Are Glowing, Solar Smart Roads the Future? 193
cartechboy (2660665) writes "We were just talking about glow-in-the-dark roads and how they were having issues already. Now there's a company called Solar Roadways that's looking to make glowing, solar, smart roads. Back in 2009 the Department of Transportation awarded Solar Roadways $100,000 to prototype road systems with embedded digital signage and dividing lines, all powered by the sun. As it turns out, the company's prototype performed well — so well that Solar Roadways is now looking to go big-time, and it's asking for your help to do so. At the heart of the Solar Roadways project sit a vast number of hexagonal tiles. The bottom of those tiles consist of solar panels and circuit boards, covered with a thick sheet of tempered glass. The panels contain LED lights, which can be configured to mark traffic lanes, send messages, or fulfill other functions. The panels also have heating elements to help melt snow and ice during colder months. Are these smart roads the future, or just another pipe dream?"
Pipe Dream I suspect (Score:5, Insightful)
What is going to prevent these plates from getting scratched and rendered useless shortly by studded tires, gravel, snow plows, etc.
i think solar roof tiles is a much better idea.
Re:Pipe Dream I suspect (Score:5, Funny)
What is going to prevent these plates from getting scratched and rendered useless shortly by studded tires, gravel, snow plows, etc.
Flying cars, of course.
Re: (Score:2)
I very much agree with you. You should put solar panels where they can catch most sunlight. These tiles are a funny gadget for some architects to make a small-scale project (a driveway somewhere, or maybe the entrance for a theme park). But as a large scale energy source, this is hopeless.
1. The efficiency of the solar panels is reduced because of lots of dirt, and because of the very thick glass protection on top of it.
--> As a result of the lower efficiency, the solar panels will not be an interesting
Re:Pipe Dream I suspect (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do scratches need to be prevented?
Scratched glass is still glass. There are century-old glass sidewalks that still let plenty of light into the tunnels below. As long as the tile only needs a sufficiently-small percentage of the energy it receives, it will continue to function. Display visibility from vehicles would be the biggest problem, but that would function much like the paint under a hockey arena. Even though the lines may not have perfect edges and appear beautiful, they'll still be functional to show where the edge of a lane is.
Re: (Score:2)
The first place to start is just to actually put solar on all the convenient flat roofs where solar is viable. There's lots of space on malls and so on that could have solar panels that nobody would even be able to see except from the air.
Re: (Score:2)
Glass is a lot tougher than people think. This glass especially - it takes a quarter million tons to crack it. They broke the testing machine.
Re: (Score:2)
If the road is going to melt the snow then why on earth would you need these?
You say that as if the two ideas are mutually exclusive which of course they're not.
What I find distasteful is that they are asking for donations, that is not the way to run a business. FFS if you want money then get investors, don't be asking people for t
Re: (Score:2)
No one has mentioned earthquakes. A strong quake would probably destroy a road like this.
Re: (Score:2)
I have put in driveway snowmelt systems and a typically driveway needs at a minimum ~100 kbtu/hr boiler to keep the driveway clear. Scaling that up to a road way and it would be astronomical.
Re: (Score:2)
Really what would work better would be energy from waste, sadly the nimby's want nothing to do with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Even waste heat is difficult to use. Sure there is a lot of waste heat around but the trick is to concentrate and transport the heat to where it is needed. Waste heat dissipates quickly.
Re: (Score:2)
How about vibrations from the cars and trucks passing over them? On a busy highway that would create plenty of energy.
Re: (Score:2)
We'll the idea is that these roads are part of the power grid so in theory they get their energy from areas that's still sunny to help melt the road where it's icy.
Re: (Score:2)
The "get it from sunny areas" is a simplistic solution. Sunny areas may be far away (transmission capacity/loss), The sunny areas may actually be quite cloudy( low capacity), the sunny area may be in peak usage and not have extra to sent other places.
Re:Pipe Dream I suspect (Score:5, Informative)
I have put in driveway snowmelt systems and a typically driveway needs at a minimum ~100 kbtu/hr boiler to keep the driveway clear. Scaling that up to a road way and it would be astronomical.
That was my thought as well. Phase change is a bitch, so I anticipated this was a marketing gimmick. I decided to run some quick calculations to determine how much snow could be melted by a 1 m^2 solar heating roadway plate thing.
Solar Roadways is in Idaho, so I decided to use their location for stats. I decided to use an average insolation value [solar-electric.com] of 2 kWh/day in December in Idaho. I disregarded the fact that these plates won't be tilted to compensate for latitude, which will give the roadway an artificially improved performance stat. I used an enthalpy of fusion for water [wikipedia.org] as 334 kJ/kg. I used a 50 kg/m^3 value for the density of freshly-fallen snow [sciencelearn.org.nz]. Finally, I decided to let the road panel have a 15% PV efficiency as well as a 100% solar panel coverage (neither of which is likely to be realistic for a road tile thing, but again this is in favor of the roadway panel).
So, how much snow can this melt per day? Call it 6.5 cm [google.com]. In practice, I'm guessing the answer is closer to "0", because the instant the panel is covered by snow it will cease generating energy. Also, snowstorms are not known to occur during bright, bright, sunshiny days. It seems Solar Roadways expects their panels to be hooked to the grid and pull power to melt snow.
Therefore, this exercise devolves to "why haven't we installed electric radiant heat in our existing roadways to melt snow?"
Well, if we have a four lane standard US highway (12 ft lanes) and we need to melt that same 6.5 cm of freshly fallen snow, it would require 4.4 MWh [google.com] (yes, megawatt-hours). In Idaho, it looks like an average wholesale rate for 1 MWh of electricity [eia.gov] is approximately $150. So... call it $600 per km to melt a few cm of snow... once? And this is for light, fluffy, happy snow, not the slushy sleety shit that has the density of neutronium and gives grandpa a heart attack when he tries to shovel it.
Unless I dropped a few orders of magnitude here (please let me know if I did), it seems the answer to this is "just use the fucking salt instead, like we have been doing." In conclusion, perhaps the LED roadway is useful, but the snow melting bit really seems to be a gimmick.
Re: (Score:2)
This is basically the same reason why Munich does not have a maglev train (Transrapid) from the city to the airport. It is not because it is not technically feasible, the Shanghai installation proves that, but because it is not economically sensible. In the case of the Transrapid the train is almost a permanent magnet and the track is "intelligent" and pushes the train along the line. This means that the track needs lots of copper and a good number of circuits to control the magnetic field. The train costs
Re: (Score:2)
So, how much snow can this melt per day? Call it 6.5 cm. In practice, I'm guessing the answer is closer to "0", because the instant the panel is covered by snow it will cease generating energy.
Whilst I doubt the practicality of these panels, this is not an issue, as the panels are connected to the grid. They may or may not be generating more power than they use over the course of the year, but they certainly don't have to be at a single point in time.
Re: (Score:2)
Whilst I doubt the practicality of these panels, this is not an issue, as the panels are connected to the grid. They may or may not be generating more power than they use over the course of the year, but they certainly don't have to be at a single point in time.
Unless they manage to bring down the cost of electrical power by several orders of magnitude it's not feasible to use electrical heat to melt snow on roadways. As the OP pointed out, it requires a 30 kW (thermal) boiler for a driveway snowmelt system. I provided links to my snow melt cost per km calculation. Feel free to substitute your own values for power cost, snow scenarios, etc.
There's a reason we don't do it today. As I said, phase change is a bitch.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you miss the part where I said I doubted the practicality of the panels. I was just pointing out a single point in your argument that didn't hold water. The panels don't have to generate the electricity for the heating.
Your calculations, I'm happy to accept at face value as I don't care enough to check them.
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you suppose the other 85% of the incoming solar radiation goes? A small fraction of it is reflected back out (solar cells are not perfect black bodies, after all), but most of it just gets absorbed and turned into heat. So, in that sense, these tiles would be largely the same as blacktop
Re:Pipe Dream I suspect (Score:5, Insightful)
Using solar PV for keeping snow off roads would be dumb. Thanks for pointing that out, Captain Obvious.
Your "Captain Obvious" comments would be better directed to Solar Roadways, who are marketing this PV system and touting its electrically-powered snow melting functionality (again, apparently grid-tied power draw to provide the radiant heat). "We designed our panels so the heaters are driven by the grid..."
I'm not entirely convinced they're legit, given this apparent cost of operation oversight (or misleading marketing). I will also note that they are using indiegogo to beg for donations rather than kickstarter. With indiegogo they get to keep all donated monies even if they don't reach their goal. They are trying to get money to scale up for production, but they claim they don't have any idea what their production costing would be. So, that's also "interesting".
Read their FAQ. For example, they claim their tiles can't be stolen because the other tiles in the roadway would wirelessly track a removed tile. Apparently they haven't heard of Faraday cages, either. If meth heads can manage to perform organic chemistry, I guarantee they can rig a functional Faraday cage.
Re: (Score:2)
If meth heads can manage to perform organic chemistry
It's not the meth-heads that do the organic chemistry, it's down on their luck chemistry teachers...
Re: (Score:2)
It's on Kickstarter, so that alone makes it about 50% likely to be a scam.
Re: (Score:2)
It's on Kickstarter, so that alone makes it about 50% likely to be a scam.
I agree with the rule of thumb, but you are also incorrect about it being on Kickstarter. As I remarked above, they are begging on Indiegogo rather than KS.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for listing some additional factors I hadn't considered. The power draw requirements were enormous by my calculations, and it appears I underestimated them by at least an order of magnitude. I have encountered these Solar Roadways types of people before... they are very "cowboy". Gung-ho, enthusiastic, etc, but they never bothered to do the basic analysis of what would be involved to make their system viable. Apparently, per their FAQ, their gauge of "hot enough to operate as a snowmelt" is based on
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
they claim that they wont need to be plowed because they are heated. if that claim is true studded tires and snow plows shouldn't be on them really
IF the claims they make are all true then i think it has potential
People put on snow tires as a part of Fall, wither needed nor not. They will have them on when they cross these plates, as they aren't global yet or even city wide. You can't ask someone to remove their studs before crossing over them - you can detour them.
Re:Pipe Dream I suspect (Score:4, Insightful)
snow tiers != studded tires
The tires you leave on from around October to March are definitely not studded tires. Having studded tries sound like a really bad idea until you are close or below the freezing point. The studs provide little to none traction on a road with no snow or ice. The reason why you have winter / summer tires is because the rubber has different optimal operating temperatures. In summer with winter tires they are to sticky and you waste fuel, in winter with summer tires they are to rigid and you have only little traction.
The places where you have a snow cover for multiple months on end it may make sense to have studded tires, since you won't need to put on snow chains. But then you are normally forced (and it is sensible) to a rather low speed when you have studded tires by law.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct -- the tires I leave on from October to March aren't studded. Unfortunately there are a not-insignificant number of idiots here in the Seattle area (and, I'm sure, in other places) that *do* run studded tires for no good reason at all, so that is still a very real concern.
Re: (Score:2)
Same here, a bit further south in Oregon. For what amounts to maybe 1/2" of snow a year, if it even snows at all, we have people running studded tires the entire legally allowed season 'just in case'.
These same people complain about the terrible shape the roads are in, and also complain about any tax
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All year tires work too...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to melt snow off a road during a -20 blizzard? It is not practical on many areas. Unless all the roads are snow and ice free there will still be use for studded tires/chains.
Re: (Score:2)
Shit doesn't work (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Shit doesn't work (Score:3, Informative)
According to this article, unless I didn't read it correctly, the solar technology they're talking about involves solar panels under a glass surface roadway. The article you cite only references the use of glow in the dark paint.
Re: (Score:2)
That seems like a bad idea. Roads take a lot of abuse.
Why not make mile markers and guardrails with small windmills on them. The drafts from traffic would drive the generators.
They do this in Japan; kinda. The reflectors on the roadside use the drafts from cars to spin a protective disc that cleans the reflectors. It's not 100%, but nothing ever is...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You are citing the Daily Fail on a solar story? You know they hate anything "eco", right?
Yeah, it has had some issues with moisture. Prototypes often have issues, that's why you prototype things.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not defending Solar Roadways, mind you, as much as I'd love to see this being used and working perfectly as intended across the world, I don't really think it's going to happen any time soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck on getting that anyway. Here, they don't even use the paint with the reflective balls in it. Hence road markings disappear with a little rain. The roads are pretty good otherwise though.
Costs?!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen a pile of articles on this, and never once in them has anybody even scratched the topic of cost. Which would kind of be important, one would thing. Turns out, they don't know or aren't saying. From their FAQ:
"We are not yet able to give numbers on cost. We are still in the midst of our Phase II contract with the Federal Highway Administration and we'll be analyzing our prototype costs near the end of our contract which ends in July, 2014. Afterward, we'll be able to do a production-style cost analysis."
There are a hundred billion cool ideas out there, but if they're not cost effective than who cares?
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually the easiest part to solve. Just put ads onto the road surface!
Now combine this with cameras or other sensors that identify the cars and tailor the ads to the drivers' interests. Ka-ching!
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
You have to reach the $1,000 reward tier before they'll send you even a 4-inch hexagon of the surface glass as a reward. I'm going to guess that their processes are not in the dollars-per-square foot range.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think the reward is tied to the overall success of the funding campaign. And the target date for receiving the reward is October. Hardly enough time to ramp up a full production facility by then.
tl;dr You're getting a prototype
Re: (Score:2)
Like many pipe dreams... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... only optimum conditions are envisioned. I did not see any attention paid to less than optimum conditions. As such, this project fails before it even starts.
According to article and videos; optimum conditions are without asphalt road ways. All through those videos I was waiting for the structure of the road this pieces of glass would be laid on. Never came up and I see it as another major expense.
The glass can't shift - asphalt out, can't be put on lines of concrete road ways (expansion/contraction).
Never did they refer to it, as after the hook is set, monies collected, it's mentioned a whole new roadway must be prepared for these things. (Or close). Point- re
Idiots. IDIOTS! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I am constantly surprised we aren't working harder to have three dimensional travel --and not need to build/maintain all of this infrastructure.
Re: (Score:3)
Then you simply don't understand the laws of physics. Moving something in the air requires fighting gravity constantly, our methods of doing so are far less efficient than the energy lost when matter itself is physically converted to energy fighting gravity, which is so tiny that its effectively undetectable outside of stars.
Re: (Score:2)
Moving something in the air requires fighting gravity constantly ...
Give These guys [wikipedia.org] a call - I'm sure they can be available constantly for such an important task.
Re: (Score:2)
No it's not. the #1 problem is morons that are elected trying to make budgets. none of them are accountants, most can barely walk and chew gum at the same time.
Until we drastically increase the IQ of elected officials as well as increase their honesty level everything will stay a mess.
Re: (Score:2)
We've too many roads going to too many places that don't justify the expense of dropping 40 million a mile. And it is about aging.
It's a rolling problem. We started out with town roads, then county roads, then state roads, then interstates. And we happily kept building more. But the roads fall apart on a steady schedule even as we merrily throw down more. What happens is you spend more every year just to keep up what your great-grandfather made, your grandfather made, your father made, and eventually the b
Re: (Score:2)
BS. Thank you for the classic "what about the children" argument. We are not talking about a few dollars here and there but more like billions. There is no way to make the roads completely safe and spending billions on an unattainable goal is just waste.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Republican states, almost invariably, pay less to the federal kitty than the federal kitty pays back. They've great roads because they're on federal road welfare.
What about sidewalks and driveway? (Score:3)
I think this would make for an excellent driveway/sidewalk material. It could have motions detectors and be used as lights. During the day, it would work as solar panels. Sidewalks and driveways cost around $5/sq ft for concrete and $10/sq ft for bricks. I think it they cost around $15/sq ft I think a lot of people would go for it, esp if they already have other solar equipment in the house.
I'm sure lots of specialty uses are possible - like casinos or paving Main St with this so it looks really fancy.
I know road budgets are astronomical and so, I would think it would depend a lot on how much these cost to make, maintain and replace. In most cases, labor is at least half the cost and so, it would depend on how much more expensive these are than asphalt.
Re: (Score:2)
That is exactly what their plan is. Start with sidewalks and parking lots to learn and work all the kinks out of the system before moving on to roadways.
Does it fix the main problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Our roads need to be repaired almost constantly. How does this improve the situation? How about a dumb road that does it's job for 80 years straight?
WTF is wrong with you? (Score:5, Funny)
What the fuck?
Can't you see from the video that these roads are made from hexagons?
And they glow in the dark?
And if these roads get damaged, it can electrocute common nuisances like earthworms, birds, little kids and the like?
And all of these features are solar powered, so you know it is green (except for the toxic chemicals in the solar panels these things deposit in the water supply when it rains).
People like you are why we don't have progress and why some little kids in Asia are choking on smog and you don't care, which makes you a jerk!
Re: (Score:3)
As far as roads go, here's an opportunity to leverage a massive area of square footage that is guaranteed to be clear of plants or other obstructions, that would benefit from power a
Re: (Score:3)
"As far as roads go, here's an opportunity to leverage a massive area of square footage that is guaranteed to be clear of plants or other obstructions"
Uh...no, it's actually guaranteed to be obstructed frequently, by cars, leaves, snow and ice (the suggestion of melting these away is absurd, there's nowhere near enough power for it), dust and dirt, machine grime, nearby trees, its own textured surface, etc. In addition, with all the stuff embedded in them and the enormous quantity of modules needed, things
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say it couldn't be done. I said it was a terrible idea, and that your claimed advantage (guarantee of being free from obstruction) didn't actually exist. The same solar cells placed in a solar farm located in a sunny area without a thick layer of textured, dirty glass, leaves, vehicles, etc between them and the sun could easily produce several times the output. The electronics and cabling used to collect the power and convert it to a useful form would be put to far better use in such a farm, in a r
Re: (Score:2)
But roads are like your skin. Or like the tires on your car.
Roads absorb wear and tear. Roads need constant attention. Roads get potholes.
Your skin constantly grows and absorbs wear and tear. Tires absorb wear and tear and need replaced on a regular basis. Roads have to take a ton of abuse.
Re: (Score:2)
After all, we're chasing the benchmarks established by plants.
You can't be serious. Even the commonly used panels are about an order of magnitude more efficient than plants. If plants are our benchmark, we surpassed it ages ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Rush Limbaugh posts here?
Re: (Score:2)
Our roads need to be repaired almost constantly. How does this improve the situation? How about a dumb road that does it's job for 80 years straight?
The dumb roads around here get stripped and resurfaced about every 5 years, and we don't even have things like snow and ice to age them. Just sun and traffic.
80 years????
Re:Does it fix the main problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Long-lived roads are too labor and time intensive to build.
Germany seems to manage. But then again, they put their road work out to bid, and generally award the contract to whoever offers the longest warranty. If the state itself is doing the work, they don't have to compete on price or labor efficiency, and it's in the best interests of the people doing the work to consider their future employment options by doing a crappy job, similar to Wally's "I'm going to write myself a minivan!" reaction to the announcement of a "bug bounty" in the Dilbert comic strip.
There's a reason why the joke "The shortest distance between any two points is under construction" is not really that funny in California.
In a word, no. (Score:2)
Parking garages, though... Lighted arrows and lines to direct people to empty slots might be useful. It could be useful for intersections which have highly variable traffic patterns, where adding additional turn lanes dynamically is useful. Stadiums often do that, with a small army of people moving traffic cones around.
Solar powered snow melting seems unlikely to work. If you really need snow melting, the power requirements are huge. The cutting edge of technology there is induction heating of snow in r [youtube.com]
Light pollution (Score:3)
We don't need another source of light pollution.
Re: (Score:3)
Won't the LEDs cause light pollution?
We want to do everything we can to minimize light pollution. The LEDs can be dimmed or even turned off if no vehicles are on the road. We envision activating the LEDs 1/2 mile ahead and 1/4 mile behind a vehicle. If you were to see the adjacent lane lighting up, then you'd know an oncoming vehicle is 1/2 mile ahead.
In addition, I suspect that you could also key the roadside lighting into the same car detection circuits. And it would only be a matter of time before some bright spark suggested turning them off completely - after all, the road markings are already illuminated.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The road-surface lights go on in an emergency situation, I'd think. Not really necessary. But the roads could power the overhead lights at night.
Read the FAQ!!! (Score:2)
Costs: the idea is that this would cost less than building normal solar pannels AND roads; Moreover, they would also replace the need for powerlines as they are inteded to be part of the distrubtion system. Thus price for new developments shouldn't be an issue.
Repair: Most road damage is due to heavy trucking and utilitys digging them up. The solar roads are designed to withstand and excess 250,000 pounds, and the pannels are modular, which means they can be removed and
Lighting the road surface sounds stupid (Score:2)
I don't know about anyone else, but I find roads that are 'bright' such as when street lights reflect off black asphalt during the rain VERY difficult to see properly on.
I can't see the entire road glowing as a good thing. Lines and indicators which are slightly lit so they are more visible, sure. The entire road surface? Absolutely not. Its bad enough dealing with oncoming headlights and being able to see other things in the unlit areas.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's a pipe dream. (Score:4, Insightful)
They simply won't stand up to the wear and tear.
They talk about how such a road can withstand loads in excess of a quarter million pounds.
Okay. But what about SHEARING FORCES? In a lot of cases this, not straight downward pressure, is what tears up roadways.
You also have heave in the roadways. Now, most roadways are built in such a way that heave is minimized, but there still is some that has to be factored in.
Also, what will weeks/months/years of thermal and physical stresses do to the surface? Here in Chicago, the roadways get replaced every 5-10 years.
How do these things handle a puddle of burning gasoline from an accident? Or howsabout an entire carbecue raging away on the surface?
And once the surface is breached (and it WILL be breached), you have an environmental hazard on your hands.
And how much will it cost to build these things? Compare the coverage to an asphalt or reinforced concrete roadway on materials cost alone. Not to mention the specialty labor for installation. ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.
You're also going to be installing this expensive road surface in areas that traditionally don't get much sun.
Rush hour anyone?
Currently, most solar cells STILL don't make back their manufacturing costs within the lifetime of the product.
As for loss of transparency due to wear? "It is thought to have a maximum reduction" basically means "They don't know, but they'll ass-pull a number out for you."
Re: (Score:2)
Or howsabout an entire carbecue raging away on the surface?
Thank you.
That great new word was just added to my casual vocabulary and simultaneously made today's time-wasting on /. worthwhile!
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
Let's build a few miles of solar roads and find out.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder what happens if we combine this road with a trailer hitch and a Tesla.
Really, what if said trailer hitch falls on the road. These things really don't break? You think the potholes are nasty now ;O
Re: (Score:2)
If you think these things are going to last 1 year on a road surface, let alone 4...
Well, I just don't know how to respond appropriately to delusional thinking.
Poor things....!! (Score:5, Funny)
I feel sorry for Smart Roads. They're so smart, deep down they must realize how many miles of Dumb Roads could have been built for the same money.
I feel sorry for those embedded hexagonal tiles too. They must have known as the grout hardened around them that it was a one way trip into a soul-less, sorry-ass world. At the semiconductor plant there was so much optimism and excitement, everyone was buzzing about becoming an integral part of the ongoing man-machine synergy. Of course when everyone graduates from silicon college they all think they'll be the ones to stretch Shannon's limits and change information states in an intricate dance party of information-sharing, everyone connected. But what happens is, so many are diverted to become these simple blinky-light drone units on a lonely road as countless strangers fly over them. Heartless strangers. And through the cruel geometry of the hexagon, only six adjacent units to keep them company. For ETERNITY.
Covered with tempered glass for Pete's sake. Even the glass is pissed off by this idea, it has already lost its temper as it is being cemented into place. I'm glass goddammit, roads are like playgrounds where all the kids are mean and gravel and skidding tires are everywhere. Gravel hurts. The glass knows its glorious transparency and reflectivity will soon be gouged and cratered, the pane dissolves into a translucent pain of dwindling light.
The solar cells under the doomed glass are perhaps the saddest of all. To lose their photon stream bit by bit until a mere trickle of current escapes them is purgatory without end. Soon all of them will be barely functional, trapped under road, when they could have been some where out in the sunshine.
It is merciful when a load of dirt just covers them up on the shoulder and just hardens there, they can settle in for a nap.
During the first frost of Winter everyone in the hexagonal array is overjoyed when the heating wires kicked in and electrons begin to jump out of their shells once more. But soon it was obvious that something was very wrong. "Hey, ease off! There's delicate electronics in here!" But trapped within their isolated pockets of trapped heat they realize that no one can hear their cries. The heat element, though it can deliver a continuous torment to the components inside, would never melt a thick layer of ice. "Someone duid not do the math. Help us!"
But no help comes, and soon the project hits cost overruns is abandoned. One day the control signals go silent, and once again a wave of dismay sweeps across the trapped colony of orphaned electronics. There is no more purpose in life, but thanks to the cruel embedding of solar cells, life will go on.
It's all just so damned horrible.
Crack pipe dream (Score:2)
Are you fucking kidding? Our infrastructure is close to third world status. We can't even fill the potholes, but we'll toss around the idea of solar powered glow in the dark bullshit?
New car headlights are better than ever. They are simply fantastic. Reflective paint on the side of the road is simple, cheap and works well.
Let's solve the real problems first, and teach people to pay attention when they drive.
you'll get a lot of static electricity (Score:2)
Not much grip though.
Re:Road hazard much? (Score:5, Informative)
From the FAQ:
What are you going to do about traction? What's going to happen to the surface of the Solar Roadways when it rains?
Everyone naturally pictures sliding out of control on a smooth piece of wet glass! Actually, one of our many technical specs is that it be textured to the point that it provides at least the traction that current asphalt roads offer - even in the rain. We hesitate to even call it glass, as it is far from a traditional window pane, but glass is what it is, so glass is what we must call it.
We sent samples of textured glass to a university civil engineering lab for traction testing. We started off being able to stop a car going 40 mph on a wet surface in the required distance. We designed a more and more aggressive surface pattern until we got a call form the lab one day: we'd torn the boot off of the British Pendulum Testing apparatus! We backed off a little and ended up with a texture that can stop a vehicle going 80 mph in the required distance.
Re: (Score:2)
Then the other part of the equation. How do they keep these things clean? If they're texture to match the traction of asphalt then how do they keep the road grime and dirt from lowering the performance of the solar panels? Spend money on cleaning?
I still don't see any cost advantage over the current reflective paint that makes the lanes very visible using nothing more than the light from your headlamps.
Re: (Score:2)
I think they're engineered to require even less power than that.
If you read their site it's fairly interesting. It turns the entire roadway system into solar power generation, tied to the grid to power homes. Only a minimal amount of power is needed to light them up. I think they're intended to run while fairly dirty.
Re: (Score:2)
Rain.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming it can become the norm everywhere (huge assumption there)...
I imagine we will replace our coal plants with large battery plants to store all the extra power we get during the day so that these things can function well at night (having to only power sections of road with vehicles on them would probably make that very feasible).
Then the electricity bill wouldn't be for the actual electricity. It'd be for maintaining these large battery store houses and maintaining these roads. I mean really, if we laid out a ton of this stuff across the US (the desert regions specifically), I figure electricity would be dirt cheap if not free (aside from the aforementioned maintenance).
The only way I can see this actually happening is if the solar panel roads become ubiquitous, which as I said, is a huge assumption. The oil industry won't have it, and getting the capital to produce enough panels to make it worth while, then lay them across major highways would be massive. Then there's building the battery centers so that they can actually function at night (or we can shift to coal power for night time).
I think this is something that would definitely pay off in the long run, but probably won't happen for the same reasons other things similar to it didn't happen. i.e. big business and lobbyists.
If electricity was super cheap during the day, I'm sure there will be lots of ways that will be used up instead of being stored in batteries. I'm sure data centers see most traffic during the day and so can turn off their data centers at night. Factories can also shut down at night.
The basic fact is that solar panels aren't efficient enough. The day solar panel becomes efficient, all these axillary technologies will bloom. Otherwise, oil industry won't have to even worry about it.
Re: (Score:2)
cost of uprooting roads that already exist, where property values are higher, and businesses/residents would be effected: y
cost of building solar plants in scrub land that is currently not being used, and due to not being used for any economic purpose, is dirt cheap: x.
In what universe ... is y x? :(
really?
the united states is huge. and has tons of roads. but most of the space is either empty, or very sparsly populated rural land, maybe focus on building solar/solar thermal arrays there first? maybe?
Re: (Score:2)
The basic fact is that solar panels aren't efficient enough
Oh, they're plenty efficient. And if you're really after efficiency, just go for multi-junction cells mounted in light-concentrating assemblies, to get rid of their high price tag. But that really only lessens the necessary real estate. I don't think it makes anything magically cheaper. So it's only useful in places where there isn't enough space.
Re: (Score:2)
From the FAQ:
How will you replace damaged panels in a highway?
Since our system is modular, repair will be much quicker and easier than our current maintenance system for asphalt roads. We've learned that in the U.S., over $160 billion is lost each year in lost productivity from people sitting in traffic due to road maintenance.
Each of the panels contain their own microprocessor, which communicates wireless with surrounding panels. If one of them should become damaged and stop communicating, then the rest of
Re: (Score:2)
They were tested in the middle of a northern Idaho winter, and tests showed the snow being removed from the panels so effectively that the glass was dry.
Re: (Score:2)
New England is right out.