It should be tested with at least Zonda, Veyron and Clarkson's AMG.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

A bike lane is nothing like a 50 ton truck in an emergency stop. Asphalt is extremely simple and can't be damaged in any meaningful way. Texturing and coating wears off, asphalt just wears down and if you're going to provide lots of traction as you must then there will be lots of wear. And you can't just make the wear layer thicker without reducing the optical properties. And if the foundation isn't rock solid these slabs are going to start wobbling and crack up like driving over giant tiles. And you can't rally patch a hole with a bit of cheap asphalt, the whole tile must out and be replaced. Cost is the big killer, it's why we don't use more solar today it's not like we covered everything else in solar panels and roads are our last resort. So they produce 1/3rd less energy, involve a ton of tempered, textured, laminated glass encased in concrete with high maintenance and low robustness. Where can I sign up?

Haha, asphalt cannot be damaged in any meaningful way. Where do potholes come from?

How do you know all those can't be done? Have you done a full feasibility analysis of this or are you saying it from "common" sense? How do you know simple workarounds these problems cannot be found?

If the road generated its own electricity, all sorts of electronics and sensors could be placed there.

Re: What could go wrong

[Type44Q]

"Freeway" has a specific meaning that's different than "highway" and "expressway." While i wouldnt be surprised if the term originated in California, it's definitely not an "ism."

Re:What could go wrong

[TheReaperD]

Actually, we don't "know" if they will or will not pay for themselves. We have two, or more sets of numbers, some from the makers of the solar products and some from companies such as BP and Shell. There's really no one involved that can be considered impartial so the best way to solve it is lay some down, get the numbers and see if anyone is right. With the ones here in the US (I'm not familiar with the French design) the panels may be still be worthwhile even if all they do is break even due to their ability to deice and detect and report road hazards as well as lay cable and piping without having to redig every time.

Re: What could go wrong

[Type44Q]

but these aren't applicable when it's flat on a hard surface

My grandfather was a senior aircraft tire engineer at Goodyear during WWII and he once told me that tires don't get damaged by driving over broken glass...

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when/if all cars are self-driving and consequently able to drive a lot closer to each other? Maybe the panels will be at the end of their lifespan by then but it still seems like a stupid solution. I mean, you can carry water with a leaking bucket but why do it if you have choices? Something that might make sense is to combine noise-proofing walls or animal fences along roads with solar panels, if it's necessary to have roads in the mix for some really important reason.

Re:What could go wrong

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

They've already looked forward than you initially assumed, it's silly that you're still assuming they stopped there.

Re:What could go wrong

[sectokia]

I think the wtf point is that there is very clearly enough land to just put these things not on actual roads. Placing them on the road seems to be a political based decision. All the trials have shown that it's extremely expensive and has poor efficiency. Yet they are doing it anyway because.... They want to burn money.

Re: What could go wrong

[TwentyCharsIsNotEnou]

We could put it on all downhills in a certain grade range. Steal power from the brakes.

More and more cars are reusing braking energy by storing it in batteries. So you're still stealing energy that could be better used by the car itself.

Also local roads with traffic that burn gas inefficiently should be ok too. They don't run the engine efficiently so stealing some excess power should be ok.

Isn't that even worse? If the car is running inefficiently, it has to generate more gross energy in order to impart the same net energy in the piezo-roadway - more waste.

Re:What could go wrong

[Bing Tsher E]

My idea for power capture is large tank circuits near where radio broadcast towers are located. They could be totally passive so not subject to FCC rules regarding transmitting entities. Tune the tank circuit to the frequency of the high power broadcasting station. For a 50,000 watt station, just siphon off a few kilowats, rectify and turn to DC power to charge your battery.

Do all of this discretely, of course.

Re:What could go wrong

[thinkwaitfast]

The problem is not technological, it is economic. I received an advertisement from a company that I bought my solar panels from yesterday and they are offering panels by the boatload (in the very literal sense of the word) at $0.28/watt. OT, but where I live, that is a one year payback period.

Now you have to ask, how much will these road capable solar panels cost and is it less expensive to buy conventional solar panels and use the savings for some other purpose (like buying even more solar panels or putting the savings towards a better infrastructure).

Re: What could go wrong

[thinkwaitfast]

Reusing braking energy by storing it in batteries is over 100 years old.

Re:What could go wrong

[thinkwaitfast]

Depends on who is in the group "we".

Re:What could go wrong

[thinkwaitfast]

In college, a prof talked about how people living near hv lines would do this. It's illegal.

Re:What could go wrong

[Narcocide]

No, more likely they're doing this because nobody wanted to give up any of their private land on the sides of the roads, so using the road itself for solar paneling is an infinitely more efficient use of space, because the roads themselves are public land by definition, and paving them with solar panels takes up exactly 0 extra real estate.

Re:What could go wrong

[MrKaos]

" The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change considers sulfur hexafluoride to be the most potent greenhouse gas per molecule; one ton of sulfur hexafluoride has a greenhouse effect equivalent to that of 25,000 tons of CO2."

So much for green energy...

You may not realize that considerable amounts of uranium hexafluoride is created and used in the enrichment of uranium for reactor fuel as well.

Re: What could go wrong

[TwentyCharsIsNotEnou]

How long a technology is in existence isn't necessarily the same as how long it's been in widespread use.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Roofs may not be pointing in optimal directions and may be shaded by other houses. Which offers the best overall option given available roofs I don't know.

An additional aspect is people can be precious about architecture but less so about roads.

Re:What could go wrong

[silentcoder]

I'm not sure how feasible this is in the US since the powergrid there is quite different (for starters, it uses 60hz rather than our 50hz) but it's not unknown for some shack-dwellers here in South Africa to get electric lighting by building the shack beneath a high voltage line and powering it with a simple induction generator. I'm sure it's illegal though. I've heard rumors that some gas-tube bulbs can actually light up under the lines without even needing an induction converter but I have no idea if that's actually true.

The concept is sound though, if you are anywhere near those lines you can hear a persistent crackling buzz- that's the EM-field around the cables switching polarities 50 times a second - causing the force to change from attraction to repulsion and back, the cables vibrate and you get that 50hz noise as a result. Alternating current is perfect for induction - and just a few kilometers down the road we use induction based transformers to step it down to 11KV at the substation which then gets routed to the corner-box transformers where it's stepped down again to the 220v we get in our homes.

Interestingly - AC isn't always the most economic choice. DC is cheaper on cabling (you only need one, the ground itself is your return-route) - the reduced weight also means cheaper poles. But because you can't pass DC through a transformer and generators output AC - to use it you need to rectify the current at the generation point and turn it back into AC at the substation. For the vast majority of lines the convertors cost more than what you save in cabling but if the line is long enough it reaches a tipping point where it's better to run the power as DC. We have one DC line in South Africa which runs from the Cabora-Bassa hydro-electric generator (which is in another country).

Re:What could go wrong

[Captain Hook]

Personally, if I was going to harness kilometers of road surface for energy generation, I think I'd go for embedding pipes under the surface and pumping liquid through them to move the heat back to a Stirling engine.

Re:What could go wrong

[DrXym]

So they'll need some kind of vehicle which can clean the surface? Some kind of street sweeping machine? Wherever will they find one of these mythical and preposterous devices?

Re:What could go wrong

[dwillden]

Why roads, think to the recent story (a few weeks ago) about a town fighting a solar installation because three of the four routes into town were already surrounded by solar. Or the possible impetus of the federal actions around the Bundy standoff in 2014 being regarding getting land for a solar plant.

Land is finite, but the roads are already publicly owned, no need to buy up the land or force owners out, or install more ugly construction, Just pave the roads with panels, let the roads generate power (which can then wirelessly charge EV's driving over them) rather than fields and fields of mirrors or panels. It's not the only solution but it is one worth trying if the panels can be made to stand up to the abuse.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are so insightful. What silly engineers these people. kamaquaa knows all! How about you bother to learn what they are doing and how. But no, you're another self-obsessed know-it-all dweeb that like to post utter shit with no content. So I'm going to call you out as a useless turd. Prove otherwise by replying to this with your professional engineering breakdown of why this massive project is run by children and simpletons.

Your pathetic post also ignores the many other systems in use. Go back to the Daily Mail were troglodytes like yourself gather.

Re:What could go wrong

[AmiMoJo]

The surface will be much harder than asphalt, and even when it does eventually wear it should be easier to replace as you just lift off the old slab and put a new one down.

In fact some places have been doing that for many decades with concrete slabs and later asphalt slabs. The problem is that the joints are never that smooth and end up being noisy, which is why it tends to be limited to roads far from where people live.

Re:What could go wrong

[wienerschnizzel]

1) They'll scratch up: first off scratches can reduce light transmission but solar panels don't require good "optical quality", only transmission; the light is free to scatter on its way in. It's the same thing that applies to greenhouses - you may have noticed that many greenhouses use "fogged" plastic that you can't see through, yet still lets the vast majority of the light in (in that case, the scattering is actually seen as advantageous). Beyond that, in the case of roadways, I'd think it a given that they'd coat them with a an anti-scratch coat (aka harder than Mohs 7 / quartz sand, the hardest common natural material))

2) Traction: Traction glass exists - it's just surface texturing. They use it for semi-transparent flooring, it's nothing special.

A thin flat clean surface is the most efficient cover for the cells. Any deviation will decrease the efficiency. You are suggesting a rough thick 'milky' material with scratches on it. It will scatter a lot of the light away from the cells. Greenhouses are not a good counterexample as they are not built for *maximum* throughput, just for one that delivers a stable 90F atmosphere inside.

3) "Glass would break and then shred tires": It's easy to make glass bear purely compressive loads (solid objects on both sides of it) without fracture - that's what it's best at. It's shear and tensile loads that glass is bad at, but these aren't applicable when it's flat on a hard surface. And lamination, like in windshields, prevents dangerous shards from coming off in the event of a fracture. This is not an actual limitation.

But the glass will not bear purely compressive loads. There will be impact forces of heavy objects falling on it at high speed, cars driving over hard pointy objects lying on the road (stones) and ice expanding within the grooves between the tiles and underneath them (this is the greatest nemesis of the asphalt road).

3) Shadowing: Go to Google Maps satellite view and look up random roads. The overwhelming majority of road surface is completely unshadowed at any point in time. Even in-city roads are overwhelmingly unshadowed. Shadows are practically irrelevant in the countryside except in wooded areas.

Fair enough.

4) Costs: The costs of the materials for a road are a minority of the costs of the project, and continue to be a minority of the cost of the project under any realistic pricing for large-scale production of paving panels. A key driver for affordability, however, would be scale: this means large scale production (so road panels are similarly priced to rooftop panels plus the extra glass costs) and continuous paving systems. Anything smaller scale would have elevated costs.

Two problems - complexity and maintenance. A solar road is orders of magnitude more complex than a regular road - first it will drive up the cost because it's not as simple as pressing a malleable material onto a rocky surface. You will need to connect the panels and lead wiring, construct maintenance access points, test the functionality. Maintenance will be a major pain in the ass. And for all of this you will have to hire more expensive technicians than what you need for regular roads. Scale does not help too much either. Regular solar panels are already mass produced and are orders of magnitude more expensive than asphalt. Even if you cut the price in half somehow, it will remain orders of magnitude higher than regular road surface.

5) "They'd be better on roofs": the main problem with roof installations is there is no way to do mass-scale continuous install (the sort of possibility that paving gives). Each roof has to be handled on its own, with its own engineering issues, with its own project overhead, its own inverters, etc. The key issue to cost reduction these days is getting rid of the overhead; panel production costs themselves have gotten quite low and keep going

Re:What could go wrong

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with roof mounted solar is that people get upset when the government lends people money to pay for it, and each installation is unique. With a road the government (or in France's case often a private company) owns the road, and can lay large stretches of it using a standard process in a well understood and mapped environment.

Re:What could go wrong

[N1AK]

Also, there can't be any traffic on the road because vehicles will block the sunlight, greatly reducing the amount of electricity generated.

Although /. comments are without doubt the most valuable thing on here sometimes I have to wonder when ignorant half though out criticism like this is what we end up with. It takes a very very modest intellect to appreciate that outside of very busy highways the % of time when there is a car over any particular bit of road is a tiny fraction. Even if a road was virtually constantly busy at 50mph you'd have around 60-90% of the road uncovered due to gaps between cars. Take a road that has say 50 cars an hour, not even that quiet for a non-primary road and the road would be uncovered for 99.995% of the time.

I'm sure there are lots intelligent questions about this that it would be interesting to know the answers to, ones about cars blocking light are not one some of them.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

America will have to invade because those treacherous French are stealing all the Americas god given from the sun.

Re:What could go wrong

[N1AK]

What about the fact that as they wear, the surface texture is gone and they do indeed become slick as glass

The fact you can come up with such an obvious question should be a pretty easy hint that smarter people who've been involved in this already had...

Re:What could go wrong

[N1AK]

I have yet to see a piece of equipment that can stand up to repeated freeze/thaw cycles from a New England winter.

Thank god you've thought of snow, I bet everyone involved in these products had completely forgotten that water existed and wasn't even aware that it could freeze! /sarcasm

Just out of interest where in France is New England, because I have to assume you are that self-centric that you have to bring up areas relevant with you even when they have fuck all to do with the area being discussed?

Re:What could go wrong

[Big Hairy Ian]

If they tried this in the UK the sunlight would be obscured by plastic cones.

Re:What could go wrong

[minogully]

You're just stealing energy from the cars.

Not sure on the numbers, but maybe this would be a good way to make a toll road.

Re: What could go wrong

[txmason]

It produced more power than they predicted.

How much more? You should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:What could go wrong

[Max_W]

In the beginning the rails were made toothed, as cogwheels. How could a train drive on even rails? It will just skid, right?

Or if a patient has got a high temperature, just put her into the bath with cold water and temperature will drop. Seems to be easy but it does not work this way.

Common sense logic is not good enough, mathematics, testing, science are required.

Re:What could go wrong

[dywolf]

if only there were some sort of vehicle equipped to clean the roads.

Re:What could go wrong

[thegarbz]

Depends on what you consider a rooftop. Let's look at this technology once major shopping centres, car parks, or warehouses are covered.
Heck IKEA stores in Australia can each power the store + their local suburb.

That also alleviates the installation liability issue as many industrial buildings are designed with unassisted roof access in mind.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Then use this money to build 10,000km of solar bikeways all over Europe. They bike there, and they need a much better connected bikeway away from vehicles.

They wouldn't have to deal with the heavy weight of trucks and cars either.

Re:What could go wrong

[thegarbz]

the main problem with roof installations is there is no way to do mass-scale continuous install

Was partially with you up until point 5. Stop thinking residential. There are some massive roofs out there. A typical IKEA in Australia generates enough power to completely cover the energy use of its entire suburb, and that's before you get into sky scrapers, ware houses, parking lots, etc. You can get more energy density than 5 panels per inverter if you are looking in the right places.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Which generally is a problem in or near populated areas, and diffuse sources like wind and solar will always require a lot of land and resources. So the only practical solution is to build them out in the middle of nowhere with long transmission lines that have to be sized for peak demand, ensuring that they are not economical.

Or we could build nuclear plants right next to where the power is needed. Conventional nuclear already require virtually no land and minimal resources, though they are constrained by access to cooling water. Molten salt reactors require even less space and resources, and can be built anywhere with air cooling or as cogeneration. They are even safe enough to locate in the heart of a city. There is no high pressure or anything which could burn to spread radiation around; even in a severe accident, the dangerous bits simply remain dissolved in the salt and sit there, eventually to solidify as frozen salt.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

>And you can't rally patch a hole with a bit of cheap asphalt
This is already standard practice in France, nothing new here :/

Re:What could go wrong

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Also remoteness is a factor. I have a property up in northern Minnesota that I will likely at some point put a cabin up on. My options for power are a generator, pay for a several hundred meter run (about 500) and a transformer, or solar/wind plus battery storage. Generators seem to come in 2 forms, cheap and noisy, or expensive and quiet and that ignores the fuel cost and other maintenance. If I wanted to get connected to the grid it would probably be in the $10,000-$15,000 range for the run and transformer plus the monthly connection fee. That leaves solar/wind as a a fairly cost effective option. As it wouldn't be used all the so time I could have a fairly low generating capacity (maybe a couple of KW) but a higher than average reserve capacity. When the site isn't being used the solar/wind can charge a battery bank.

Re:What could go wrong

[operagost]

I presume that the roof of every government building has already been completely covered by solar panels, so this is the next step. /sarcasm

Re:What could go wrong

[edtice1559]

This is because we put the snowplows all the way down to the road surface. They kind of scrape across it as the trucks drive. With this type of surface you could leave the plow a few centimeters above the surface and then use the energy generated by the panels to heat the pavement and thaw the rest.

Re:What could go wrong

[rhazz]

1,000 KM of solar panels to provide power for 5 million people does not sound like an experiment. It sounds more like a huge infrastructure investment using a technology that currently has only been implemented at a length of 100 meters on a pedestrian/cyclist pathway, and that implementation was done by a completely different company with a different product. Surely just a few kilometers would be more appropriate for an experiment. I would hope they are implementing the project with a drawn out introduction phase that will test the product at a much reduced scale for several years.

Re: What could go wrong

[The-Ixian]

Ain't no such thing as a free lunch my friend.

We are always "stealing" energy from somewhere...

Re:What could go wrong

[angel'o'sphere]

We are taking about "highways" not about roads in a street. On a highway you have a about 1 car every 100meter, or less. I usually drive km's on french highways without even seeing a car.

Re:What could go wrong

[angel'o'sphere]

it's basically the LAST place you want to put solar panels on, due to various reasons.
There is a thing between your two ears, which should be switched on before writing/talking.

Simple hint: the houses and hence the roofs you are talking about are: private owned. The government has no simple way of "forcing" citizens to build solar plants on such roofs.

Secondly: if citizens would set up solar plants on the roof, everyone would have a single connection to the grid, with a single feed in and extraction metering.

OTOH: the road is public owned. The "owner", may it be a town or a a department, can put on that road what ever he wants.

Finally: to connect a piece of the road to the grid, you simply decide where a good distance to the relevant grid is, e.g. instead of connection it to a distribution grid like a roof, you connect it to a transport grid. And: you only feed into the grid and never draw energy from it.
So: you have far less and far simpler connection points to a higher level grid!!!

So, IFTFY: it's basically the L^HA^HS^HT^H FIRST place you want to put solar panels on, due to various reasons. However I had considered to place them on a kind of roof or noise protection walls along the road instead trying a pavement.

Re:What could go wrong

[angel'o'sphere]

actually light up under the lines without even needing an induction converter but I have no idea if that's actually true.
It is true, you find plenty of youtube videos covering this effect.

Interestingly - AC isn't always the most economic choice. DC is cheaper on cabling (you only need one, the ground itself is your return-route)
AC also only uses one cable and the ground for the other.

Re:What could go wrong

[silentcoder]

>AC also only uses one cable and the ground for the other.

Maybe in the US it does, but here it definitely does not. Possibly because we use an earth leakage system with three cables for AC. Earth leakage is much safer - almost all electrocutions have the ground as the return part of the circuit so an earth leakage system means those are virtually impossible. The US I understand uses fuse boxes but we use circuit-breakers and earth leakage. On the other hand, our home power is twice the voltage of US systems so that is probably what justifies using more expensive safety systems - the risk when you get shocked is much higher at 220V.

Re:What could go wrong

[hattig]

Other questions ...

If this textured glass is harder overall than road surface, then will it last longer? A typical road needs to be resurfaced quite often, could this halve the resurfacing incidents? If so, it could save a lot of money as a side-benefit.

Does the road surface have an adverse effect on tyres?
What about snow chains? And other metallic scrapey things?

Re:What could go wrong

[hattig]

I presume the snow plow could also leave about an inch of snow and have an integrated blower or series of brushes to blow/sweep the remaining snow away.

Or that one inch of snow is drivable, whereas what was there before wasn't.

Or these panels will not be used in areas where snow really happens, and road salt/grit is enough for cold nights.

Re:What could go wrong

[edtice1559]

The reality is that these would produce a huge measure of safety. Deep snow isn't really that dangerous for driving. You just have to go slowly. But there's little risk of a complete loss of friction leading to a dramatic accident. Once you plow the roads, whatever amount of precipitation that is left will melt during the day and then freeze again at night. This leads to the so called black ice that has been blamed for countless accidents. If the panels also had a heating element built into them, that could be run at night (using some of the generated electricity) to increase safety.

Re: What could go wrong

[Joce640k]

... assuming people always drive on the same side of the road)

Well, yes... only if we assume that.

Re:What could go wrong

[gfxguy]

Only you always lose when you convert energy, so it's an extremely inefficient toll road.

Re:What could go wrong

[gfxguy]

... but it's not unknown for some shack-dwellers here in South Africa to get electric lighting by building the shack beneath a high voltage line and powering it with a simple induction generator.

The downside being that they live under a high voltage line.

Re:What could go wrong

[silentcoder]

I would say for the average shack dweller, that's the least of their downsides.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look at some satellite pictures of busy cities -- specifically at how much of the highway cars actually cover at any given moment. Unless people are parking on these, I doubt that issue is a system killer.

Re:What could go wrong

[turbidostato]

"Simple hint: the houses and hence the roofs you are talking about are: private owned. The government has no simple way of "forcing" citizens to build solar plants on such roofs."

It has, in fact, the simplest of ways: legislation.

And, since you used "forcing" between quotes, you can also add tax benefits and grants as "forcing" tools.

Re:What could go wrong

[jep77]

Perhaps, then, the solution is to build much larger rooftops? And much closer to the ground!

Since I hate driving in the rain, or with the sun in my face, I think we should cover all our highways with roofs and then cover the roofs with solar panels.

Roofs. Roofs. Say that a few times. It's a funny word. Like flammable. I can't stop saying it.

Re:What could go wrong

[jep77]

Coal too?

Re: What could go wrong

[MachineShedFred]

No thanks. My car has a driveline disconnect while coasting and regenerative braking in order to increase fuel efficiency. It's called "smart engineering."

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

I dunno, it seems like it should be easier to put panels on the roads themselves (as long as they're tough enough) than it would be to mount them on poles. You might also have better resilience to natural disasters - poles get knocked down all the time. Plus, you need fewer connections to the power grid with roads - might be easier to manage that way, and probably cost a bit less.

Any land we're already using that could be used for solar generation seems fine to me - rooftops are probably better, but there are a lot of roads around anyways. I think a small test project would be better than committing to 1 Mm of roads, but I guess we'll see where it goes.

Re:What could go wrong

[fustakrakich]

You can get a little something from a piezo with less give than asphalt, which by the way could be laid on top. Probably not worth the cost though, not unless oil goes back up to a hundred bucks, which it won't. But you know, we could at least paint the lines...

Re:What could go wrong

[MachineShedFred]

Well, the Interstate Highway System started in the 1950s. But more to the point, Calfornia has highways built to Interstate standards, but are not part of the Interstate Highway System. For example, California Highway 91 is a grade-separated limited access highway complete with interchanges, but is signed with the green signs that denote a California highway and does not have a designation within the Interstate Highway System, nor the blue-and-red shield that denotes an Interstate Highway.

Because of the confusing nature of these intertwined systems in Calfornia, the people have just used the highway route number, and added the word "freeway" to create an understandable term. For example, you have the 405 freeway (Interstate system), the 101 freeway (US Highway 101), and the 60 freeway (California 60). In California, many of these highways also have been named - for example, US Highway 101 is the Hollywood Freeway, California 91 is the Riverside Freeway, and Interstate 5 is the Golden State Freeway.

Re:What could go wrong

[Kryptonut]

10 - 20 "rooftops" to one inverter? You do know that one panel being obscured can dramatically bring down the efficiency of all the others connected to the same circuit, right? Hence micro-inverters are gaining popularity....increased points of failure (one per panel) but increased efficiency...e.g. one panel is obscured, but it's isolated from the rest, so not bringing down the efficiency of the others.

Re:What could go wrong

[JazzLad]

That's ok, there's fewer cars on the road at night.

Re:What could go wrong

[stooo]

>> 1,000 KM of solar panels to provide power for 5 million people does not sound like an experiment.
It rather sounds like a "hidden" public funding for a hopeless shell project.

Re:What could go wrong

[SoftwareArtist]

I just can't comprehend how this is even a proposal in the first place.

That was my first thought too. My second thought was, "Some people who know a lot more about this than I do clearly think it's a good idea, so perhaps they know things I don't." After thinking about it more, I came up with some potential advantages: installation is very easy (just huge sheets of panels lying flat on the ground), it allows huge solar installations (the cost of hooking up to the grid isn't proportional to the number of panels, so the bigger your installation, the cheaper it is), it requires no new land, they're going somewhere that's owned by the government (you might choose to put solar panels on your roof, but that's completely your choice, not something the government can force on you), and it's potentially easier to maintain them and keep them clean (think of the work required just to wash an equal number of solar panels mounted on poles or rooftops, compared to just driving a street sweeper down the road).

The obvious disadvantage is that they need to be super sturdy to handle thousands of cars driving over them every day. But if they've already solved this problem, who knows? It might be a good idea.

Re:What could go wrong

[SoftwareArtist]

It takes five minutes to run the numbers on that and find that it takes way more energy than could ever be considered reasonable.

Actually it doesn't. See, for example, this article from a few days ago: http://www.theatlantic.com/tec.... Heating the road can sometimes be much less expensive than traditional approaches with snowplows and chemicals.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

We really should end the Road Roof Idea as implausible just due to the fact that you cannot make a roof/tunnel large enough to transport all the manner of vehicles and oversized loads that drive through. Also the ENTIRE US Highway System (route 2-98 EW, route 1-99 NS) roads were designed as alternate landing areas for planes and fighter jets in wartime. Building tunnels could also reduce that function/capability as well. I have no arguments for or against the "solar freaking roadways" as I do wish for newer technology/advances for transportation no matter what they look like/function, just that someone somewhere is innovating.

Re: What could go wrong

[david_thornley]

I assume we're trying to generate power efficiently. In that case, wouldn't it be better to have a stationary gasoline engine that was designed and tuned for efficiency under certain particular running conditions? Any inefficiency we introduce or encourage means we're generating the power less efficiently. This includes using an indirect method like moving a motor vehicle (an inefficient process in any case) to generate piezoelectric power, and using an automobile engine that has to run fairly efficiently over a wide range of conditions. (Using it on an electric or hybrid vehicle is even stupider, since you're taking electricity, converting it to motion, and then converting it back to electricity.)

Re:What could go wrong

[mattack2]

Also, there can't be any traffic on the road because vehicles will block the sunlight, greatly reducing the amount of electricity generated.

While there are many reasonable (possible?) complaints about this, this doesn't seem like it's necessarily a valid one.

Unless your road has bumper to bumper traffic the whole time the sun is out, I suspect a HUGE percentage of the road is uncovered and would have sunlight hitting it.

Plus, if this is on top of the existing road and really is strong, I wonder how long it would last. I'm always curious about potholes. Could you spent 10X as much for the roadway but have it last 20X as long?

Re:What could go wrong

[fustakrakich]

No, the crackling you hear is the humidity in the air conducting a bit of current around the ceramic insulators. If it's dark out, you can see it.

Re:What could go wrong

[wienerschnizzel]

Sure, that's a legit concern. I could say that you should not put the solar roofs over major highways, just over smaller roads, but I'm not here to advocate highway solar roofs because I don't believe in that idea either. I'm just saying that even that would be better than the original solar highways idea.

Re:What could go wrong

[rioki]

This does not compute. Normal pavement is generally made up of waste products from oil and coal extraction and combustion processes. It's dirt cheap and in many cases the producers pay to get rid of it. On the other hand you have small computers with large arrays of silicon infused with platinum, gold and rare earth minerals. You are figuratively and somewhat literally paving the road with gold. If you want sensing equipment on roads, then install pneumatic or radar sensors.

Photovoltaik may barely work, when you keep the glass clean and install it in an optimal orientation. Putting it above the road to shade the drivers may actually be a better idea, than on the pavement...

Re:What could go wrong

[tehcyder]

Also, there can't be any traffic on the road because vehicles will block the sunlight, greatly reducing the amount of electricity generated.

What a wonderful idea.

Similarly, solar panels on houses are completely useless because what happens if a cloud passes over?

Re:What could go wrong

[minogully]

Inefficient energy conversion is not the same as cost effectiveness. What is an efficient energy conversion rate for you? > 50%?

Solar panels don't even come close to that yet, they are still cost effective enough to market.

Re: What could go wrong

[TheReaperD]

They cost more to install, that is not in dispute. The question is whether or not they provide enough energy and secondary benefits such as ice removal and obstruction warnings to warrant the investment. The panel makes say they will and the fossil fuel companies say they won't. Neither side can truly be taken at their word so the only way to know for sure is to install some in real world conditions and watch the numbers.

Re:What could go wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Roadways are designed to be robust and not need a lot of maintenance"

Your New England roads are fucked. New Hampshire had some of the worst roads I've ever seen anywhere in the road, and this is supposed to be a civilised first world country.

Yes, snow plows are probably incompatible with these solar panels.

But guess what dickhead, what you have now isn't any better, and the rest of the world will benefit from this tremendously.

Re:What could go wrong

[virtual_mps]

Maybe in the US it does, but here it definitely does not. Possibly because we use an earth leakage system with three cables for AC. Earth leakage is much safer - almost all electrocutions have the ground as the return part of the circuit so an earth leakage system means those are virtually impossible. The US I understand uses fuse boxes but we use circuit-breakers and earth leakage. On the other hand, our home power is twice the voltage of US systems so that is probably what justifies using more expensive safety systems - the risk when you get shocked is much higher at 220V.

The US has used circuit breakers for decades. You may be thinking of "earth leakage circuit breakers" (ELCB) but those are pretty obsolete at this point. Current US code requires ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI) extensively, which are equivalent to the residual current devices (RCD) which replaced ELCBs and have been required for quite some time in most countries, regardless of how the circuits are wired. (And arc fault circuit interrupters (AFCI) are increasingly required in habitable locations.)

None of that has anything to do with power distribution. In the US (and most places) AC is typically distributed multi-wire. Single wire is used in very isolated areas (especially, e.g., Australia). Single wire in the context of this thread refers to distribution, not household service. (Pretty much every place in the world now uses a hot/neutral/ground scheme for lighting service, with additional phases possibly utilized for high-power applications.) The economics of AC vs DC for long distance transmission have more to do with power loss and equipment costs than number of conductors.

Re:What could go wrong

[virtual_mps]

The problem with roof mounted solar is that people get upset when the government lends people money to pay for it, and each installation is unique. With a road the government (or in France's case often a private company) owns the road, and can lay large stretches of it using a standard process in a well understood and mapped environment.

Real estate management companies can do to the same thing for enormous square footage of basically identical industrial flat roofs, and already are.

Re:What could go wrong

[HornWumpus]

Way to go 'all in' on stupid.

Re:What could go wrong

[HornWumpus]

Yes it's harder.

But hardness is only one material property and not all that important a one at that. Unless the material is the 'hardest' in play, it will be abraded. Sand is harder than typical glass.

Toughness is more important. Road surfaces flex measurably under heavy vehicles.

Re:What could go wrong

[Jack Griffin]

It has, in fact, the simplest of ways: legislation.

I take it you have zero experience with trying to pass any legislation even remotely controversial? It's not simple because such a measure would never pass, and if it did the Govt would be out on it's ear in the next election and the bill revoked. So no, not simple.

And, since you used "forcing" between quotes, you can also add tax benefits and grants as "forcing" tools.

Now you're on the right track, carrots usually work better than sticks with these types of things. Although this can also backfire too since anything involving tax incentives will get twisted by the opposition as "welfare for the rich" (since they pay more tax hence will get bigger breaks).
The road idea isn't such a bad one, assuming the engineering is correct (Which I do)

Re:What could go wrong

[Jack Griffin]

1,000 KM of solar panels to provide power for 5 million people does not sound like an experiment.

It does when your population is over 66 Million. And this is not alpha testing, it has already been proven elsewhere.

Re:What could go wrong

[Jack Griffin]

I mean, I just can't comprehend how this is even a proposal in the first place.

And here is your problem. Failure of imagination...

Re:What could go wrong

[angel'o'sphere]

The tax benefits we already have, also in France ... well it is not tax ...
So no, there is no "simple way" to "force" solar on all roof tops. And as I pointed out, that makes no sense anyway.

Re:What could go wrong

[angel'o'sphere]

Seems you are talking about "the last mile".
I was more thinking about long distance transport grids, as your mentioning of DC over AC indicates.

If you mean with "here" Europe, then long distance AC lines use one single line, not two, not three, and the earth as ground.

Re:What could go wrong

[silentcoder]

Here mean's South Africa... I'm pretty sure there is no cable from Caborra Bassa to anywhere in Europe...

Re:What could go wrong

[turbidostato]

"It has, in fact, the simplest of ways: legislation.

I take it you have zero experience with trying to pass any legislation even remotely controversial?"

I do. That's why I tell it's easy; it just depends on the moment and the government: it just takes for an absolute majority in congress.

"Now you're on the right track, carrots usually work better than sticks with these types of things. Although this can also backfire too since anything involving tax incentives will get twisted by the opposition as "welfare for the rich""

Now, it's me the one saying it is you the one with zero experience. We are talking here about the French government but you seem to be talking about USA. Need I to remember that current French government is a coalition of a socialist majority with a far left minority? I don't think the right wing on the opposition wold use a "welfare for the rich" argument, given the case.

Anyway, my argument is that for a government to do something, there's always an easy path: legislation -that's exactly what governments are for, not that such a path is sensible or even doable, given a government in minority or how it is "sold" to the public, nor -much less, that passing a legislation on forcing solar panels on new (or old) buildings would make any sense.

On the other hand, maybe the French government hasn't pass legislation forcing solar panels but they already passed legislation on energy savings for new buildings (i.e. increased thermal isolation) so it isn't so far fetched.

tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

RRV #632 for the tech. For the political sorts, this is what happens when you have a stupid EU policy requiring the state to pay private companies to build infrastructure rather than employing their own talent.

Re:tl;dr

[Barny]

Heh, I came here to post exactly this. Dave tends to only call bullshit on things that merit it, and as an electronics engineer this is his bread and butter.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

For the political sorts, this is what happens when you have a stupid EU policy requiring the state to pay private companies to build infrastructure

What does this have to do with anything? The decision to pave roads with solar panels was made by the state, not private companies.

Re:tl;dr

[maxrate]

he's an electrical engineer - not a materials scientist or infrastructure/civil engineer. The solar component is only a fraction of the overall product/project.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone who's never worked in civil service.

When you contract out civil engineering, someone profits from the work done. So, it is in the interest of civil engineering companies to sell stuff that's not needed, and you end up with wild conflicts of interest as people in government invest in those same companies. The most famous post-war example in the UK is the Beeching Axe, where a road construction company owner was employed by the Tories to write a report in which he called for the closure of much of the UK's railway system.

Decision-making is frequently blurred between the private and public sectors, being made by the same people who stand to profit directly from the contracts resulting from the decision, but wearing different hats at different stages of the process.

There is no need to have profit-making civil engineering companies for government works - just self-sustaining ones owned by government which must balance the books over some number of years.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ZSXB3KDF0 where they look at the solar road in the Netherlands.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

And what are they to produce.... Electricity.
If they cant do that, they're worthless bro.

Re:tl;dr

[Barny]

Did you watch the video?

He takes the fact they can make the cells and road as a given, he calls bullshit on how they can extract and transport that power in any useful way.

Re:tl;dr

[HornWumpus]

Except it's been tried. The self sustaining government owned ones always end up full of powerful peoples nephews and incapable of doing ANYTHING efficiently.

Eventually they are sold off for more than they are worth and the industry returns to sanity.

For example: See the Greek economy.

Profit margins are less than inherent government wastefulness.

Stupidest thing i've heard in a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

better hope there's not too much traffic... or that tires might make the road dirty.

Re:Stupidest thing i've heard in a long time

[JoeMerchant]

It's an employment project, now you can pay people to wash the road every few days.

What could go wrong?

[maxrate]

I wonder how the panels will reflect light. I could see motorists being blinded should the surface reflect significantly. Affixing panels with glue on the existing surface seems interesting in terms of how things might be maintained. Overall the solar roadway is an interesting concept.

Re:What could go wrong?

[stoborrobots]

... should the surface reflect significantly more than a current roadway does. There's a non-trivial amount of glare that comes from existing road materials, the question is whether this surface has *more* reflection than that...

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be efficient, the solar roadway should tilt to the optimum angle for solar energy capture.
That could lead to some interesting curves.
Build it that way and I just might have a reason to visit France.

Re:What could go wrong?

[gl4ss]

well the aim would be to reflect as little as possible, to get any power.

Why not a roof?

[JoeMerchant]

Wouldn't it be more effective to build a "solar roof" over the highway, shading motorists during the hottest parts of the day, angling the panels to maximize insolation at the latitude, and for f's sake: not having to make them sturdy enough and grippy enough to safely drive trucks on them?

How long will this roadway last, and what will be the replacement cost? I mean, if this miracle surface can stop potholes from forming, then, yeah, let's put it everywhere, but I'm not feeling like that is the case.

Re:Why not a roof?

[aaarrrgggh]

That was my first reaction as well, but a roof structure would run about $4-5/watt for the system, with panels about 35% of the cost.

Assuming the roadway is about half the efficiency at peak output, cars traveling at 60mph and keeping 6 car lengths minimum between themselves, twice the cell cost but no superstructure... Your installed cost per watt is 70%, with a 15% performance penalty, or a pro-rata $3.3/W.

Granted upkeep will be higher, and life likely lower, but might actually work.

Re:Why not a roof?

[rmdingler]

Of course, there's traction and such to consider.

Re:Why not a roof?

[BarbaraHudson]

You know how strong you would have to build the superstructure to withstand wind and snow? If these can be used, and make it easy as replacing a tile to "fill a pothole", anyone who's ever needed a wheel alignment or a new rim after hitting one will be grateful.

Re:Why not a roof?

[Rei]

Or see my reply above, where I cover a lot of the criticisms (I'll gladly go into more). There is nothing at all exotic about traction glass (aka "anti-slip glass").

Re:Why not a roof?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your installed cost per watt is 70%, with a 15% performance penalty, or a pro-rata $3.3/W.

Granted upkeep will be higher, and life likely lower, but might actually work.

I wonder if only installing the solar arrays on the shoulder would make more sense. Sure you still get the odd car on their from time to time, but not as much...

Re:Why not a roof?

[ganjadude]

road wear would be down due to lack of weather

Re:Why not a roof?

[JoeMerchant]

At 40 degrees latitude, snow slides off optimally angled solar panels. Actually, conveniently, in the latitudes where snow buildup is a problem, optimal panel angling will almost always get it to slide off, and in the borderline areas (35 degree-ish), the dark coloring of the panels should help melt off the light accumulations expected (or, you could just use a little energy to heat them up on the rare occasions there is a lot of sticky snow.)

Re:Why not a roof?

[JoeMerchant]

Installed cost lower, life lower, upkeep higher, sounds like a boomer project to me: just let the kids pay for it.

Re:Why not a roof?

[rmdingler]

Look. The amount of road surface available to conversion as energy generating real estate is, of itself, very tempting.

The infrastructure exists already, and preliminary experiments, such as your bike path, lend some credence to the theory.

But. The compromises necessary to perfect an energy generating roadway are such that folks have to be injured on your compromised roadways for a generation or two in order to perfect the system.

Yes, any Ronco product/ Swiss Army knife does many things instead of one, but none as well as the individual tools it replaces.

Re:Why not a roof?

[Harlequin80]

I think you would find the structural costs of roofing the highway prohibitive. The structure would have to be relatively high, so as to not impact large vehicles and it would act as a massive lifting surface. Weather events which may drop the electrical production of a ground mounted system have the potential to destroy a raised system.

Re:Why not a roof?

[BarbaraHudson]

And the structure required to support a highway-sized 1000km road against gravity, never mind wind forces, renders it cost-prohibitive, never mind that it would be butt-ugly.

Re:Why not a roof?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you going to beat 47 cents per watt with this stuff installed on the buildings that use the power?

Re:Why not a roof?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more exotic than asphalt. There's no reason to put the solar panels on the road, any savings gained by not raising them on a structure will be lost during upkeep, repair, and surface management.

Re:Why not a roof?

[JoeMerchant]

I suppose road = roof, and ugly is a point, but costs for non load bearing roofs, even with 30' clear span, run much lower than the costs for something like a pedestrian bridge, perhaps in the $40/sf range around here - whereas costs for high traffic road surfaces can easily top that, especially if it is supporting heavy trucks.

Re:Why not a roof?

[Jeremi]

That was my first reaction as well, but a roof structure would run about $4-5/watt for the system, with panels about 35% of the cost.

I think "roof" might be overkill, how about just a series of poles along the median strip, with solar panels placed on top of them and/or between them? The added cost would just be the cost of the poles, plus some additional wiring.

Sure, the surface area per mile of highway would be much less, but it's not like there is a shortage of miles of highway available.

Re:Why not a roof?

[Bert64]

There's other savings to be had from the roof structure...
Reduced sunlight falling on the roads will result in decreased a/c use (or open windows) in those cars on hot days, and the shelter provided by the roof will also reduce the amount of rain and snow on the road, both of which decrease traction so it could decrease the risk of crashes.

Re:Why not a roof?

[lu-darp]

> Wouldn't it be more effective to build a "solar roof" over the highway,

Like this 20-mile long one in Korea... ? http://www.autoblog.com/2015/04/13/solar-bike-lane-korean-highway-video/

Just looking at it, it seems way more simple & practical than that freakin' other idea... ;-) (critique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocV-RnVQdcs)

Re:Why not a roof?

[BarbaraHudson]

Irrelevant if you're going to build the road to support trucks anyway.

Re:Why not a roof?

[aaarrrgggh]

Poles generally don't have high enough wind loading; you need a grid to achieve that.

I imagine you could make ~100' wide x 700-1,000' trusses periodically along the road with 500-750kW inverters and make something work, but the challenge is getting it up high enough, and protecting the columns from car crashes.

Re:Why not a roof?

[mattventura]

Presumably due to the fact that individual building installs require inverters and other electrical equipment to be installed, whereas a mass solar panel install could have fewer but larger pieces of equipment. That being said, it still wouldn't beat just installing the solar panels beside or above the road, or even on the shoulder.

Re:Why not a roof?

[virtual_mps]

Wouldn't it be more effective to build a "solar roof" over the highway, shading motorists during the hottest parts of the day, angling the panels to maximize insolation at the latitude, and for f's sake: not having to make them sturdy enough and grippy enough to safely drive trucks on them?

And wouldn't it be even more effective to build solar panels on all of the "roofs" that already exist, before building new roofs just for solar panels? There are a whole heck of a lot of really big buildings with flat roofs around the world, only a small fraction of which have panels at this point. Pick the low hanging fruit before trying the kool-aid.

Solar Roadway Bull$it

[labnet]

Do government ministers check their brains into deep storage when they are elected?

There are sooo many things wrong with this concept; the first being grip.
How do you make glass grip? You have severely roughen the surface which will make the light scatter severely reducing efficiency.
They are not angled correctly. They will get damaged. Very expensive because they have withstand trucks... any anyway, next time France gets invaded, the tank tracks will rip them to pieces.
Just go find a nice field to put them in,

Dave at EEVblog has already covered the concept in depth.
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/b...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.eevblog.com/2015/05...

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave's response was to "solar freakin roadways". But if you read the article this project is different than the "solar freakin roadways" thing.

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Alwin Henseler]

Dave at EEVblog has already covered the concept in depth.

Laying the panels horizontal, also maximizes the chance of a micro-meteorite hitting a panel. Besides all the other problems with this concept, if that doesn't kill it...

Nothing wrong with an experiment here or there, even if it doesn't make much sense. But for example in the NL, at least we'd try this on a bicycle lane first, not on a regular road where trucks drive over it. Come to think of it: parking lot would be even better. Parking lot full - low power. Parking lot mostly unused - high power. Nice for parking lots that are big but fill up only now & then. Roof or dedicated plot of land still better though.

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Rei]

1) Traction glass. You can see through it just fine. And you don't need to be able to see through it (light rays taking parallel paths), you just need light - refraction and all - to largely get through. And not even all of it, it's fine to lose a good chunk of it compared to rooftop installs - see ""They'd be better on roofs" in my reply above.

How well can you see through your typical modern greenhouse? You don't need to have "perfect visual transparency" to let lots of light past a surface. In fact, your surface texturing can actually increase your potentential generation (see my comment about the potential of fresnel lensing above).

2) Most rooftops are also not angled correctly either. And unlike roads, most rooftops are not designed to bear the extra weight of panels. And again, see the "They'd be better on roofs" reply.

3) See the comments about damage and loadbearing in the same post.

4) Tanks rip all roads to pieces. But your not-so-subtle jab at the French who basically were responsible for you being an independent country (rather than a bunch of rabble-rousers quickly captured and hung by the British) is well noted.

5) Fields A) mean building dedicated projects, rather than hitting two birds with one stone (getting a road and a solar farm out of the same build process); and B) using up greenspace that most people would rather keep or use for other purposes.

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Anonymous Coward]

"4) Tanks rip all roads to pieces. But your not-so-subtle jab at the French who basically were responsible for you being an independent country (rather than a bunch of rabble-rousers quickly captured and hung by the British) is well noted."

Spot on. I'm English and we love to take the mickey out of the French but this is some tiresome bullshit.

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Mr Z]

Dave's argument starts with real-world numbers regarding solar insolation and PV conversion efficiency to establish a baseline. The exact details of a specific implementation won't change the broad conclusion that the energy balance alone, even if you take out the gee-whiz features of the Solar Freakin' Roadways design such as LEDs and networking, doesn't make sense.

When you add all the other stuff on top, it only gets worse.

Fundamental issues: Only so much sun hits the earth, and PV cells only convert a certain fraction to usable energy. When you mount them flat on the ground, you reduce their efficiency further because they're not perpendicular to the incoming light. When you put them under thick enough glass to support real physical loads such as cars and trucks, you lose even more. And when you distribute them over a large area, transmission losses become a Big Deal.

I'm personally skeptical you could build solar panels that would withstand actual vehicle traffic, at least the way we build roads here in the US. Real world roads aren't flat, and they change shape over time as they wear and as the road bed settles and degrades. But real world glass isn't very plastic, and won't conform to a changing surface. It's more likely to crack and break into many pieces. Likewise for the PV cells under it. You'd have to put some beefy steel plates under these to guarantee a sufficiently flat mounting surface to support the load-bearing glass.

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[penguinoid]

any anyway, next time France gets invaded, the tank tracks will rip them to pieces.

That's actually a bonus. "If you invade us, you have to bring your own power plants."

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but "grippy" glass will have to be much rougher than a normal road surface to compensate for the slipperiness of glass. This will in turn chew tires up, increasing costs for everyone.

Re:Solar Roadway Bull$it

[Z80a]

Today is not a very good day for dave.
Not only this bullshit but the return of FTDI.

Why?

[Dereck1701]

I can't really see the reasoning behind this, it would be far easier, more efficient, quicker and cost effective to put panels along the roadsides, next to substations on the sides of buildings, on roofs, or practically anywhere but on roads. Until they can lay solar panels like they do pavement for virtually the same cost as pavement there really isn't much point when there are SOOOOOOO many other viable locations.

Re:Why?

[SlowCanuck]

Exactly what I was going to say. The "Carbon Footprint" of a solar road way is going to be enormous!! Maintenance, initial design, and not to mention the other things brought up, need to be strong to carry vehicles, and grippy. People do not realize that glass reacts to sun and actually become brittle. Just Glad it is France and not somewhere in Canada!!

Re:Why?

[nospam007]

"I can't really see the reasoning behind this, it would be far easier, more efficient, quicker and cost effective to put panels along the roadsides, "

Needs permits since it's above ground, hides the views of rich people and gives everybody living there a right to object, on the roads they can do whatever they want. 1 owner, no permits.

"Until they can lay solar panels like they do pavement for virtually the same cost as pavement ..."

You mean waiting until the money making pavements is as cheap as the dead not-money-making kind?
Why?

Re:Why?

[Firethorn]

Needs permits since it's above ground, hides the views of rich people and gives everybody living there a right to object, on the roads they can do whatever they want. 1 owner, no permits.

1. Do you think that the Highway division needs permits for it's structures? It's the same organization putting down pavement or putting up roadsigns and bridges.
2. I think that 'hides the views of rich people' should be rephrased - such panels would block the highway from view, and reflect some of the noise. Would be a NET POSITIVE for rich people living in the area. I don't think they'd object to the lessening of the impact of highway visibility and noise. They already put panels and such up in some areas to isolate the highways a bit.

You'd just be strategic where you put them first.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't really see the reasoning behind this,

Try thinking instead of looking

it would be far easier, more efficient, quicker and cost effective to put panels along the roadsides, next to substations on the sides of buildings, on roofs, or practically anywhere but on roads.

Except - that it wouldn't. Instead of a continuous array of panels you'd have multiple discreet installations.

Laying panels on roads does not change drainage requirements - and it does reduce resurfacing costs.

Oh, and that little thing called "land acquisition"... (probably not important - as you were)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"change drainage requirements"

How do a pole/building mounted solar panels change the drainage requirements? There is grass below them or a building that was there anyways. No one is going to just drop solar panels on ground like paving stones (well, except for the articles project). And "multiple discrete installations" are precisely how how you locate and properly aim solar panels for their optimum efficiency.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason to put them on the road is a whole "smart road" project. These solar panels auto-unfreeze the road in winter, can have LEDs to guide cars in foggy weather. The manufacturer also considers wireless electric charging.

Re:Why?

[hattig]

Additionally, if you were sourcing these panels for your road (assuming a new road or road renewal project) then you would not need to finish the traditional road with the smooth top layers of tarmac. You can do the coarse tarmac sublayer, and then use the glue/mortar to attach the panels. Given the time it takes to roll that top layer totally smooth, I don't think that attaching panels is going to be a major issue.

And for road renewals, you could get rid of the whole renewal cycle. No more tarmac scraping. No more road closures (just deploy overnight, stick a ramp at the working front for the day). Just fill the major holes and stick the panels on top (I presume you'll still need to install a power conduit in the road somehow, but that's going to be minor, and could be shared with utilities in a sensibly designed rollout).

The best thing is that someone is going to do it, so we'll have real world data on the system's effectiveness in a real world setting, and this will be done at the cost of the French.

Thanks France

[Kohath]

I don't think this will work, but I hope it does. I'm glad the French are paying to find out instead of us.

I suspect the initial cost (or yearly amortization of that cost) and ongoing maintenance of the solar panels will be higher than the value of the generated power.

Re:Thanks France

[BarbaraHudson]

It's not like ordinary roads don't need maintenance. So as long as the initial cost + maintenance is less than the value of the electricity generated + the cost of maintaining an ordinary road, you come out ahead.

1000km?

[Dutch Gun]

Wow... 1000km is a pretty hefty pilot program. And here's the important phrase:

This project will supply 5 million people in France with electricity if it is successful

So... 1000km and they have no idea if it's going to be successful? It seems like the reasonable thing to do would be to pave a few km of road and see how it holds up under real conditions for a few years. But hey, money is no object when you're saving the planet, right? Well, I'm glad it's their tax dollars that are doing a giant feasibility study for the rest of us.

The Dutch have the right idea. They've started with a 100m strip to start with to see if the things actually work as intended first. I like the concept, but new products and concepts like this need to be tested pretty carefully.

Re:1000km?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with a 1000km pilot? It's not like it's going to cost anything. It'll be paid for with taxes. /sarcasm

Re:1000km?

[penguinoid]

It seems like the reasonable thing to do would be to pave a few km of road and see how it holds up under real conditions for a few years.

Does it? Maybe building a factory just to try a few km would actually be too expensive?

Re:1000km?

[Anonymous Coward]

"So... 1000km and they have no idea if it's going to be successful?"

Seriously? So, you think someone walked in a said "I need a couple billion Euro's for a crazy idea I have and I have no idea if it is going to work", and they said, "sounds good, heres a check".

Seriously?

I expect they have "some idea" about the chances of it being a success. One thing we as Americans are suffering from is this obsession with perfect systems - which can never be perfect. It has killed NASA and is killing the country's economy. Occasionally you need to take a chance - a considered chance and with some "reasonable" chance of success. the question becomes what is reasonable, and the answer is not binary - everything or nothing, success or failure, it is some degree of success which can then be used as a foundation to improve the next version.

Re:1000km?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same reasoning as: We loose money per customer. How we going to fix that? Volume!

Re:1000km?

[thegarbz]

Building a factory without some degree of certainty if it will work on the other hand sounds like a flat out investment scam.

Re:1000km?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... 1000km and they have no idea if it's going to be successful?

The wording "if it is successful" you quote and comment on is from the Slashdot summary, not from original sources. Sources in French newspapers say they will start with a small test next Spring. The 1000 km will be completed over 5 years, so there is time to see if it works as expected and cancel if it does not.
The comparable Dutch product you mention was considered too expensive to install.

Re:1000km?

[hattig]

Well this is hardly going to be the point in time where it turns from an idea on paper into 1000km installed.

What is unsuccessful, for a start? Only supplying 3m people? Or failing to generate any power 5 years down the line because of damage/dirt/unforeseen issues?

How much does a panel of this stuff cost? How many people are needed to install it (a truck of panels and glue, and a couple of people?). Are these roads due renovation anyway (massive teams of people and equipment)? Even if the power generation fails, the harder glass surface might last twice as long as tarmac, saving money.

But I'll truly believe it when I see it working. I want it to succeed, not fail because naysayers shoot it down before it's had a chance.

Re:1000km?

[david_thornley]

One possible definition of unsuccessful is that it causes multiple accident and/or increases fuel usage. Whenever I can't help thinking "what can possibly go wrong?" sarcastically, I really don't want to see full-scale deployment planned.

I want to see people research thorium reactors. I want to see people try the solar roadway. I think it's way premature to plan to build production plants.

Re:1000km?

[HornWumpus]

It will be a success at transferring money from the French government to their cronies.

Re:1000km?

[HornWumpus]

It will be a success if the results finally kill this stupid idea once and for all.

It won't. Just look up the thread to see the power of wishful thinking.

For a lower price...

[cirby]

Build 1000 km of above-the-road arrays.

They wouldn't have to ruggedize the panels to let cars drive on them, they could angle them for better efficiency, and they could repair most of the things that will go wrong without having to shut down the roads.

For that matter, they could BUILD the damned thing without shutting down the roads.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

The panels would still have to be rugged, and their support structure would have to be able to resist winds, snow, and impacts of cars on the support pillars. Those open fields next to highways save a lot of lives - your idea would kill people.

Re:For a lower price...

[ganjadude]

build the structure over the entire median, more panels, and keep the middle free in case of an accident.

Re:For a lower price...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair those open fields save the most lives due to snow/ice covered roads, which having a roof would help alleviate. Also would it not be possible to have the poles designed to hold the weight of the roof but shear away when a vehicle hits it at 70? If you design the structure so that you could loose some of the support pillars it should not be a huge deal.

One of the biggest issues I can think of is oversized loads. You wont be driving the space shuttle down any roads like that. You will also have issues with things many people see on roadways already on a daily basis. Cranes, wind turbines and their blades, large farm equipment, etc.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

First, it's not just the median. It's the grassy areas on both sides. Second, while it might be possible in theory, the extra strength for such long and wide spans to resist wind, etc., would render it impractical. Third, if you cover the road, you now need to light the road 24/7.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

You won't be driving the space shuttle down any roads. They're now museum pieces.

Also, not all glass is created equal. Some glasses can withstand 400 psi, which is far more pressure than a semitrailer tire produces on the road, unless you inflate the tire to more than 400 psi, which you won't do if you value your life. Structural glass is coming into wider use, as the transparent floor of walkways and dance floors, and resists wear longer than acrylics. It's even been used to make bridges between two buildings that have no steel supporting members, and staircases with no steel.

Re:For a lower price...

[Anonymous Coward]

The space shuttle statement was an example of unexpected needs. I did follow it up with valid daily life examples.

I also never said boo about the glass.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

What do you think is a component of these tiles. It's certainly not some opaque material.

Re:For a lower price...

[cirby]

The panels wouldn't have to be any more rugged than standard ones - they're going to be "up on the roof."

Also, your theory of "cars will run off the road and people will crash into the posts" isn't really supported by actual highway use. If you were right, then every tunnel or narrow road would be a horrible deathtrap - and they're not, by a large margin.

At worst, you just put a guard rail along the sides of the road. It would be insanely cheaper than the solar roads themselves.

You don't have to "roof" the highway, anyway - just build a one-sided overhang from the panels. By angling it, you get as much energy from a single eight foot wide panel as you would from a highway-width one. At worst, just build the thing ten feet off the side of the road, still on the right-of-way, and be done with it.

In any case, building a simple frame to hold relatively lightweight solar panels is certainly going to be much, much cheaper than completely re-engineering a modern two-lane highway with transparent materials and super-ruggedized solar panels, to boot. ...and while tempered glass is certainly a strong material in some senses, it becomes much, much weaker when it gets even mildly scratched, or when struck with a heavy object. Like when a car rolls along it with a few pieces of gravel stuck in its tires, or when something falls off a large truck. Asphalt and concrete are much more damage-tolerant in this respect.

Re:For a lower price...

[cirby]

The "extra strength" is just a matter of thicker materials and deeper foundations. We build lots of similar structures all over the world without any problem.

This is much, much, MUCH cheaper than engineering solar panels + glass to take the weight and impact of motor vehicles. Tempered glass, while nice and strong in many situations, isn't that good for roadways. Especially when you consider how slick glass is, even when textured.

The "solar bike path" they built in the Netherlands a couple of years ago cost about a hundred times what a similar "normal" solar installation would have. Even if adding stronger uprights cost twice as much, it's a better deal than driving on the solar cells themselves.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

1. The roof would have to be VERY strong.

2. Google "single-car accident bridge pillar supports" and you'll see that, despite being engineered to minimize it happening, plenty of people get killed. It's also a popular form of suicide.

If you go to the link I've posted elsewhere, surface scratches aren't really a problem - you use laminated glass, and the top layer is sacrificial. As for a large piece of something falling off a truck, that's a problem even today. More cameras will help catch the perps so they can pay for the damages, and maybe be more careful the next time. Same with gravel trucks that don't properly cover their load.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

They've already solved the problem of slickness. And laminated glass, with the topmost layer being considered as sacrificial, works far better than just tempered glass. For even more strength and tolerance to flexing under load, you can embed carbon fibers or nano-wires in the adhesive used for laminating the layers of glass. Light still gets through just fine. And the adhesive gluing them to the road surface will also help spread any forces, to help prevent an initial crack under stress.

Re:For a lower price...

[cirby]

In other words, "use expensive materials in a complex sandwich, plan on replacing the top layer on a regular basis, and hope it works for long enough to generate enough electricity to pay for itself."

They have NOT "solved the problem of slickness." They mentioned it in passing, and tested some textured surfaces that are better than nothing, but pretty much all of the solar road "solutions" are just handwaving - and expensive handwaving at that. Look at the initial "we could melt the snow off the road" claims (which turned out to be one of those "Laws of Thermodynamics" things that would never work).

Here's the kicker: as good as asphalt and concrete are at being road surfaces, they still break, a little. They're fault-tolerant. Take a good look at any road more than a few days old. It will have a lot of little cracks, divots, and other wear points that the glass roadway will not be able to handle. Glass cracks, you have to replace it. A seam opens up between panels, you need to seal it before water gets in. A foundation problem pops up (AKA a pothole)? Shut the road down for hours, pull the panel, rebuild the foundation, and replace the panel.

Nope. Sorry, it's still a supremely silly idea.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

As I pointed out, the adhesive makes both a way to spread the pressure and act as a sealant for cracks. The "we could melt the snow" is obvious bs, unless they've embedded reinforcing wires that have the right resistance in the upper layer of laminate, which could work.

As far as the "use expensive materials in a complex sandwich". glass laminates aren't complicated at all. And the best part is, the glass doesn't even need to be totally transparent for this to work.

Re:For a lower price...

[david_thornley]

You don't need much light 24/7. If the sides are open, there will be plenty of light in the daytime, and no change in the amount of sunlight at night. For city streets, it might have a problem with the current level of streetlights.

Re:For a lower price...

[BarbaraHudson]

You've obviously never driven under a wide overpass in bright daylight - they're lit even during the day because the human eye can't react fast enough to the change in illumination.

Re:For a lower price...

[david_thornley]

The illumination helps, but we're talking about a cover over the whole road. The illumination will not normally change fast.

Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Kunedog]

There was a successful kickstarter for something similar, which IMO gets ripped to shreds in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If you love solar panels, then why not put them, well, anywhere else instead of on a road surface where they will be under constant, severe assault by heavy vehicles with tires that can leave light-blocking rubber on them.

Doing this would be expensive and ineffective, if not impossible. It seems good for nothing but a scam to bilk investors or as another vacuous Green PR campaign.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

Roads have to be paved and maintained anyway.

If the gain in power is greater than the increased expense, then it comes out ahead.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're already maintaining the roads, so, if you're maintaining the solar panels, the cost of roads is free.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[aXis100]

Urgh, wont maintaining solar roadways be an order of magnitude or two more expensive than bitumen?

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Mr D from 63]

The one thing that is clearly missing from the article and reference pieces is an estimation of cost. There is no indication that this will be cost effective in any way. It would likely be much less costly to line roadsides and medians with normal panels.

But alas, for some, cost doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if we maximize the carbon reduction returns for our investments, it is more important to look like you are doing something extraordinary. Look at how wonderful the French are!

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

It said it had already been done elsewhere, it didn't say anything regarding success of these ventures. Let alone was there any type of cost analysis of the value of the amount of electricity that will be generated versus the cost of the panels themselves, cost of installing + the additional cost to keep the panels in working condition plus the additional cost there will be when the road has to be repaired it can't just be done as always because they will have to worry about the surrounding panels etc that will get damaged and will have to be replaced. Basically sounds like a big giant money pit.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[sumdumass]

I'm sure that can be achieved by raising the price of energy. This can be done by law or some rogue regulation. It will have the added benefit of making energy use go down. The poorer Will likely have to choose between using electric or eating or medical care which might reduce population too. Its a green win win.

Of course every person will hate you for it. But they would already if they realized why the costs of energy is so expensive in some areas.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[IBME]

From a long term perspective this makes sense. However I think that taking into acct. the actual sun's angle to said roads would have to be an included factor for every panel so as to get the most energy.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

Heavy vehicles? This is France. America's pants weigh more.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[jonwil]

Dave Jones over at the EEVBlog has a great video as to why solar roadways are crap https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[amiga3D]

I'd like to know who in the French government is related to the people running the solar tile company.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[AmiMoJo]

Jones has already been thoroughly debunked. His numbers are right but he completely misses the point of doing this. The ones he was looking at were development projects intended to demonstrate the viability of the technology, not to be financially beneficial from day one. In that light the Dutch solar cycleway has been a huge success.

Sadly this is often the case with YouTube videos. People like Jones rush to get them out and cash in, without bothering to understand what the people behind the idea are actually trying to do.

Colas is not some fly-by-night startup looking for gullible idiots to invest. It's a big, long established company that has a lot of contracts for road building and maintenance with the government, in France and the rest of Europe.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[AmiMoJo]

It's a pilot scheme, intended to develop the technology. Profitability probably isn't the primary goal, developing the technology is.

You also have to consider how much the normal road surface costs, how durable it is and how easy it is to replace. Being able to simply lift a damaged section out and replace it in half an hour, instead of having to close the road overnight and resurface it, would be a huge bonus.

Note also that motorways in France are mostly privately owned and charge a toll to use them. They have not said which road will be getting this new surface, but chances are it is privately run.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Gavagai80]

The poorer Will likely have to choose between using electric or eating or medical care which might reduce population too.

If you're poor (source: am poor), it's easy to keep your electricity bill around $25 a month. Show me a medical bill within an order of magnitude of that.

It's the wealthy who really have to worry about electricity prices, because they can afford large houses and energy-guzzling appliances. Tiered rates play a role too of course.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Mr D from 63]

A normal road surface costs very little, it is quite durable, and quite easy to replace. Lifting sections is much more difficult than scraping and repaving long stretches. You also have to consider the supply and storage line for all those sections, and what needs to be done with damaged or aged sections that are removed.

As a surface material, it doesn't get cheaper and easier than asphalt. It is quite ignorant to think manufactured panels would be even close in comparison.

I chuckled at your private road comment.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[sumdumass]

Lol.. did you miss the part where I said raise prices? Ok- so $25 a month now, what if that jumps to $50 or $75 or more just to make the road energy scheme viable?

I bet you noticed that I was trying to be facetious but you missed the entire premise.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[thoper]

care to provide a link of this debunking?

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[AmiMoJo]

It was on his own forum, but he deleted it last year and doxed the guy who posted it.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[BarbaraHudson]

First, trials != ventures. And since, as you pointed out, there's no cost /benefit evaluation, you have no rational basis to complain - neither you nor I have the figures. I was just pointing out that you had left out one cost of ordinary roads in your theoretical equation of worth.

I should imagine that, properly done, the underlying road will last much longer because (1) no exposure to light, so no asphalt oxidation, (2) any cracks that form will be covered with adhesive from the tile, so no water infiltration. Think of them as acting like shingles on a roof, instead of just leaving the bare roof exposed to the elements.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Gavagai80]

Did you miss the part where I said an order of magnitude? $50 or even $75 is insignificant compared to other costs, like rent food and especially medical bills.

Re: Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[sumdumass]

Nah.. I have a $25 co-pay for a doctor's visit. I don't pay more than $22 a month for blood pressure and sugar medicine. Right there is almost the $50 extra.

Yes, my food bill is considerably more than $50 a month. But then again, it would/could be $50 less if a $25 a month bill tripled. I could make it work though. I would just have to cut back on fresh fruits and veggies and get something in a box or something.

But let's look at rent. A poorer person in my area will pay between $400 and $600 a month for an apartment depending on how shity the neighborhood is. That is around 10% of their rent if it had to come from there.

But all this is moot to some degree. Your electric bill is not the only ones that will rise. Everyone's will increase which means that on top of this $50 hypothetical, the food bill will increase, the doctor bill will increase, your rent will likely increase because others will have to find the money to pay their bill and they need to cover costs plus profit if they want to stay in business.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[AmiMoJo]

Sure, asphalt is cheap, but it's only a small fraction of the cost of (re)laying a road. Most of it is labour, equipment, costs for disruption etc. So increasing the cost of the road surface won't have that much of an impact on the cost of the road, especially if it can be offset by lower/easier maintenance.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Mr D from 63]

The entire cost of re-paving asphalt is around $2-$3/sq foot. That includes everything, labor, materials, etc. That is complete repair/repaving cost. You can't get anywhere close to that, not even within 1 order of magnitude, with panels, not even with just the material cost of the panels. Just clueless spouting on your part.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[AmiMoJo]

In Europe is it vastly more than that. It's hard to compute a per m2 cost because it rather depends how much closing the road (or one/two lanes) costs. It also depends on things like if pedestrians can access the site, the type of road surface being replaced etc.

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[HornWumpus]

No kidding. I've seen them hire a person to sit there with a hammer and a pile of stone and reconstruct the cobblestone roadways, just like they were centuries ago.

That's 'make work' and isn't a cost of maintaining a road, it's a cost of paying off a bum.

I guarantee you Germans know how much it costs to fix their roads. Do you know any Germans?

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[HornWumpus]

So, No? We're supposed to take your word for it?

Re:Good Video Outlining Technical Challenges

[Mr D from 63]

In Europe is it vastly more than that. It's hard to compute a per m2 cost because it rather depends how much closing the road (or one/two lanes) costs. It also depends on things like if pedestrians can access the site, the type of road surface being replaced etc.

Bullshit. You make a claim with no data, then say its " hard to compute". Not even a baseline amount? Lets face it, you simply have no idea of the cost at all.

Designed For Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

France is a leader in nuclear energies.
Launching a large scale "green energy" project that everyone knows will be a giant trainwreck and maintenance nightmare will destroy confidence in renewables and protect Areva's business for decades.

I'm being a bit of a conspiracy nutjob, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true either.

Re:Designed For Failure

[zippthorne]

I see that you are anti-nuke. Are you pro-coal, or do you think that natural gas will stay cheap forever?

Re:Designed For Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fine with nukes over coal, but I'd rather move to solar and wind (which are actually cheaper in some instances).
The children currently running nuclear power plants are clearly not fit for the job given the blatant disregard for safety.

Leftist thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

I really should start a company to supply leftist governments' projects. Unless these projects exist solely for the satisfaction of existing select suppliers.

Re:Leftist thinking

[HornWumpus]

You do understand!

Because people think they're ugly

[rsilvergun]

and yes, that is silly, but it's also one of the major things holding up renewables right now. If you're not into technology then it bugs you to see it. They do the same thing with shopping plazas where they hide them from view so the bored housewives who shop there don't have to look at them.

Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

Seriously, of all the things to be bitching about in the world, this project seems like it should be low on the list, yet /.ers are foaming at the mouths by the look of the top comments right now. Even if this project is destined to failure, do you actually believe humanity will never, ever be able to capture solar energy from roads? Well, if you admit it might be possible one day, then guess what? It is going to take projects like this one failing to eventually get there (or did you think technological progress hatches like a magic egg if you wait long enough?).

A project like this is NOTHING compared to the money spent on fusion so far. Is it actually any more of a long shot than fusion? Seems like people who have trouble prioritizing their bitching list should not be so critical of how others are prioritizing their long shot energy projects. Besides, this has nothing to do with the project, and you are just blowing off steam because it is Sunday, and you couldn't get a date on Saturday night, AGAIN, right?

If only people could get rich off of pissing all over someone else's idea. . . /.ers could finally move out of their parents' basements and stop being such bitter a-holes. . .

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

When there's an obvious example of porkbarrel spending, people are right to comment on it. Just because others waste money on potentially fruitless research is totally irrelevant. Maybe you should take berating others for having logical discussions off your "bitching list", that is, if you aren't paid to bitch by the same corrupt idiots behind this project.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

This money could be better spent researching THE MATERIALS side of things instead of building something that WILL 100% FAIL.

Metamaterials would be able to capture considerably more light than typical solar can, but it suffers from mass production problems, as well as frequency problems.
The money that would be spend on this retarded idea would be more than capable of brining metamaterial solar to the masses.

Fuck man, you wouldn't even need to pave roads, you could cover houses and power them off a CLOUDY day with the efficiencies you could get from those. (based on that "EM blackhole" they created a while back that could basically absorb most light of a frequency that fell on it)
You wouldn't even need properly aligned panels either, like you need with solar.
A typical metamaterial cloak can work from any angle, the one-way EM trap can as well.

Projects like this is just greentarded shit for the sake of being green.
THIS WILL NEVER PAY OFF. EVER.
This will cause SO MUCH MORE of a carbon footprint than every coal plant in the country combined.
Solar is a pain in the ass at a distributed level. Fine if you have a solar plant where everything is together, but when it isn't, it is all kinds of ass.
Storing solar energy is also a pain in 50 asses since batteries are terrible, have awful recharge cycles and are expensive. Not to mention bulky and dangerous at EOL.
It. is. not. feasible. Not now, not in 10 years, not in 20.
Traditional solar will never work for roadways.

You could put roofs across all the roads and it might work.
Or on house roofs, building roofs, sides of buildings and everything else.
Those would maybe work. But it would still, yet again, be a pain in the ass because it is distributed.

Protip, yes, even power companies hate you for selling solar back to them, not because they are BIG and EVIL, because it is a pain in the ass to manage the grid.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

Sorry, Anon. . . TLDR; . . . Except for the first sentence. . . go create an account and I might read the rest of your post one day.

This money could be better spent researching THE MATERIALS

Oh, just like how the conventional solar industry has started booming because everyone focused 100% on material research alone instead of economies of scale? Except that is exactly what did NOT happen!? It was the economies of scale that created the virtuous cycle of innovation and up scaling we are seeing today. NOT the Ivory Tower. . .

Solar power is incredibly cheap, decentralized, and easy to access. Treating it like another Ivory Tower technology like fusion is exactly the WRONG approach. It is SOOOO much cheaper than other energy projects that trying all sorts of crazy, bold things with it is exactly what is and should be happening.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[r.freeman]

> do you actually believe humanity will never, ever be able to capture solar energy from roads? Humanity also could build a carriages being polled by ants and us that instead cars. Jus it doesn't mean it's a good idea, or should be done, especially from everyone's public money.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because it is the pinnacle of govt. idiocy.
Planning a 1000km stretch of city road replacement with an unproven idea. That's audacious.

As far as current technology goes, this is a very silly idea. It's stupid really, unless there are major breakthroughs in power storage and transmission, and photovoltaics and materials. this is a no go.

It literally would require many magic things that don't exist.

Once we have 5 or 10 major (like order of magnitude sized) improvements and breakthroughs is these areas, it's a total farce.
-D

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

Humanity also could build a carriages being polled by ants and us that instead cars. Jus it doesn't mean it's a good idea, or should be done . . .

Unlike the absurdity you posted, building-integrated photovoltaics is a legitimate technology with obvious advantages. If power generation could be easily and cheaply combined with conventional construction technologies, the reduced costs and ecological impacts would be immense. Your treating this technology like some kind of absurd magic reveals nothing but your unabated ignorance of said technology.

. . . , especially from everyone's public money.

How the hell do you expect to be able to modify public roads without public money? The very nature of such a project requires it to be public. Maybe you are against public roads?

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

They're Slashdotters. They hate anything that isn't C or C++ and maybe some Perl. They scowl at anything other than bug ridden open sores software written with vim and compiled with the outdated, nearly abandoned GCC.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar power is NOT incredibly cheap otherwise everyone would be using it.

Coal, oil, natural gas power - now that is dirt cheap compared to solar!

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

temper temper - no need for a tantrum

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Z80a]

Anything that can be made to make solar roadways better will make regular solar panels better.
Its just a race that can't be won.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[argStyopa]

tl;dr version: We waste shitloads of money on all sorts of things, why not waste it on this?

(Which is a pretty weak justification for massive spending of public money...)

I think the reasons the /. posters are frothing so much about this is in direct relation to how FUNDAMENTALLY stupid it is, and this is a technically oriented crowd that reacts viscerally to technical ignorance: you know, like make a public roadway surface of GLASS (with all of it's obvious shortcomings*), expecting that glass to remain light-transmissive despite the use by millions of cars (tires carry things like, you know, stones?), etc.

*
1) strength, obviously. Trucks weigh upwards of 50t. Add the compressive forces of braking, etc...yikes.
2) fragility to temperature: one of the reasons asphalt is so widely used is that it's FLEXIBLE at a wide range of temperatures, resisting cracking. Glass is notoriously bad at this - as you can see pouring hot liquid into a glass that's at 0 c..
3) repair costs: (also related to #2) - asphalt is used as a patcher because it's super cheap.
4) friction is pretty important to a road surface, particularly wet friction. While a glass surface can certainly be 'rough textured' this would directly impede its ability to transmit light for the solar power function.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

Really, so you are saying it is cheaper to power the lights in my yard with little coal, oil, and natural gas power generators?

We are talking total project costs, not unit costs. Maybe you will figure out the difference after you figure out how to create an account?

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[rhazz]

A project like this is NOTHING compared to the money spent on fusion so far

If they were proposing to build a fusion reactor along 1,000 km of roadway, we'd be hating on it just as much.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, of all the things to be bitching about in the world

One signaling the potential waste of billions or trillions of dollars due to technical illitercy and a failure to teach the public basic physics in a nation which loves to tell everyone all about "education" and largely helped originate the idea that the world's problems come from being "uneducated" is surely one of them.

1000x the good could be done by spending the money to save a bunch of kids from cancer. Note, I don't mean just the initial costs but the long-terms as well.

And do you know how inefficient this kind of installation without a parallel superconductor or other major electrical installation to carry any output is?

Now why are you (and the people who modded you up to +5) here?

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Anonymous Coward]

and you couldn't get a date on Saturday night, AGAIN, right?

Fuck you, asshole. Also: Projecting much? Someone with a relatively low user ID I'd think wouldn't be such a little shit troll, but here you are, doing pretty much exactly that. Or did you hijack someone else's account so you could use it for trolling? Or are you just as much of a fat neckbearded piece of shit like you're accusing others of being, complete with shit personality, that this is you being 'normal'? Shove it up your ass, faggot.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

As with many things, comparing anything else but cost and generation output between the two projects results in a pretty absurd comparison. . .

ITER is planned to produce net 450MW output at, so far, 14B USD cost. Keep in mind, that is ALL or NOTHING. That is a pretty low bar for the roadway to beat. . . AND, the roadway can be stopped at any time (10km not performing as expected. . . uhm. . . guess we'll stop here. . . ), so the opportunity cost is massively different.

That is the great thing about tech like solar and wind. You can do absurd things on the cheap in an industry used to throwing away ten of BILLIONS at a time! There is absolutely no comparison. This is like cell phones kicking the ass of landlines. The economics of the industry have changed and so swiftly that the armchair experts are still arguing yesterday's talking points. . .

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

You are arguing that France is wasting money on the project, itself, but it seems you should be arguing that France wastes orders of magnitude more of that every year on PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS! What idiots! Instead of paying professionals, they could have just come to /. and had a bunch of free (in cost and time) smart asses do all the HARD SCIENCE to confirm whether or not the project is feasible ('cause, you DO have actual data supporting your points above and not just a soar asshole from rigorous "fact" extraction to show for your post, right!?)!

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[argStyopa]

France, like most western democracies:

Politicians > Engineers.

And like any situation where big $ are involved, there are enough tame engineers that want government favor that they'll cheerfully vet any project.

Re:Slashdot: News for Haters

[Idou]

Can you prove that the exact same thing is not happening to an even greater extent (due to the higher costs involved ) with fusion projects?

Third time? Or more....

[Fencepost]

This is at least the third variation of this I've heard of - there's the Kickstarted solar roadways thing mentioned here, there's this one, and there was an earlier one that proposed larger drop-in units that were basically pre-fabricated road surface blocks with a clear (enough) top, internal electronics (including lighting) and connections out either off the road or possibly through adjacent units for power delivery.

The various arguments when those were initially proposed included that road surfaces and significant chunks of parking lots (the aisles, not the parking spaces themselves) are empty 90+% of the time (true), it's surfaces that are already not natural so there are no objections of "you're covering that beautiful field with solar panels," and by using pre-fabricated units you might be able to actually put in road surface at a comparable cost in labor.

I know my initial reaction at that time was that the concept wasn't terrible - it addressed real problems. The technology might not have been there, and still might not be there, but for some carefully chosen situations they might be a viable option. The biggest obstacle that I could see is that something like that would likely need some pretty tight tolerances in the installed environment, and "road bed" and tight tolerances don't always go together so well (see "alligator cracking").

Also, regarding the criticisms that it would cost far too much to cover all the roads in the USA, just how much electricity are you expecting to consume? I feel sure that on average houses with solar have less solar panel surface area than they have driveway area and a lot of them are (hoping to) produce more power than they need for their house. Covering all roads wouldn't be necessary, most likely even covering all suitable roads wouldn't be necessary.

And regarding France doing a large experiment with this, is it a 1000km stretch or is it multiple locations in differing road conditions, up to a total of 1000km of test plots?

Re:Third time? Or more....

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

This will never fly in the USA. Just look at the fighting from the established power companies over people in Nevada with their solar roofs, no way any state will be able to overcome the intense lobbying that would come from any attempts at making such a "public" item provide power; we don't allow the "public" to get in the way of corporate profits.

Re:Third time? Or more....

[AK Marc]

You didn't read the right stories. The change balanced the buy-back price. Before, it was subsidizing solar with the costs of other users. Now it's set to not fund solar, but doesn't "punish" solar in any way. Though the best solution is to have buy-back at peak time at retail, and other times to be wholesale. Because managing the peak power usage helps the grid the most. But it's in no way a "tax" or "penalty" on solar. It just reduced/eliminated a credit.

Re:Third time? Or more....

[Jeremi]

we don't allow the "public" to get in the way of corporate profits.

If the technology works, then a corporate-owned solar roadway could be just as profitable as any other corporate-owned solar farm, of which we have many. And if it doesn't work, then there's no point in installing it anyway.

Re:Third time? Or more....

[HornWumpus]

No. Peak wholesale at peak and baseload wholesale other times. Duh. Solar should be paid the same as other sources.

Re:Third time? Or more....

[AK Marc]

Nope. Because the generators of other types of power all get subsidies, and when the price is fixed to a wholesale price, we see Enron-style price games at the wholesale level.

So what if it fails

[MrKaos]

I suspect that even if there is some doubt if this project will be successful the lessons learned from doing it and operating it will provide enough operational experience so that the next effort will have fewer failures.

By doing it you learn what problems have to be overcome.

Re:So what if it fails

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that even if there is some doubt if this project will be successful the lessons learned from doing it and operating it will provide enough operational experience so that the next effort will have fewer failures.

By doing it you learn what problems have to be overcome.

What you say is anathema in a society ruled by free market capitalism that focuses only on the next quarter.

Re:So what if it fails

[MrKaos]

What you say is anathema in a society ruled by free market capitalism that focuses only on the next quarter.

No it isn't. It acknowledges that to succeed you must first fail. Rarely is a first attempt at anything successful otherwise you wouldn't have a saying such as 'practise makes perfect'. Incremental improvement is how many things have been developed. This is no different.

Re:So what if it fails

[PPH]

If the first attempt at a drawing board had failed, what would we go back to?

Re:So what if it fails

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask any Free Market Capitalist about entrepreneurship, and they'll tell you the road to success is all about throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, learning from your mistakes and then moving on.

Re:So what if it fails

[Anonymous Coward]

The lunchtime/dinner napkin it was first sketched on?

Re:So what if it fails

[Anonymous Coward]

They should pave large parking lots with these solar panels first for a multi-year trial phase before doing it on roads. Then they can observe how durable they are, how much maintenance they need, etc. Parking lots are a much more controlled environment than major roadways. When they need to work on them they don't have to shut down traffic.

Re:So what if it fails

[gl4ss]

it's engineered to fail and spend money and be a works project.
otherwise they would put the cells on the walls.

or just build 2 kilometers of it.

I really suspect they will only build 2 km of this stuff though and the 998 km is a stretch goal.. let's say that one kilometer of it is 1 million, then 1000 is one billion.

I suspect though that they're trying to prove that the road surface will last for more time than blacktop. it might, if it's harder. but then it will be also inferior to drive on.

Re:So what if it fails

[MrKaos]

pencil and paper

Wattway site

[luca]

This seems to be the official site of the manufacturer.

I don't know if it's just propaganda or real facts, but they seem to have taken into account all the shortcomings and engineered around them

Re:Wattway site

[SuperKendall]

Note in the "minute" video they have used the tiles on every road except for the main road...

Also note that video at the start shows no matter how you rough the surface it's still vastly smother than real asphalt.

The company is obviously a scheme to maximize revenue from the gullible who will buy anything if you label it "solar" or "green". It's green for sure, lots of green to be flowing to the owners and investors of the company ...

No, it really has not

[SuperKendall]

Limited trials have been done - that don't take any amount of real traffic, and also cane easily closed for snow and the like.

To do a large span of primary roadway that will take a lot of traffic (and thus see a lot more rubber coating them) is a whole different matter.

Boondoggle is not too harsh a term to use here. Obviously someone is getting some massive kickbacks out of this, pretty much the driving force of the solar industry.

Re:No, it really has not

[BarbaraHudson]

Unless you're jamming the brakes hared enough to cause a skid, you won't get a rubber coating on the tiles - it's in the air and settles out as dust. The motion of the next few vehicles will prevent dust buildup.

Otherwise, we'd never have to resurface roads - they'd be coated with a nice coating of black rubber protecting the asphalt, instead of the asphalt oxidizing and turning light grey.

Re: This will piss off the Teapublicans

[Anonymous Coward]

It's how they be.

Improving Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to be missing possible spin-offs of this. A solar paneled road can easily track every car on it. Well it wouldn't be perfect due to fast moving clouds or hiding in a truck's shadow, but all new cars have always-on running lights now and that'll help make it easier. This is a stepping stone to smarter, electronic roads that may be able to communicate with the cars or heat itself when ice starts to form.

I can't wait to see a video of a non-specially trained, lane assisted car attempting to automatically drive on one of these tiled roads.

Re:first!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? You need to get a life.

Onion?

[Anonymous Coward]

I expected this story to link to The Onion. I makes about that much sense.

Why cover roads with solar cells? That only ensures that they get dirty, blocking the sunlight. Indeed the cars and trucks on the road will be doing that. And I simply can't believe semis driving on these solar cells won't wear them out. Truck wear out concrete. Putting solar cells on buildings makes more sense, although even there it isn't financially feasible.

Sounds like crony capitalism to me. Using roads is an excuse to get government monies.

Re:Onion?

[ChoGGi]

Truck wear out concrete.

That's some expensive road you be driving on, Asphalt and solar panel roads are probably cheaper.

I'm just wondering what happens when the asphalt needs to be repaved, something tells me the panels will be damaged after removal...more garage?

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[hey!]

This is where I stopped reading what you wrote.

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[Rei]

What road do you live near where the surface is packed full of rubber tire marks? Must be pretty miserable to live there, with people burning tires all the time.

A solar panel is in fact an EXACT OPPOSITE of a greenhouse - the greenhouse relies on IR alone,

Hahahaha.... oh geez... :)

Let's back all the way back to third grade and cover the topic of "photosynthesis". You see, plants need light from the sun to grow! Now class, take one of those seeds you sprouted and put it on your windowsill, and put the other in the closet... we'll bring them back to compare in two weeks. Don't forget to water!

The amount of light transmission is probably the biggest factor in greenhouse design. Here in Iceland people have to use glass (most common) or hard plastic (less common) because of the wind, thin plastic hoop houses don't survive here. Most commonly used is single pane glass. Yes, you read that right. Here in a country with "ice" in the name, it's still considered worthwhile to let the heat pour out of your greenhouse in order to get a few extra percent sunlight. Now, we have hot water for heating which reduces (but doesn't eliminate) heating costs, but still, it drives home the point: to growers, light equals growth.

Greenhouses most definitely do not rely on "IR alone".

If you're curious as to why fogged surfaces are often seen as desirable in greenhouses - it's because of shading. Fogging only causes the greenhouse to lose a couple to several percent of the light (depending on the type of plastic or glass), but it means that all of the light is no longer coming from the same angle. This helps get light to leaves that would otherwise be shaded by other leaves.

Ironically, contrarily to what you wrote, glass-covered solar panels do care about IR transmission. They don't generate power from IR, but their efficiency is correlated to their temperature, and the temperature is correlated with the radiative equilibrium of their environment.

Yes please

[Trogre]

Anything that drives up demand for solar panels should result in a ramp up in supply and a drop in price so I can get my home solar installation more quickly.

Re:Yes please

[thegarbz]

Somehow I don't think you're going to want these panels on your roof.

Re:Yes please

[HornWumpus]

Depends on how hard they are to pull up.

Re:Yes please

[thegarbz]

I was talking more about weight. Everything is easy with a crane, but this will not be at all suitable if you need to structurally reinforce the roof. They are thick, strong, designed to withstand a shitload of force on them. Expect them to *need* a solid foundation.

Re:Europe continues its race to the bottom

[Anonymous Coward]

Economic suicide by green technology. A new and deadly muslim invasion. 28 nations who devote less than 2% to defense spending. They can't patrol their coasts. Their eastern borders are laid bare to predations of the Russians. Sad to see. I am of European heritage. European Christians made America what it is.

European Christians enacted a genocide versus the native americans. And then proceeded to steal their land and call it their own. I wouldn't be proud of that heritage.

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[aliquis]

I also wonder are photons only in the visible spectrum? At what wave-lengths does photons exists and at what doesn't they? Shall I google it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"An FM radio station transmitting at 100 MHz emits photons with an energy of about 4.1357 Ã-- 10-7 eV. This minuscule amount of energy is approximately 8 Ã-- 10-13 times the electron's mass (via the mass-energy equivalence)."

Oups?

The roads must roll

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that this is not what Heinlein predicted

Re:first!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so envious :(

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[Anonymous Coward]

A solar panel is in fact an EXACT OPPOSITE of a greenhouse - the greenhouse relies on IR alone, so it doesn't care if photons are reflected. Meanwhile a solar panel doesn't care a whit about IR transmission, ONLY about photons that make it through - any scattering or glossing of the surface dramatically cuts down on light that can reach the solar cells inside, because many of the photons end up either being reflected or scattered to the sides away from the cells.

Um, IR consists of photons too. When you say "photons" you seem to mean visible light photons, but the way you say it suggests you have no clue what you're talking about...
Besides, chlorophyll absorbs light most strongly in blue wavelengths, then the red (but not IR) wavelengths.

tilt? no?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have panels facing south (northern hemisphere, 50lat) with some a bit west and since a bit east to get more from a day but all south. These then range from 30 to 55 degrees of tilt to get the most from a year strings of panels in fixed positions. With all this effort the eco and financial payback is about 7 years. If i put them all flat it'd be practically pointless even using them. I can't get my head around justifying these road projects both financially and environmentally - it feels like well intentioned people are going to be causing a lot of waste.

Re:Europe continues its race to the bottom

[Anonymous Coward]

no the native americans gave it way far n square in a trade for shiny sparkly trinkets. too bad so sad. its ours now BITCH!

Trump To Pave 1000 miles of Road With Mexicans

[Anonymous Coward]

Build wall out of them too

Why roads?

[Firethorn]

Okay, first up: I analyzed the 'Solar Freaking Roadways!!!' proposals so I know the arguments, though I think they glossed over or ignored numerous problems. My end thought was that it might be a neat system for a pedestrian walk area, where you don't have anything bigger than a golf cart traversing it.

That being said, I'm always willing to be proven wrong - it's relatively easy to get me to agree to a 100m/1km/1 Mile or so 'test strip'. 100m, for example, is long enough to get a truck completely onto the solar surface and drive for a bit - because the interface might be a destruction point. Something to study, obviously.

Okay, the reasoning for 'solar roads' is a combination of displacement and synchronicity. By displacement, we mean that the surface of a properly constructed solar panel displaces other construction material - pavement, for a road. For something like a 'solar car park', solar panels are strong enough to replace the roof, not supplement it.
- Problem: Pavement is relatively incredibly cheap and durable.
Synchronicity: By this I mean that the substitution provides additional benefits. Solar roadways, for example, boasts that you could incorporate heating elements into their units such that when it snows you can avoid the need for plowing by melting the snow off the roads, then recoup the heat used via the solar panels. Problem - I don't think they've thought about heavy snows and that you get less light in winter.
Another 'benefit' would be using LED lighting to enable 'remapping' the control lanes on a road, signaling when it's safe to pass, etc...
They even said that the solar roads would be easier to repair - have a busted hexagonal panel? Pull up with a truck that has a robot arm that automatically unbolts and lifts the damaged panel and locks a replacement in. Each panel is supposed to be cheap because it's made in an automated factory.

As such, using the panels as 'roadway shade/shelter' such that things like rain and snow don't reach the road at all, and probably even block direct sun, is a much better use.

Re:Why roads?

[skids]

I could see the side-benefits of an easily repairable/lightable/etc road system making up for the general stupidity of the idea. Of course, if you've ever driven on one of the concrete slab roadways like in upstate NY the constant clicking of the tires on the seams drives you batty after a while, and there'd be way more seams.

Roofs also need maintenance and replacing, and this is not cheap as any homeowner knows -- so the material displacement theory has to compete with that as well, though currently many rooftop solar installations do not replace shingles.

I bet we also get the solar-panels-in-space microwave beam stupid idea thing built before this is all over. Anything to avoid just doing the sensible boring thing and building the cheaper solutions.

Re:Why roads?

[Firethorn]

Roofs also need maintenance and replacing, and this is not cheap as any homeowner knows -- so the material displacement theory has to compete with that as well, though currently many rooftop solar installations do not replace shingles.

Currently ALL solar rooftop installs over structures such as houses don't replace shingles or other roofing materials. The problem is one of tightness - solar panels as direct roofing material is currently too 'leaky'. With a car port, this isn't a big deal. Hell, the panels are also structural, so they're replacing the shingles, the tar paper, plywood, AND most of the 2x4 supports. They basically only need edge support, which is easy to provide with beams.

They also tend to be semi-transparent, though that could be fixed if they were designed to replace a roof with a aluminum backing or something.

Basically, the engineering to use them over what I'd consider critical structures(IE homes) as opposed to non-critical structures(IE carport) hasn't been done or finished yet.

Re:Why roads?

[thinkwaitfast]

Anything to avoid just doing the sensible boring thing and building the cheaper solutions.

The crux of the problem

Re:Why roads?

[skids]

Well, not all, there are indeed "solar shingles", but they are pricey by comparison. Last time I looked, pricier than merited by the economics of replacing shingles.

Re:Why roads?

[Firethorn]

You're correct, I need to remember to be careful about using 'all'. To my knowledge, said solar shingles haven't progressed beyond test installs and such.

Re:Why roads?

[Anonymous Coward]

My end thought was that it might be a neat system for a pedestrian walk area, where you don't have anything bigger than a golf cart traversing it.

Sorry, but trucks & heavy machinery drives on pedestrian walks - just not as often as on the main road.

Road authorities putting up new signs or something? Utility trucks parked all over the pedestrian walk so they don't block road traffic.
Someone digging up the sewer/water/cables in the area? Big tractors etc. on the road, and on the pavement.
Someone delivering materials to construction sites drives big trucks across pavement to get to the site.
Do the area get snow? Expect the occational truck with a snow plow blade on it - and metal chains around the tires to prevent sliding. Sometimes, they hit a bump and that blade takes out a centimeter-deep chunk of asphalt. Might have an interesting effect on glass & panels.

Oh, and glass surfaces are slippery enough when dry. Not something you want to walk or drive on. Then it gets wet, then there is an oil spill. . .

Re:Why roads?

[AmiMoJo]

They aren't going to lay 1000km overnight, they will do it bit by bit and test along the way.

Even if pavement is really cheap, that isn't the main cost of surfacing a road. The cost of doing the actual work is the bulk of it, and the solar road surface might actually reduce that a bit. In any case, as we have already seen with test deployments in Europe, the energy generated over the lifetime of each slab vastly exceeds the extra cost compared to concrete or asphalt.

Re:Why roads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this just an argument against research of any kind?

Re:Why roads?

[david_thornley]

I also am dubious about melting snow off. There's reasons why I send the kid out the door with a shovel instead of a hair dryer or heat gun and extension cord.

Re:Why roads?

[virtual_mps]

They even said that the solar roads would be easier to repair - have a busted hexagonal panel? Pull up with a truck that has a robot arm that automatically unbolts and lifts the damaged panel and locks a replacement in. Each panel is supposed to be cheap because it's made in an automated factory.

This kind of thing comes up a lot, and seems to come from people with no clue how roads work. Repairing the surface is the easy part. Repairing the subsurface is hard, and putting some glass on top isn't going to change the fact that you've got a major repair involving a lot of earth moving equipment if the subsurface of a road is compromised. Just throwing a new piece of glass over a sinkhole isn't an option.

Re:Why roads?

[Firethorn]

This kind of thing comes up a lot, and seems to come from people with no clue how roads work.

You are correct. That's why I said 'they said', though I didn't put your objection, probably because my post was already getting too long.

Re:Why roads?

[HornWumpus]

No. It's an argument against _large_ scale pilot projects of unproven technologies. But that's the technical argument. This could be tested with a 1 meter long test strip across a single road.

It's also an argument against government sponsored hopeless projects being given out as patronage. That's the social argument.

Re:Why roads?

[HornWumpus]

But you pay your own bills.

The governor or Illinois famously had the governor's Mansion's driveway and sidewalks heated.

Isn't government spending wonderful. Such prudence.

Re:Why roads?

[Jack Griffin]

T In any case, as we have already seen with test deployments in Europe, the energy generated over the lifetime of each slab vastly exceeds the extra cost compared to concrete or asphalt.

But does it cost more or less than concrete/asphalt plus a brand new power station somewhere?
They aren't cheap either.

Well...

[FrozenGeek]

... I guess we'll get to see how well this concept works. And I won't be among the taxpayers responsible for paying for it. Not a bad deal for me.

SNOW TIRES

[ArylAkamov]

I would love to see how they stand up to studded or chained snow tires.

Why the goddamn road?

Why not above the road? The side of the road? Parking lots as a sun shade for drivers? Roofs of public buildings?

Re:SNOW TIRES

[Anonymous Coward]

Because solar roadways sounds more future-ish.

Re:SNOW TIRES

[frootcakeuk]

I've seen the damage a truck did to the M25 just by having a blow out. It carved a 3 inch deep gash into +500m of tarmac. This thing wouldn't stand a chance!

Put the solar panels OVER the cars, not under them

[Applehu Akbar]

Kroger Markets has solar-paved one of its huge Fry's Marketplace parking lots in Phoenix (I-17 at Bell Rd). But unlike Royale's daffy scheme, they have done it the right way, by using the solar panels to shade the cars, rather than having them in the pavement. Covered parking is precious in Phoenix, and a perk generally reserved for neurosurgeons.

Re: first!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, wish that firstposting would come back with full force. It's retro, ffs!

I hope the local power company fights!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like they don't like roof top solar, I hope they fight solar roads too. How DARE they cut into our bottom line?

Re:Put the solar panels OVER the cars, not under t

[Firethorn]

If I lived in Arizona, Heck, any of the Southern states, I'd consider covered parking a perk worth perhaps paying a touch more in the store for. Plus, from a business standpoint there's a lot to be said for such an install.
1. If I phrase it as the carport structure as not being a carport, but as necessary support structure to get the solar panels safely over the cars, I can deduct and get credits for my carport as part of the solar install.
2. There's various credits and deductions with said install.
3. The power provided helps lower my max energy usage - companies are billed not only by total power used, but by maximum wattage. IE it's cheaper for me to use 100 watts continuously than 2400 watts for 1 hour a day. The daytime power from the panels will reduce the increase in power usage during business hours. Set my AC systems up to 'supercool' during that time frame to keep the temperature good once the sun comes down until my power starts dropping.
4. As you mention, car ports in heavily lit areas down south is a perk. I can attract a 'higher class' of customers that way.
5. For that matter, it saves energy in cooling costs. People burn less gasoline running the AC for their cars, especially with remote starters and such. Raised solar panels(and a few inches is sufficient) can act as a sun screen for your building, substantially dropping AC energy requirements, to the point that I remember some buildings having non-solar screens way back in the day. The energy gained from solar energy is a economic boost in such a case.

Why not just the shoulders?

[Mike Buddha]

Do they not have wide shoulders on their roadways there? Seems like you could make a solar panel that's tough enough to be driven on, then put it on the side of the roadway where it'll get less wear and tear.

Lunacy

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of lunacy is why we're all going to die in apocalyptic hellfire.

The conservative morons believe climate change is a myth and/or conspiracy by "big" government and "big" science. The liberal morons believe you can solve climate change by feel good initiatives with no science behind them.

The scientists are crying out "WHY WON'T YOU JUST LISTEN TO US?!". Reality is a spectrum, not black and white. So why are all the proposed solutions black and white?

Re:Lunacy

[Tempest451]

Was there a point to this or are you just venting?

A Better Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Moslem generates 5 watts .

Added Return

[Tempest451]

I see no issue with research for this. Currently the only thing roads provide is a flat surface to travel on. Creating some sort of additional return through energy production seems logical, especially with the sinking costs of producing solar cells. It is the cumulative efforts of small projects like this that will make larger gains in reducing our environmental impact.

CAn we get a FRENCH link ?

[aepervius]

Because I have my doubt that they will go ahead and pave 1000 km without a small strip as debut project. So far I am only finding unrelated article in french, so i strongly suspect that in original french it was formulated very differently and the summary or copied article are misrepresenting it.

Here is a better link than the summary

[aepervius]

Yeah not in english, but at least it point out that it will be tested on some roads and the article use COULD (pourrait) if test are positive. Not WILL as the slashdot summary points out. http://www.franceinfo.fr/fil-i...

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[Anonymous Coward]

"the greenhouse relies on IR alone, so it doesn't care if photons are reflected."

You know IR is made of photons, too, don't you? And plants need much more than IR for photosynthesis.

PR from a mediocre politician

[lorinc]

If you're not French and don't know Royale, you may believe this. Otherwise, you know it's just crappy PR from one of the most mediocre politician France ever had. Don't get excited by this, it's just one of her usual "big words, big failure" things.

The right tool for the job....

[charrois]

Though I applaud all efforts at green energy, I can't help but think that turning highways into solar farms is going about things the wrong way. Their purposes are fundamentally different, and as such their design is (or should be) fundamentally different. Designing a solar panel to support a considerable weight, provide as much traction in its glass surface as asphalt designed for the task, and be reasonably efficient at generating electricity has got to an engineering nightmare! Not to mention the expense of doing so. The only advantage I can see for a design such as this is that the footprint on the land isn't increased by anything more than the roads already use. But aren't there significantly more inexpensive and straightforward alternatives? Even at the very least, constructing a long array of panels along the right of way beside the roads wouldn't require more land area than already allocated to the roadways, plus the engineers would have the much easier task of designing good roads and good solar panels independently without having to work the conflicting requirements into some sort of cobbled together harmony.

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[Anonymous Coward]

- the greenhouse relies on IR alone,

Wow! You sure know a lot about photosynthesis.

Oh wait.... it's SuperKendoll - world's greatest arseclown. Stick to arguing about Jedi knight training - you know, fiction. Leave science to people with brains.

Re:Slashdot: News for Hatters

[Anonymous Coward]

carriages being polled by ants

They'd be voting ants right?

Why roads, why not railway lines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, wouldn't it make more sense to do this on the railway lines rather than roads?
Or am I missing something. At least you more or less know where the train is going (on
the rails one hopes( and can therefore avoid it getting scratched by tires or whatever. I
guess the trains might blow dust and stones over it, but that could be tested to see the
effect. One or two trains a day could even clear them with a blower over it too I suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFToDbD9gUw

[teac2019]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And France just declared a Financial Emergency?

[Contract Gypsy]

Wow, Another Socialist country ignoring their financial issues. That's okay, Germany will bail them out and then own them outright without a single bullet being fired!

Re:And France just declared a Financial Emergency?

[Tempest451]

Germany...You mean that other socialist country?

debunked already

[sproketboy]

Why would they waste money on this? It's a scam. Thunderf00t debunked this last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:debunked already

[hercludes]

This. This is the first thing I looked for when I opened this article. Everything I hear people debating/arguing about has already been covered in this video.

Harvest the mechanical energy instead?

[scratchy_king]

Could be worth laying down piezoelectric energy harvesting material instead of, or in addition to, the solar cells.

A recent study shows that up to 80% of the compressive energy can be transformed into electrical energy.
An efficient self-powered synchronous electric charge extraction interface circuit for piezoelectric energy. [Closed-access journal]

What this translates to in absolute numbers from the weight of cars/trucks and frequency of passage, is an exercise left to the reader ;)

Re:Harvest the mechanical energy instead?

[david_thornley]

Power comes from somewhere, typically in a form related to sunlight (there's also a lot of energy provided by supernova crap, of course). The First Law of Thermodynamics is a formal way to say TANSTAAFL in a particular context. If we put down piezoelectric generators on a road, we're taking power from the vehicles traveling on it. The vehicle is always going very slightly uphill, and fuel efficiency will go down to some extent.

Now, suppose that we have a certain supply of gasoline. We can put piezoelectric generators on the roadway, and accept that we'll need that gasoline to make up for the mileage losses. At this point, this gasoline is turned into vehicle propulsion, say at a 30% efficiency rate, and some of that is bled off at 80% efficiency. That means we're getting electricity out of this gasoline at about one-quarter efficiency.

Now, say we install a gasoline-powered generator. It can be much more efficient than the typical vehicle internal combustion engine. It can be made in a size that is suited for power generation, it can be designed to run efficiently in one particular frequency/torque situation rather than to run fairly efficiently over a range, and it can drive a generator directly. I'd expect somewhat more than 80% efficiency there, which means the piezoelectric approach would run at least three times as inefficiently as just using fossil fuels in the first place.

Re:That is a REALLY BAD assessment

[dywolf]

you ever get tired of posting really idiotic garbage?

Why roads?

[Anonymous Coward]

France could place solar panels in the vineyards, in between the rows of vines.

locality of grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

It is well known that we in Southern California use the article with road names. Take *the* 118 to *the* 5 to get around the traffic on *the* 101. Perhaps this is because the freeways have distinct and unique personalities, and as such, deserve the definite article?

Yes, in the rest of the (less-civilized) world, people would say "Take (State Route) 118 to (Interstate) 5 to get around the traffic on (US) 101", and I'm sure they'll find that hella good.

Freeway is a general term used in much of the United States - I leave you to read wikipedia and other sources for more information.
Freeway is not expressway. A freeway is defined as a limited access highway. For all other roads in California, if it touches your property, you can build a driveway onto it. More specifically
Cal Veh Code 332. "Freeway" is a highway in respect to which the owners of
abutting lands have no right or easement of access to or from their
abutting lands or in respect to which such owners have only limited
or restricted right or easement of access.

There are some estimates on Wattway site.

[denzacar]

http://www.wattwaybycolas.com/...

What is the price per m2?

Wattway's price per m2 is to be seen in light of the production cost of electricity.
Photovoltaic energy is measured in watt-peak, which takes into account sunlight conditions.
Today, depending on the technology used and the support on which the panels are installed, prices fluctuate between 2 to 8 euros/watt-peak.
The cost with Wattway is estimated at 6 euros/watt-peak.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that Wattway can turn an existing surface into a money-maker by providing an additional use, which has a positive impact on the final price.
With Wattway, there is no need to rent or purchase farmland to install solar panels, nor do you need to redo your entire roof to produce photovoltaic electricity!

How efficient is Wattway compared to a conventional solar panel?

Wattway panels have a 15% yield, compared to 18-19% for conventional photovoltaic panels.

So... More expensive (per watt) than conventional solar panels, with ~20% lesser yield.
Which would probably decrease by at least 30% per panel, as that is about the area of the panel that would get most tires tracking over it.
Which brings us down to ~10% yield.
While the cost stays in the upper 25%, meaning it's 3 times more expensive than the cheapest panels out there. Per watt.
Combine that with the (optimistic) reduction in yield due to dirt, and they are ~5-6 times more expensive.

Now... considering this article's claim that "4m of solarised road is enough to supply one household's electricity needs, apart from heating, and one kilometre will light a settlement with 5,000 inhabitants"...
And similar claims regarding similar but FAR MORE realistic project in Amsterdam and the claims of "enough energy to power three households" per 100 meters, later readjusted a bit to "provide a single-person household with electricity for a year" for about half a year of work, per 70 meters or road installed (which comes out to not quite but almost 3 homes per 100 meters)...
Those 4 meters of road per household seem to be calculated based on roads some 4-5 lanes wide.
Granted, not the same tech as that Dutch bike lane but that's how wide those bike lanes would have be to to provide that same amount of power.

Which is not the issue of lack of such roads... but that's a lot of potential potholes.
Which does not really sound realistic for regular roads, considering Wattway's "fresh asphalt with no deformations or ruts" policy.

How long does a Wattway panel last?

A Wattway panel lasts as long as conventional pavement, meaning at least 10 years depending on the traffic, which speeds up wear.
If the section is not heavily trafficked - a stadium parking lot for example - then Wattway panels can last roughly 20 years.

Are Wattway panels all-weather?

Wattway panels are rainproof thanks to the fact that the silicon cells are encapsulated and the junction box which provides the connection between the panels complies with IP66 sealing effectiveness standards.
The panels have even passed the snowplow test with flying colors.
Operators do, however, need to operate the machines with a bit more care on Wattway panels than on conventional pavement.

Can Wattway be installed on any type of road? Are there any constraints (road

Re:There are some estimates on Wattway site.

[Mr D from 63]

Yes, anything might have some niche application. But why even do it in your driveway when its much cheaper to put them on the roof?

And seeing that repaving a road in generally only about $2/square foot, and a conventional low cost solar panel is over $25/square foot, and assuming, for obvious reasons, these panels will cost significantly more than a conventional one, I chuckle when I see arguments about the benefits of replacing panels vs normal road repair. Heck, even new road construction, including grading, compaction, and layering, is only about $8/square foot.

Re:There are some estimates on Wattway site.

[denzacar]

But why even do it in your driveway when its much cheaper to put them on the roof?

Same basic reason that underlies all those "let's put it on the roads" - it's a large and mostly empty surface which has to be kept clear and uncluttered 99% of the time.
Bonus points for it being attached to the actual building where actual people would spend actual harvested electricity - instead of miles from nowhere, with all the losses of transporting the electricity to the actual households.

Sure... you COULD build a solar roof over your driveway... but maybe you need special permits and such for that.
Maybe you or your family members don't want a roof on stilts in front of your home or over your yard - while you do want more solar capacity than what your roof may provide.

A niche solution for all those niches where regular roof-mounted solar panels can't be installed, but there is free and empty walking/driving surface nearby.
Hell, even those solar-fucking hexagons make sense if you rip out most of the bullshit (LEDs, heaters, 20 tons or so of concrete "access ports" and foundation...) and use them for paving roads in parks and gardens.
IF they can be produced cheaply enough, that is.

But not compared to the cost of paving the roads - compared to cost of installing regular solar panels, on, around or over that surface.
Besides, solar fucking hexagons were the only ones retarded enough to suggest ripping out existing roads and putting in magical hexagons instead.
French Wattway assumes existing asphalt roads underneath the glued-on photovoltaics, Dutch SolaRoad is assembled from concrete slabs with a top layer of photovoltaics - which is just the thing for driveways.

Re:There are some estimates on Wattway site.

[Mr D from 63]

Maybe you or your family members don't want a roof on stilts in front of your home or over your yard - while you do want more solar capacity than what your roof may provide

That would entail a very minute slice of market. I've always laughed a bit at proposed solar carports for driveways, when 99.9% of the time there is a house right there to put solar panels on in a much more aesthetically pleasing and economic way. Even if you are going to add a carport anyhow, it likely makes more sense to mount panels on the house and not add loading to the carport.

Regardless, when it takes these scenarios to describe any practical customer use case, you know it is a niche product at best.

But not compared to the cost of paving the roads - compared to cost of installing regular solar panels, on, around or over that surface. Besides, solar fucking hexagons were the only ones retarded enough to suggest ripping out existing roads and putting in magical hexagons instead. French Wattway assumes existing asphalt roads underneath the glued-on photovoltaics, Dutch SolaRoad is assembled from concrete slabs with a top layer of photovoltaics - which is just the thing for driveways.

Compared to either or both, there is just no way to show a path to cost effectiveness when there are so many other place to put panels. I don't care of a few homeowners install them, some homeowners blow money on stupid stuff all the time. As a societal solution, its quite destined to failure from a cost effectiveness standpoint either approach you take. If there were any cost effective case, you can rest assure the developers would be talking about it in their PR headlines.

Re:There are some estimates on Wattway site.

[denzacar]

I WAS describing a niche product - i.e. driveways.

Something doesn't have to provide a complete societal solution to be useful to an individual - or the society.
Enough driveways with it eventually would make a difference.
If you also use your driveway as the site for your thermal storage for passive heating... this could be a nice bonus, increasing the efficiency of the system.

All I'm saying is that the idea is not completely useless. There ARE niches for it.

Not the same tech.

[denzacar]

Dutch used 2.5 x 3.5 concrete slabs with a solar cell layer on top - for bicycles.

French are supposed to be GLUED ONTO existing asphalt roads AND they are supposedly sturdy enough to handle trucks.
Well... at least regarding weight... no mention of how they handle a truck or a bus slamming on the breaks on that glued on surface.

French already have 'Green' Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing that is clearly missing from the article and reference pieces is an estimation of cost. There is no indication that this will be cost effective in any way. It would likely be much less costly to line roadsides and medians with normal panels.

But alas, for some, cost doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if we maximize the carbon reduction returns for our investments, it is more important to look like you are doing something extraordinary. Look at how wonderful the French are!

This is a project to show the French love Solar electricity to fit in with the environmental movement. France already has a mostly carbon free electrical grid via nuclear power (which isn't cool with the greens), so pretty much CO2 emissions are a solved problem with most of the world looking to get where France already is in about 50 years but they have to spin their wheels doing something... anything... in the meantime.

Heated roads are a product of mental retardation..

[denzacar]

incorporate heating elements

This is the most retarded part of that proposal. Even beyond the "let's put LEDs in it and forgo on paint".

Heat does not magically disappear.
Even should all of the electricity used come from solar sources, melting snow with heat is LITERALLY producing global warming.
Not climate change, not greenhouse effect - putting heaters in the ground and running power through them to evaporate ice and snow.
Literally heating the fucking surface of the globe.

It would probably be more effective AND ecologically sound to simply spray the roads with gasoline and light them on fire.
At least nobody would be driving on the roads while they burn.

Re:Put the solar panels OVER the cars, not under t

[hattig]

1. Car parks during the day have cars parked on them. Cars are packed densely. Cars on roads are actually only a passing phenomenon unless they're stuck in a jam (hint, don't install these panels in area prone to jams).
2. Therefore, you NEED the panels above the cars to generate meaningful power.
3. Also, it has a shading benefit. Which keeps cars cool. Also keeps patron dry.
4. And you can leave gaps for natural downlighting.
5. The structural cost will be cheaper for a giant solar carport than over-road structures.
6. All that stuff about tax perks Firethorn wrote.

So yeah, more car parks should have solar car ports. It's a win-win really, a no brainer.

There are many many many more miles of road than car park available, and they are all fairly similar. They require no supports, just glue. Mass production of the entire installation works, whereas the solar car port requires a different architectural design for every carpark (and maybe planning permission, etc).

Re:Heated roads are a product of mental retardatio

[Nethemas the Great]

You do realize that even in the impossible 100% efficient system, the max thermal emission cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun right? The difference between the black asphalt roadway and the solar powered roadway, is that for most of the year the solar energy is powering homes. Where as the asphalt is serving as a heat island all year long.

All the roads in France

[Lodlaiden]

I thought all the roads in France were lined with trees. Wouldn't this impact the usefulness of the solar panels?

Re:All the roads in France

[HornWumpus]

The Germans will have to learn to march in the sun.

Re:Put the solar panels OVER the cars, not under t

[Anonymous Coward]

Something else to consider for a parking lot with solar panels over the cars. The structure could also contain charging stations for electric vehicles.
Here in Florida I'd be happy to have a solar panel covers walkway from the parking lot to the store. Could leave the umbrella in the car on purpose and not need to buy one in the store if it started to rain when I was ready to leave!

Real world data

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we will have some real world data for this idea.. 1000 km of actual roads isn't a risky move..

What about aliens?

[thogard]

There is a low level but prescient rumor in some area that aliens are damaging windshields in cars. Go look at the windshield of your car and see if there are hundreds of little pits in them.

The pits change the characteristics of the light heating up the inside of the car on a summer day enough that several automotive engineering groups have had to deal with it. Typically it means doing something different with plastic. One example is the plastic covers over those auto belt things in the mid 80s where the plastic was deteriorating faster in cars with more damage to the windshield was mentioned in a an article in an automotive safety journal. The pits also mean the glass gets hotter as it ages so the frame has to compensate.

A vast majority of the pits are caused by tires throwing small bits of rock at an angle to the glass. The small bits of rock also seem to be tracked in from far away and aren't from the local road surface.

So when the light output goes way down, will someone also blame the aliens?

50 Watt for everybody?

[Yanglish]

I very much doubt that you can provide 5 million people with electricity in a climate zone of France. If one Bulb 50 Watt, then maybe.

Nothing more than a pilot project.

[Voice of satan]

As already pointed by another poster, the French press gives a different account.

They already have done a small pilot project with a one kilometre long strip. They say it was a success without going into specifics. They also say that such one kilometre long strip can provide lighting to a 5000 inhabitants small town. Not that it can power it fully. Quite a difference. They add that the project could be extended to the point 1000 km of roads would be equipped that way over a time span of five years.

And i doubt Royal (who is indeed not a very smart person) has five years ahead of her. There is a presidential election in France in 2017 and whether the current socialist excuse for a head of state will stay in place is highly questionable.

You do realize that what you said makes no sense?

[denzacar]

You do realize that even in the impossible 100% efficient system, the max thermal emission cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun right?

Assuming here you're not a climate change denier, only shortsighted.

What 100% efficiency?

Solar power efficiency? Nowhere near that.
Energy transfer efficiency? Impossible. Second law of thermodynamics.
Cannot exceed that which was handed to it by the sun? Not true - because what is stated above.

Electricity used for heating roads could not be 100% solar based even if solar panels could create electricity despite being covered with snow, in the winter, with shorter daylight times and overcast skies.
Thus, energy to melt snow would have to come from other sources.
Being that most of the electricity produced and used today does not come from renewable sources, all that remains are nuclear (which are a tiny percent) and fossil-fuel based electricity.

Ergo, heating up roads can and would mostly be done by burning fossil fuels.
I.e. Pumping both additional heat energy into the system by melting snow with energy not coming from solar sources WHILE pumping greenhouse gasses into it as well.
In other words, for every 100 Watts of electric energy spent to melt the snow, at best ~20 Watts would come from solar sources - everything else would come from traditional sources, most of which are fossil based.

ONLY in the case where ALL electricity everywhere (and energy - you can't just hide heating and cooking and various industrial processes and claim 100% renewable energy use) is produced by renewable sources would that not be true.

And even then, it would be a case of shunting solar energy from the summer side of the planet to try to keep the winter side of the planet warm...
Which even should it be possible (it's not... for both technical and political reasons - like borders and such) would again be a literal case of trapping more solar energy in the form of heat which is pumped into the areas that are supposed to be cold at that time of year.

It's the same thing as using sunlight to grow trees on the sunny side of the planet, then using solar-powered chainsaws to cut them down and chop them up, putting them into solar-powered ovens and making charcoal, then transporting that charcoal in solar-powered vehicles to the dark side of the planet and burning it there.
It's not carbon or energy neutral - additional energy is captured, stored and released into the system at each step.