Solar roadways? Yeah, we've
seen 'em before, but we've yet to see America's own Department of Energy give any one development company such a notable vouch of confidence. Just recently, the DoE handed over a $100,000 contract to Solar Roadways, which is just enough to build a prototype of the "first ever Solar Road panel." The 12- x 12-foot panels could theoretically be embedded into roads, and when shined upon, could pipe good, clean electricity straight into the grid. Heck, they could even boast LEDs in order to alert drivers to upcoming accidents or changes in road conditions. Reportedly, each panel would cost around $7,000 (at least initially), and if these were used on the entire US Interstate system, we could pretty much forget about using non-renewable energy sources to power our homes and businesses. Of course, our government is simultaneously wasting money on repaving perfectly good roadways with antiquated asphalt, so there's a tremendously great chance that this won't amount to anything.
[Via
Inhabitat, thanks Miko]
posted September 6th 2009 6:06PM
At first "sight", I thought they were talking about kinetic energy into electricity from the car driving over the roadways. example: http://www.ucmerced.edu/featuredetail.asp?featureid=159
I heard about this last year, but haven't heard from it since, I don't know if it's the same people.
They actually are supposed to repel dirt. Did you read the FAQ from the website?
The glass cleans itself in two stages: the ‘photocatalytic’ stage of the process breaks down the organic dirt on the glass using ultraviolet in sunlight (even on overcast days) and makes the glass hydrophilic (normally glass is hydrophobic). During the following ‘hydrophilic’ state, rain washes away the dirt – leaving almost no streaks, because hydrophilic glass spreads the water evenly over its surface.”
For places without much rain, they may need other ways of cleaning the roads if the breakdown doesn't work completely or in cases of sand storms. They have street sweepers now in southern states.
The guy in the video seems like a nice guy too (not a typical corporate jerk), so this doesn't seem like a get rich quick scheme either.
What is the advantage of putting the solar panels on the road it self versus on the road side using traditional panels?
Using panel on the road, you run into issues of endurance, and more importantly lack of efficincy being that sunlight is blocked by cars for a large portion of the day.
I don't see any a reason behind this.
The website answers these issues.
Asphalt costs a lot of money to maintain.
These Solar Roads have much lower maintenance.
Using both asphalt roads and solar panels on the side costs more money.
They will have panels where there are lots of tree shade and inside tunnels. These roads are not just for collecting power, but to provide lit roadways. Not every panel needs to have sunlight for this to work. Panels in shade will just store power from other panels that get sunlight. There are many miles of roads that don't have many cars on them all the time.
Only 1/3 of the panels need to have sunlight to equal the power that the U.S needs and that is going by conservative numbers where the panels are only 15% efficient. If they were double the efficiency at 30%, then only 1/6 of the panels would need sun to power the country. There are currently solar panels that are 40% efficient (albeit expensive, but prices drop each year).
Don't think of this as Solar Panels from the 80's. It has come a long way.
Bah! I told my professor about this idea, but with parking lots. He kinda just stared at me. . . haha. . .oh god
Why? If most parking lots are full during the day what would be the point? Better to cover roofs of malls and maybe the ring of roads that goes around many malls with solar cells.
1 day after it gets implemented, someone will create a hack to play DOOM on the roadway.
*shrugs* Sure why not. Imagine the power that could be generated in South Dakota.
If you believe this, I've got a bridge to sell you...
These would also be pretty cool for traffic control, the government could use them to monitor traffic flows in the areas they're installed in instead of the double air tube sensor chained to a light pole method, and get results faster, street names on the street would be kind of cool too.
Just great! super for this constructive work. i will research on this just after my mcitp certification . Electricity generating tools should be utilized.
Great, Someone had designed a way to make potholes more expensive. The DOT needs to wap the DOE with a clue bat.
Does this mean no more pot holes. If so I'm all for it !
You can check out a video of Solar Roadways here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3PeSm6_hTE
It comes complete with computer animation of the roads and some older design sketches. Interesting stuff...
Best,
Mark
YERT - Your Environmental Road Trip
If I could only use that in my driveway, it would be perfect.
Aramark
Asphalt + Tires = Good traction
Glass + Tires = Not Good Traction
This isn't glass from the 1800s. It's not even glass from 5 years ago.
Read about what they can do with glass nowadays and then do your addition again.
They now have glass to stop debris smashing through windows from hurricanes without a scratch.
This is an article from 2 years ago, so I'm sure tech has improved since then:
http://continuingeducation.construction.com/article.php?L=6&C=362
Once computers became mainstream, technology has advanced so fast in every field.
The next decade, technology will move faster than people can keep up.
Cars can have traction on glass and it might even be better than driving on asphalt.
I don't understand why they don't make it easier than redoing the roads and just put solar panels on all the telephone poles around the US? Just put up a small grid on the very top and plug them into the existing grid? There are millions of those poles all over and many get sun the whole day so why not make it easier and cheaper than rip up a road and just toss a few million onto those and be done with it?
The reason is cost and effectiveness. Put it this way. To power a hot water heater for your home, you would have to cover your entire portion of your peaked roof that has a southern exposure. Your estimated payoff with government incentives would be about 17-25 years.
To power your whole house, you would need more panels. I hope solar gets more effective, but the progress since the 70's is not good enough. If anything, perhaps LED lighting will cut down on power consumption more than compact flourescents have.
This road solves two problems...generates electricity as well as no needing asphalt.
If they could get induction in the road you could recharge your vehicle while you drive!
Seriously, am I the only one who sees the inevitable rolling blackouts and nation wide power failures during the bumper to bumper parking we call "the long weekend commute" covers highways near and far with an endless stream of sunlight blocking cars and trucks instead of incoming photons begging to get funky and liberate some loose electrons?
I can see it now:
Road is paved with these expensive Solar Panels. Everyone goes 'Wow!'.
A day later, someone comes along and takes a pneumatic drill to it 'cos they need to repair a water main.
Nice.
I would have preferred the last sentence to have been left out of this article, especially this part:
"our government is simultaneously wasting money on repaving perfectly good roadways with antiquated asphalt"
This isn't a political site so don't push your views buddy!
Even if we were to replace every road in the country with these, you would still need other power plants to provide electricity during the night and winter for those parts of the country that get snow. They would just have to start generating more power to compensate.
But I doubt that traffic congestion could actually cause a blackout anyway. There aren't enough drivers or cars in the country to blot out the light shining on every paved surface in the US.
Waaa now I miss my lego days huhuhuhu. Going back to business at hand, there's no doubt that building solar panels will be the mainstream in short time as grid cost gets higher and higher. As technology advances, production solar power materials are more competitive than ever.