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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.
Look, if you were doing rolling charging, there might be some point to this. But if you aren't, there isn't. The best place for the panels is at the point of use. The best point of use is at a vehicle charging station where people park during the day, preferably over the top of a parking garage where the panels will have all the positioning advantages and also add shade to the top level of the garage, or on a convenient flat corporate rooftop where it can be serviced without substantial hazard to workers. The best place for a panel will never, ever be a road surface, and it will usually be a roof — just probably not the roof of your home.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The concept of "solar roadways" has already been so thoroughly debunked, it's totally unbelievable that anyone would fund them.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Definitely scammed but i'm not sure they are the first. I think they have had several government grants already.
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.
Theft.
People already steal working train power cables for the copper. You think they're not going to rip up something they can put on the garden shed and get free electricity from?
Next week, they are announcing plans to build a monorail.
Everything about this article is pretty much garbage. Let's pick this apart.
The solar panels are being installed in a sidewalk as a test to see if they might be viable in other places like roads. Nobody is installing solar panels in roads yet.
Potholes shouldn't be an issue because the solar panels include a heating element, which should prevent many issues with thermal expansion and being covered with snow and ice. Despite what Slashdot commenters think, people have actually thought of these problems.
The goal here is to generate electricity and reduce maintenance costs. There are a huge number of interstate and state highways in Missouri. I-70 is in serious need of upgrades to improve the interchanges in the middle of Missouri and to add an extra lane statewide. But it's also necessary to maintain other major highways like I-44, I-55, I-35, I-49, and I-29. Plus you have a lot of state highways, especially in areas like Saint Louis and Kansas City. Then you also have these lettered state highways throughout the state that are roughly similar to the Farm-to-market roads in Texas. And there are also significant upgrades needed for bridges over the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in the Saint Louis area. All of this is pretty damn expensive and, as a result, Missouri's highways aren't as good as the highways in some of the surrounding states.
If you can cut maintenance costs and add another revenue stream, that's a good thing. It's a lot easier than trying to make I-70 a toll road, which has been discussed and met with a lot of opposition. It's not clear if these solar roads are viable, but it's worth testing and finding out.
I am very pro solar power, I believe in the appropriate climates we should have most of our power generated from panels, but this is completely idiotic! Plain ol' durable asphalt has the grip required by tyres and can sort of handle the wear and tear from traffic and weather (lasts a few years), why replace it with something fancy? It is a "solution" searching for a problem. What's wrong with putting panels next to/over the road? Oh, that would be too easy and not costly enough huh? Who in their right mind funded this?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I hear those things are awfully loud...
Monorail! Monorail!
I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Of course, and the panels will be irradiated with vintage solar light, carefully bottled and preserved for so long time!
... to just let them try it and find out for themselves, because scientifically literate people telling someone who supports this all of the entirely valid reasons about why it won't work don't mean squat when a person really *wants* to believe something, and that is blinding them to the arguments against it. The only thing left for them to listen to is their own, hard-knocks experience.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Slow glass
As a highway designer, this concept scares me. To get the optimal solar efficiency, you need a perfectly smooth surface to transmit as much light as possible. However, to provide a safe driving surface, especially in wet conditions, you need a decent amount of friction. How do you add friction? Make the surface rough. Even a small amount of roughness will greatly decrease the solar efficiency.
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.
The concept has been analyzed by several highly respected scientists and engineers, among them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... From engineering points of view, this 'plan' is ludicrous!...a massive waste of money/time/talent ..
Reviewing the above Youtube links will reveal just how stupid the idea really is...
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
There's been a lot of speculation here about reducing thermal expansion. One of the reasons roads in Wisconsin need to be paved so frequently is that they have to be designed to handle a temperature range of -20F to 100F. This means that asphalt roads here have a lot more asphalt. When you look at a southern state, they handle a much narrower temperature range of say 50F to 130F. They can get away with lower asphalt content, which means the roads are more durable. Northern roads also have to content with frost heave, beneath the pavement, which also reduces lifespan. To reduce thermal expansion of the roadway, you'll need to keep the temperature above 50F. Will the solar panels produce enough energy to do that when the air temperature is below 20? Heating the road surface might prevent the soil below it from freezing at the centerline, but along the shoulders you'll still get a lot of frost. That means you have the center of the road behaving very differently from the edges, which will likely lead to much more frequent maintenance.
Sounds like you really have no argument, but you really don't like how his views don't match your own.
So to preserve your ego you must lash out like a rabid dog frothing at the mouth.
PS, this is what happens when schools stop teaching critical thinking skills in favor of gender studies.
I don't care how you 'feel' about solar roadways, they are fucking stupid waste of time and money, and so are you.
Of course, but the people who still think this is a good idea have already seen those reasons and still think that solar roadways will work. They are beyond listening to reason, so the only thing left for them to learn from is their own experience. After they try and it doesn't work, they won't even have the argument that "nobody really knows that it won't work because nobody's tried it".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"I don't care how you 'feel' about solar roadways, but here's how I feel about them and you should listen to me."
Thunderf00t was great when operating rationally. He frequently lets that slip, however, and it's rather obvious when he's arguing from his emotion rather than fact. It was quite strange watching the quality of his videos slide into where they are now, where only a few subjects remain where one can expect any sort of objectivity.
If you don't like thunderf00t, you can try EEVblog, he's covered them as well.
That might be news to him. He works in a lab in Czech Republic. There was a big row recently when a group of activists tried to get him fired with a letter writing campaign that failed.
Sometimes it is a good idea to test this stuff out before jumping into conclusions on why it may be a bad idea.
We are moving from a success reward system to a failure avoidance culture. Lets avoid making things better because there is a chance that someone could make it worse.
Lets try it out, see the failure points and see if those have a workaround.
Vs. hiding our head in fear that it may not work out 100% right at go live.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And by "fucking idiot", you mean "He has a PhD in hard science and decent critical thinking skills and I'm jealous". :D
Ezekiel 23:20
Yes, the Czech Republic...apparently a country with ten million unemployed people. :-p BTW, in .cz, when you criticize feminism and religion, you don't get fired. You get free beer.
Ezekiel 23:20
We already had this discussion.
If you want a long (but informative) rant about why that is utter nonsense - here's mine.
In short - the best they are pulling off today is 36 W, they hope to someday, with the help of magic elves and such, make 52 W.
Only tests they made of using their panels for testing required 72 W.
I'm guessing that's why they ended up testing it on a road in Missouri and not in... say... Wisconsin.
Also, as any melting would be done in the winter, with shorter days and continuous snowfall - clearing the roads with heating would mean "pumping in" electricity from other sources. I.e. Burning coal.
Which would not only create tons of CO2 - it would literally pump water vapor and heat into atmosphere.
As far as "save the planet" ideas go it's somewhere between switching everyone from using electricity to using candles and exploding a bunch of nukes around poles in order to blast more ice into the water to cool the oceans.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Here is the EEVBLOG video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
He makes many interesting points and calls BS on the large number of unsubstantiated claims made by solar roadway nuts.
Unbelievable: they found a sucker. Of course, in this case, the sucker is a bureaucrat paying with other people's money. So that makes it ok.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm not saying that it should be tried because I think there is even the remotest possibility that it will actually turn out to something like how the solar roadways folks painted it. I'm saying it should be tried because all of the reasons why it won't work have already been given, and it's clear that advocates of the concept don't want to listen to them, so all that is left for them to learn from is their own experience of trying it and failing that way.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This would be a great idea if it was on top of the road or by its side, doing this on a road is stupid!
Solar panel efficiency is not the greatest when pointing directly to the sun, with a high transparency and CLEAN glass on top of the silicon, being completely horizontal, with a opaque glass (because tires need to adhere to it, so it needs some texture), and that gets dirty with time will be just pointless.
And there are other factors that makes it even worse, the panel are connected in series, due to the low voltage generated, then in parallel, but if light on a panel is blocked the voltage of that block drops significantly and the series of panels practically drop off the circuit, and in a road you basically have this constantly!
To make it worse, the features this bozos said could be integrated in the panel are ludicrous, like LED signaling or deicing... they simply didn't do the math or a delusional, LEDs have a hard time beating the sun light in broad day light at a distance, even if directed to your eyes, and you know what is capable of using the sun light very efficiently to mark the ground? paint! And don't get me started on deicing, do they have any idea how much energy it takes to melt ice? phase change consumes a immense amount of energy, and do that to millions of tons of ice is much more energy inefficient than just scoop it to the side of the road and wait for higher temperatures to melt it.
Have you ever heard the term ad hominem attack. If you have a problem with his finding then refute the findings. Attacking the man just means you have nothing useful to say.
You may have a point about failure avoidance, but this is pretty clearly a waste of time.
Consider that this is a relatively expensive project which might scrape by in terms of value if it was allowed to actually live through its 35 year lifespan, but it won't. Roads don't last that long, and not just due to wear and tear, but also due to re-routing or other concerns.
There is no good reason to have solar panels as a roadway. Take those solar panels, put them in a field and make an actual centralized plant with them which is economically viable and provides useful amounts of power to the grid where it is required. WTF are we going to do with a road made of this stuff that some solar panels on the side of the road couldn't do already?
Ripping up a well built road is hard work. There's a crew about 200 meters up the street from me now demonstrating that very thing. Six guys, a huge power shovel, several trucks, a bulldozer. Depending on how the solar road is constructed, ripping it up for parts might not be worth the effort/risk.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
"Jones' videos have been thoroughly debunked. The test cycle way in Europe exceeded expectations and proved that the technology is viable."
It produced HALF of the energy produced by the same surface taken as a rooftop or side panel.
"They just have to pay for themselves and then some over their lifetime."
There is no way such marking pay themselves over a such time, when really self reflecting paint do the same job, and repainting is far far easier than a trench or electronic. What happens if it cracks or have a small hole due to winter/summer changes ? Well it slowly fill with water. Is that electronic water proof ? because that paint sure is. So far only test were cycle way which are not too bad. Now try an 18 wheeler.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Depends on if you care about whether you break it, or whether you have to put it back together.
Laying or removing tons of copper cables under sleepers, through bedded gravel, and under track isn't easy either. But the usual technique involves a crowbar to make a start, a winch, a van and driving off with whatever it was that you wanted - usually still attached until you come along with diamond saw to chop off how much you need.
I don't see how that same tactic wouldn't work with solar panels on a road.
Even if what you say about him is true (and it isn't as far as I've seen), what bearing does that have on what he has said? I don't need an old youtuber to tell me that solar roadways are a stupid idea. Next time attack the argument instead of the person. Better yet, how, in your words, would solar roadways work? Maybe if you perform this mental exercise you will realize why you sound so stupid.
As one possibility - think solar-powered car charging stations along the highways across the great plains. There's no power lines in many such places, just endless fields of wheat, corn, etc. Putting panels along the side of the road would require first buying the land from the megacorps that already own it. Also, those roads are unlikely to be rerouted any time soon - they're mostly straight lines running hundreds of miles between the only things of interest in areas unlikely to get any more interesting. As a bonus, being the only available source of electricity in the middle of nowhere means such charging stations could sell their power for considerably more than the market rate, making economic feasibility far more attainable. Sure, EV drivers could choose longer alternate routes, or carefully budget their charge between towns, but a charging station in the middle of nowhere is a lot more accommodating, and it's not like a single recharge is particularly expensive, even at inflated rates.
I will agree that, at present, solar roadways are likely going to be hard pressed to be economically viable - but the technology is only going to get better - assuming we give it a chance by actually putting it to work in at least limited contexts. And frankly there's almost 18,000 square miles of roads in the US - mostly empty space just going to waste when a car isn't actually passing over it. It would be nice if we could actually put all that wasted space to use.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I''m not "so quick" to suggest that... all of the perfectly valid reasons for why the logistics of solar roadways is not viable have been given, repeatedly. People that are still advocating it aren't listening to mathematics or science, they are going with their own feelings, even though they will deny it.
The only thing left to convince them they are wrong at this point is personal experience. After they fail to make it really work, they will have that first hand knowledge that may keep them from making similar mistakes in the future.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Let me ask your question a different way: Would you take investment advice from a homeless person?
Well, that's an irrelevant question. Dr. Mason is an actual scientist, but he wouldn't need to be. A sophomore could tell me the same thing and I'd listen to him because the evidence stands on its own. If a homeless man came up to me and told me not to invest in something because of x and y reasons, and he backed those reasons up with sound arguments, yes, I'd listen to him. Maybe he's homeless because he was scammed in a similar way.
Would you be concerned if the surgeon who was about to operate on you had prison tattoos and canker sores?
But I have been seen by a doctor with tattoos, which is odd for me because many people in my country don't have tattoos. It turned out he used to be in the military. But you see, the things you suggested might be pointers to incompetence are not found with Dr. Mason. The problem comes when you realize that you attacked Dr. Mason because he disagrees with you on an internet fight, not because he's been dismissed from academia, or because he's published false data, or anything like that. So again, how about you tell me how you think solar roadways would work? This should be easy for you, since you're not a homeless person and I assume you've taken at least one course in basic physics. As much as you try, you can't trick me. I am from a country with people far trickier than you.
For the record, I'm not recommending anyone take Taylor Swift's opinions on string theory seriously either.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because his points on this issue are well thought out.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Have you figured out how doing this has made you a hypocrite who's functionally no different from Thunderf00t or any other shrill whiny gamergater?
Or do you need it spelled out for you?
So put the solar panels above the roadway. Something like this but scaled up over the entire road rather than just a bike lane. The main disadvantage of roadway solar panels is that they can't be angled thus are inherently less efficient, but putting them above lets you angle them. Plus it requires no change to the road technology itself (that problem has been solved for a while).
These work best in parking lots, where the solar panels charge up free charges for electric cars and trucks.
Don't have to do it in the entire lot, so that the solar panel area can be swept clean by broom trucks (rotating brooms on a cylinder) instead of with snow plows, or do this as car canopy areas to avoid overheating and snow. Angle them to the correct pitch and there you go.
That makes sense. You can even put the batteries inside the poles to hold the charge.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So the MoDOT is the first large party to be scammed by this project!
It's really hard to say without looking exactly at what is in the proposal.
The highway right-of-way is much wider than the actual road travelled; you could put a lot of solar roadway on the parts of the road that aren't routinely driven upon nor snowplowed.
One of the main points of engineering is to take something that currently doesn't work and improve upon it to make it work. The problem is that we don't currently know why it won't work which is why it's necessary to start small and then scale up.
Until Los Angeles suddenly loses power twice every day at rush hour.
Kroger Marketplace in Phoenix uses this tech the right way, paving its parking lot with them but OVER the cars. Shaded parking in Arizona is a perk usually reserved for Doctors' Row.
Sometimes it is a good idea to test this stuff out before jumping into conclusions on why it may be a bad idea.
And sometimes, it's good to make just some ballpark guesstimate before jumping into the first "freaking" meme-filled kickstarter project.
And regarding the Solar Roads, there's simply no way that the numbers could add up.
So either:
A. - The creators actually have a few big not-yet announced technological surprises up their sleeves that they'll releave as a last minute surprise
(which isn't entirely impossible: there's a lot of research being done on solar pannels' efficiency, LEDs efficiency, etc.)
And that would explain why the estimets under estimate the project.
B. - The ceators are way over-optimistic and are hoping too much.
The estimation are right and the project will only work for a very limited definition of work (like the tile barely able to power themselves. Not replacing all the coal power plants and powering thousands of home).
Given how much hype-driven this campaign looks like, I might be, there's a high chance that we're witnessing "B".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They got about half of the power you'd get from putting the solar panels on a roof.
Which (= panels on a roof) is exactly what some people in (south) Korea seem to be trying to experiment with.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Address your lack of units to the "creators" of said "solar roadways".
All the numbers are quoted directly from their site. So they refer "per hexagon".
But who cares - cause their "invention" simply doesn't provide the power needed to melt the snow.
Not even their updated "48 W" version, which still doesn't come close to the power they had to pump into the heaters to melt the snow.
Which is a thing their FAQ no longer mentions. It just talks about how awesome it is to melt snow - by the power drawn from the grid.
I.e. By burning coal to melt ice and snow and heat up air.
They are using the same exact language as back when they listed the fact that they had to use 72 W to melt the snow off of a 36 W producing hexagon - except there's no more talk about any actual numbers.
Measured or projected.
But they still say "the panels will not be heated to the extent of being warm to the touch" - just like back when "72-watts... was an overkill and made the surface warm to the touch on most winter days".
I guess that after their "experiment with different voltages at different temperatures" they came up with the solution.
Which is clearly NOT TO MENTION how much power the whole thing would draw from the grid in order to melt the snow and ice.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That would indeed be the primary competition.
The first question would be which strategy has the better amortized cost effectiveness in the long term - over-road structures come with their own non-negligible construction and maintenance costs, and may be more attractive targets for thieves as well. Anyone seriously considering deploying large-scale solar roadways today would probably go that route, but I don't know of anyone doing so, do you? Meanwhile pilot projects such as this are generally designed to stress-test prototype technologies to gain a better understanding of the engineering challenges they face in the real world, if they can break even on investment themselves that's an added bonus.
Over-road solar may never make sense - the cost of roofing over highways is likely too high to be cost effective, even if the solar aspect was free. Structural engineering is a fairly mature technology, and unlikely to get considerably cheaper any time soon. Solar roadways though may have the potential to eliminate those structural costs so that, once mature, they could offer a considerably cheaper alternative. At least as good a cause to spend political pork on as most recipients.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Why not you fucking patriarch?!
Go look at EEVBlog instead. Unlike thunderf00t, Dave Jones isn't a raging MRA piece of shit.
Eat the rich.
Oh, that's not true in this case... educated people already *do* know why it won't work. The problem is that that there are people still think it would be a good idea despite having heard all of those reasons... they *want* to believe it will work, and this is blinding them to the realities of exactly why it won't work. They believe that the reasons that have been given for why it won't work simply will not apply to solar roadways, despite being unable to give any rational basis for why the reasons it won't work will somehow not apply to it. Since these people are ultimately just listening to their own feelings on a matter, after they try and fail, they will at least have the evidence of their own experience to substantiate that it won't work. While it's not a sure thing that a single experience of failure will necessarily convince the most sincere believers, it's still got a better chance of doing so than repeating all the reasons they've already heard.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The heating element i assume is to reduce temperature extreme to reduce the level of expansion and contraction that can cause heavy damage.
This is not a project based on science or engineering.
This is a happy-flower-candy-unicorn project to save the deer and make everything happy-skippy-nice.
They have LED lights in it in order to light up the fucking animals crossing the road.
http://solarroadways.com/faq.s...
Solar Roadways® panels have an integrated heating component. The heating system in Solar Roadways® maintains a temperature above freezing. This keeps the road free of snow and ice. Since more than 70% of the U.S. population lives in snowy regions, this system is crucial to maintain safe road conditions. The implementation of a heated roadway system would also save a significant amount of time in snow removal. The electricity required to run the heating elements will vary from location to location. Every effort has been made to make sure only the minimal amount of energy is expended in keeping snow and ice from accumulating.
For homeowners SR can provide safe and efficient walking and parking surfaces. Shoveling and plowing are time consuming and shoveling can result in injuries. Many homeowners bear the expense of purchasing snow removal equipment or pay others to plow for them. Heated driveways, walkways, paths, patios, etc. would provide safer walking and driving surfaces that require less maintenance. With the implementation of SR, homeowners would be saved from winter inconveniences.
...
Each panel's heating element and LEDs are driven by the grid/storage system, not by the solar cells directly. The solar cells place the harvested energy on the grid/storage system. The systems are independent of one another. This is important because the heaters/LEDs must work at night when the solar cells are incapable of producing power.
I.e. They will be pumping in coal-powered heat and light in order to light up the deer and melt the snow and ice.
Pouring gasoline on the road and setting it on fire would probably be more ecological and "green".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you think roads have to be repaved only once a decade you have never lived in an area where it snows. We have to repave our roads every year or two here in WV. The primary reason for this is dealing with the snow. Salt is terrible for asphalt and concrete. Running plows on them is even worse.