Solar panels not for roofs, but for driveways, sidewalks, highways

http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/53033fd2f20e4928a5b2955111715b43/US--Solar-Roadways/

by mmphosis • 12 years ago

8 9 12 years ago

Why not place a bunch of solar panels in the desert or, indeed, on roofs, instead of covering highways with glass? This makes no sense at all.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

This idea has been refuted on so many levels on so many sites it is distressing to see it posted again and again.

ctdonath2• 12 years ago

Because there isn't a desert next to my house nor state.

The problem is finding a large flat surface that shadowing won't harm. My roof may not be large enough for enough power via solar cells (and I'm really not keen on climbing on that steep a surface that high up), I don't want to cover the lawn with panels, and I'm not cutting down my forest ... but my driveway (and street) gets a lot of light - given a solar panel tough enough to drive on, that would reclaim sunlight-rich surfaces with zero further impact.

This "road surface solar cell" solves the problem of "solar strip mining" whereby sunlight is denied en masse to an area that otherwise needs it (lawns, deserts (yes, light-needing stuff lives there)). Paved areas have already completely destroyed anything living there, and are not likely reclaimed for any life or activity other than driving. Good to dual-use a road rather than lay waste to even more square mileage of land.

(I'm skeptical of the durability of these things though. Roads, even mere driveways, are an awfully harsh environment.)

cyorir• 12 years ago

http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible-idea...

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/183130-solar-roadways-pas...

Mithaldu2• 12 years ago

Wow, this is really the money quote:

"The current state of the design appears to depend on the placement of a one-foot-square grid of large bolts in the roadway. I've installed bolts into concrete, and it takes me several minutes to mark the hole, drill it, clean it out and pound the anchor into place. A mile of 30 foot wide roadway would have 150,000 bolts to install. Whee!"

Unless these plates are as damage-resistant as military-grade armor plates, there's no way that they'll ever be anything but a novely.

Mithaldu2• 12 years ago

I want to see what happens when one of those things breaks. There is absolutely no dispute that they will break in practice, but if they leave glass shards all over the place, they'll be entirely unviable.

I'd also like to know if they will be able to with-stand super-high-load traffic, like the transporters used to carry big things like the space shuttle around.

fighterjet• 12 years ago

This idea is dumb on a lot of levels.

Asphalt is a really great road surface. It's hard, cheap, and durable. Paint is great for road markings. You can see it during the day and it consumes no electricity. Let's take a look at "Solar Roadways".

Glass as a road surface. Not just glass, but glass that must be optically clear in order for the cells to work. The two most important things for a road surface, traction and durability, just went straight out the window.

LEDs as road markings. Sorry, but this is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. There's no way you could see LEDs under thick glass at the angles you would be looking at them while driving in broad daylight. Not to mention, the cost to power these LEDs on a major highway would be enormous.

Their site includes a video of them driving a light tractor on a short stretch of tiles, in order to prove durability. I'm sure the tiles would hold up just as well with a year's worth of fully loaded tractor-trailers unevenly weighting and unweighting each tile as they travel across this multi-trillion-dollar slippy slidey glass road.

How exactly do they propose to transport the feeble amount of electricity generated which isn't used by the LEDs that no one can see?

There's many other things wrong with this. I'm pretty distressed to see this on the top of Hacker News, and even more distressed to see that they've raised over 1M in funding.

ctdonath2• 12 years ago

The two most important things for a road surface, traction and durability

Solvable problems. Hard, yes, but solvable.

thedrbrian• 12 years ago

http://youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds

EEV blog on the feasibility of solar roads

Solar panels not for roofs, but for driveways, sidewalks, highways

Related Stories