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Historic Route 66 To Feature Solar Road Technology (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has announced plans to upgrade a small stretch of the historic Route 66 roadway with solar-powered panels. The panels, which are created by Solar Roadways, can support the weight of cars, feature built-in LEDs to create light-up road markings, and can be used to generate electricity to donate back to the grid. The company has won a number of contracts with the U.S. Department of Transportation, though it's unlikely we'll see solar-powered roadways throughout the country anytime soon. MoDOT said it hopes to lay the first panels starting with the Historic Route 66 Welcome Center by the end of the year, The Kansas City Star reports. SolarCity released a new report recently that says their solar power systems have a usable lifetime of at least 35 years, which is 40% longer than what the market expects.
Perhaps before adoption as roadways, these panels might be put to use as sidewalks. In just our place alone, we have over 800 square feet of sidewalk. Its also the area on our property that receives the most insolation.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This really is the most moronic idea I have ever seen. Glass is not exactly on the list of best materials to use for:
1) high traffic areas
2) load bearing capacity
3) coefficient of friction, especially when wet
That last part is especially laughable when you consider their solution, a pattern of pimple-like bumps on the top. Ok, so those will last exactly as long as the first snowfall, at which point the plough will make it rather smooth again. And, of course, as anyone knows, rough roads will produce lower gas milage, so the effect of this surface might be to use *more* energy.
And everyone really needs to go and look at their youtube videos where they show how it's wired up, which requires a trench to be dug under the roadway and kept waterproof because it's stuffed with expensive non-waterproof electronics.
What a joke.
Thunderf00t (Phil Mason) is an unemployed gamergator post-doc who spends his life posting about someone named Anita (with whom he appears to be obsessed). Why would you get his explanation on anything other than tips about living comfortably in a basement?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Jones' videos have been thoroughly debunked. The test cycle way in Europe exceeded expectations and proved that the technology is viable.
Jones' mistake is that he doesn't understand the economics. Most of the cost of paving a road is not the surface material, it's the labour and the equipment. Solar road surfaces might not be optimal for producing energy, but they don't have to be. They just have to pay for themselves and then some over their lifetime. I don't know about these guys, but in Europe Colas has developed Wattway which they claim is easier to install over existing road surfaces.
You have to look at the whole lifecycle of the road surface to see why this is potentially a good idea. Of course the technology has to be fully proven under real conditions, but so far it's looking good and several major companies are investing a lot of money to develop it.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If the marginal cost of making a road a solar road is $x / Watt of installed capacity, and the number of Watt-hours generated over the expected lifetime adds up to a value of $y, and x > y, then the labor and equipment cost doesn't matter. It's never worth it.
You're demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding about opportunity costs and percentages which is all too common (and is a large part of how marketers exploit people's purchasing habits to upsell you). That if a cost of an option exceeds its benefit, that you can somehow make it worthwile by reducing its percentage share of the overall cost. i.e. When a product is 100% of the cost, it's not worth it. But if you add it onto another much more expensive purchase, it's now "only" 1% of the cost and that somehow makes it now worth it. Yes the percentage got smaller, but it's irrelevant. You're comparing against an absolute benefit, so you need to use the absolute cost to make a proper comparison. No those floor mats aren't worth $150. But add them onto a $25,000 car, and suddenly people will pay it because it only adds 0.6% to the price of the car.
You can argue that the cost of a solar road surface is reduced compared to plain panels because the people making the road would be doing the labor anyway, and that it's no additional work to lay down the PV material since (for installation purposes) it behaves similar to other material they're already using to make the road (I dunno, I haven't read up on solar roads). Or you could argue the PV material replaces some other material they're using to build the road, and so represents less additional cost than just the PV material alone. But you cannot argue that it somehow magically becomes worth it because you're tacking on a bunch of other costs (labor and equipment) which you would be paying for anyway.
Another crucial aspect here is that electricity cost is about 20-35 cents/kWh in Europe, while it's only 11.5 cents/kWh in the U.S. So a solar project that's marginally "worth it" in Europe can be a total money loser in the U.S. (unless you're in Hawaii).