Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sandpoint Town Square Home To First Public Solar Roadways Panel Installation (newatlas.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the go-towards-to-the-light dept.

Two years after the Idaho-based company Solar Roadways exceeded its crowdfunding goal of $1 million for constructing roads that gather solar power, the company has completed its first public installation in the City of Sandpoint, Idaho, where there are 30 tiles currently installed. New Atlas reports: The 150 sq ft (14 sq m) installation in Sandpoint's Jeff Jones Town Square is made up of 30 SR3 panels. Where Solar Roadways' second generation prototype was a 36-watt panel, the SR3 is the same size but is rated at 48 W, made possible by replacing the panel mounting holes with edge connectors. The new units each include four heating elements to help keep the installation free of snow and ice and over 300 brighter, daylight readable LEDs with over 16 million available colors. Though now laid down and switched on, not everything went exactly to plan with the installation. Manufacturing difficulties meant that some of the SR3 panels were not fully operational at the time of the public reveal. The working units were placed in the center of the grid and surrounded by dead panels. Solar Roadways aims to swap out the non-working units as soon as possible. Sandpoint officials plan to allow the public to interact with and modify the light show soon, and future plans for the town square include free public Wi-Fi and the roll out of electric vehicle charging stations. You can view the live stream of the Solar Roadways installation here.

6 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. "free of snow and ice" by networkBoy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    just how much snow and ice melting does it take to turn these into a net negative rather than positive generator of energy?

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  2. It's a bit expensive...And for what? by bobbied · · Score: 3, Insightful

    150 Square Feet of roadway for a cool $1 Million and nearly half of them don't work yet? Sounds like a pretty expensive road to me.

    So, what exactly is the point of this little experiment anyway?

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  3. Too many problems to even be able to quantify by bradgoodman · · Score: 1, Insightful

    2 years - and the most feasible thing they have is 150 sq ft? These look shiny. I'm guessing that means bad traction. They look thin. They are not letting cars or anything heavy on them. Won't the "heaters" take an impractical amount of power? If not, why not put heaters on *all* roads regardless of Solar Roadways. They don't think the complex wiring infrastructure (trenches) required in their initial description will be a problem for major, large-scale installation, but didn't do that here? I could go on a lot more...

    1. Re:Too many problems to even be able to quantify by bobbied · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Install these on a real roadway and I guarantee they will be gravel within a day. Steal plate that thin would get messed up by the onslaught of loaded trucks, these things don't stand a chance.

      They haven't a clue about what it really takes to make a durable road, much less what it's going to take to keep a solar panel working as you drive trucks over it at highway speeds... It's obvious from looking at their stuff, and I'm just a guy who got his Electrical Engineering degree and who's roommate was getting his civil engineering degree....

      Then there is the whole, how much energy are you going to collect under a blanket of snow/ice/mud and how on earth could it be enough to melt it faster than the traditional sand, salt and plowing with the sun shining down on a dark colored road?

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  4. Re:Do the math... by Rakarra · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Here's the problem -- this makes the roads much much much more expensive. Heavy vehicles operating on the roadways degrade them fairly quickly. Heavy vehicles on the road's surface will very quickly degrade their solar efficiency. How are workers supposed to dig into the roads to install cables, lay need sewer lines/etc?

    Think about how many roads around your city or town are in poor condition because "there's no money to fix the roads." And that's for extremely cheap asphalt. "Underfunding municipal projects" is a problem I don't think we're ever going to solve.

  5. When logic isn't enough... by XSportSeeker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It wasn't enough for logic and a bunch of engineers and whatnot to put this idiocy to the ground, I guess they needed to make a public test that will obviously fail hard and never go beyond the prototype phase.

    I hope this finally leaves dumb politicians and a bunch of people with too money to spare before doing proper research with enough proof not to waste more money and time with this.

    People could literally contribute more by putting that money into LED lights for their homes or tested and tried real solutions like solar panels on their roofs.

    I'm not saying we shouldn't try new things, but nothing about the Solar Roadways idea is new, and nothing about it is worth testing. There is no new concept there. There is no component of it or idea that has not been considered before and discarded due to infeasibility. This is the glass sword idea. It might look cool to some, but there are just so many reasons why you'd never do it that it's plain stupid to even try.

    There's just too many people defending the idea because "we have to try to see if it works" or something. Try to eat your own poop to see if it's tasty. Oh, you don't want to? Why? Have you ever even tried it? Perhaps it's great and you don't know!