Historic Route 66 To Feature Solar Road Technology (cnet.com) 202
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.
Worse than senseless (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Exactly how is it going to generate energy when it is covered by ice?
Please, stop. (Score:2)
We already had this discussion. [slashdot.org]
If you want a long (but informative) rant about why that is utter nonsense - here's mine. [slashdot.org]
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 -
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If anyone wants some more detailed rants, check out these videos by an actual electrical engineer explaining, with a lot of calculations, why this is all a waste of time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Rule of thumb: never try to learn science from youtubes.
If somebody had something useful to say, they wouldn't have tried to say it on a youtube.
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We already had this discussion. [slashdot.org] If you want a long (but informative) rant about why that is utter nonsense - here's mine. [slashdot.org] 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.
Since you can't even bother to figure out what the right units are-- Watts per what?-- this rant is a fail.
Since you are a troll - you're whole life is fail. (Score:2)
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 gr [solarroadways.com]
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Do you realize that to melt a volume of ice take the same energy as it would to raise 0 degree C water to 70 degrees C? That is a lot of electricity. Also the power to melt the ice would have to come from somewhere else as the ice would interfere with the electricity generation.
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Can't speak for these guys by the Colas Wattway system, which is somewhat similar, is as much about providing a cheap and durable road surface that can be easily laid and replaced as it is about generating electricity. The energy generated is just used to offset the cost of the road surface.
That's the point - even if it isn't the most efficient place to put solar PV, you have to surface the road anyway so if the lifetime cost is similar why not?
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That's the point - even if it isn't the most efficient place to put solar PV, you have to surface the road anyway so if the lifetime cost is similar why not?
The question is whether it can possibly have a similar lifetime cost, and I think the answer is no. Perhaps I will be proven wrong, but I don't think so. Nothing has turned out to have a lifetime cost as low as tarmac. Other things have been tried, like concrete roads, which only have a low cost if you neglect them badly and they are horrible to drive on — witness the 101 in CA. It's embarrassing. I don't think it's going to turn out to be as durable or as easy to service as they claim.
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Neither the installation nor the maintenance and operation costs for this particular "invention" are cheaper or simpler than the traditional road solutions.
They are nowhere close actually.
They require concrete foundations, with crawlspace for all the cabling.
They have built-in lights to light up the animals crossing the road.
They have built-in heaters to melt the snow and ice.
It's a product of hippy thinking, not engineering a solution to a problem - which would be roadside solar panels.
Fear for the deer? P
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The best place for solar is the same place it is for coal and gas, at a central station pushing out power over the grid. Rooftop installations don't even approach the economics of central solar. The only challenge there is storing the energy so that peak solar periods don't go to waste.
Yes, for some uses having rooftop solar can be valuable, but those cases are premium use cases. I wouldn't argue against you having some panels, if you want, but its not the right solution for providing economical solar po
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"The solar doesn't scale well when buildings are designed to minimize footprint and maximize height."
That's because you idiots refuse to cover the sun-facing sides with solar. You only ever touch the roof and ignore this huge freaking swath of unused photon-exposed space.
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That's because you idiots refuse to cover the sun-facing sides with solar. You only ever touch the roof and ignore this huge freaking swath of unused photon-exposed space.
To be fair, solar windows sucked bad until recently, and retrofitting them is expensive — especially if you're not already doing a remodel. This will change, albeit way too slowly for anyone's good as usual.
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You mean the part of the building that's in the shade of the next building over?
Bloody F!@#ing Idiots. (Score:5, Informative)
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?... [youtube.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Solar in general is not where the funding should be going. Without storage solar will always be a highly opportunistic supplement. In the south of the US in summer it could help with AC loads but will still need to backed by lots of peaking plants powered by natural gas. Wind is better but the real investment should be in the next generation nuclear plants and honestly I would like to see more funding for some of the innovative fusion designs like the Lockheed high beta and the Polywell. Yes they are long s
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Solar thermal is where it's at. Dish sterling CSPs are running at 33% efficiency, versus 14% collection for standard-grade PVs and 19% for extremely-high-end multi-band crystal PVs. Salt towers are viable; for under-road, you can actually collect a lot of blunt, low-temperature heat, enough to warm buildings. You can concentrate this heat by running the air through a compressor with the compression chamber attached to a cooling loop, but I don't know if that will give you much gains with the power avail
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I've theorized that a high-efficiency heat pump--a quantum tunneling junction, in particular--could circulate atmosphere and concentrate heat well enough to use a compressor and compressed-air engine to leverage atmosphere heat, essentially using the entire earth's atmosphere as a solar battery being charged continuously by the sun
I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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You are correct that nuclear is the way to go based on existing technology but the NIMBY attitude is so strong getting them built anywhere is a monumental task and even if they get built face continuous resistance and scrutiny on a much larger scale tha
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"There is, however, quite a bit of solar energy available."
Except that it does not follow the demand curve very well and is terrible in winter. The great plains and high plains are the best places for wind.
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Actually solar power (photovoltaic) follows the demand curve perfectly, in summer and in winter.
I suggest to google for the demand curve of your country to get a clue?
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Jones' videos have been thoroughly debunked. The test cycle way in Europe exceeded expectations and proved that the technology is viable.
Jones' mistake is that he doesn't understand the economics. Most of the cost of paving a road is not the surface material, it's the labour and the equipment. Solar road surfaces might not be optimal for producing energy, but they don't have to be. They just have to pay for themselves and then some over their lifetime. I don't know about these guys, but in Europe Colas has
Re:Bloody F!@#ing Idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the marginal cost of making a road a solar road is $x / Watt of installed capacity, and the number of Watt-hours generated over the expected lifetime adds up to a value of $y, and x > y, then the labor and equipment cost doesn't matter. It's never worth it.
You're demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding about opportunity costs [wikipedia.org] and percentages which is all too common (and is a large part of how marketers exploit people's purchasing habits to upsell you). That if a cost of an option exceeds its benefit, that you can somehow make it worthwile by reducing its percentage share of the overall cost. i.e. When a product is 100% of the cost, it's not worth it. But if you add it onto another much more expensive purchase, it's now "only" 1% of the cost and that somehow makes it now worth it. Yes the percentage got smaller, but it's irrelevant. You're comparing against an absolute benefit, so you need to use the absolute cost to make a proper comparison. No those floor mats aren't worth $150. But add them onto a $25,000 car, and suddenly people will pay it because it only adds 0.6% to the price of the car.
You can argue that the cost of a solar road surface is reduced compared to plain panels because the people making the road would be doing the labor anyway, and that it's no additional work to lay down the PV material since (for installation purposes) it behaves similar to other material they're already using to make the road (I dunno, I haven't read up on solar roads). Or you could argue the PV material replaces some other material they're using to build the road, and so represents less additional cost than just the PV material alone. But you cannot argue that it somehow magically becomes worth it because you're tacking on a bunch of other costs (labor and equipment) which you would be paying for anyway.
Another crucial aspect here is that electricity cost is about 20-35 cents/kWh in Europe, while it's only 11.5 cents/kWh in the U.S. So a solar project that's marginally "worth it" in Europe can be a total money loser in the U.S. (unless you're in Hawaii).
Re:Bloody F!@#ing Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in Korea... (Score:2)
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 [treehugger.com].
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Most of the cost of paving a road is not the surface material, it's the labour and the equipment.
Agreed, which is why I think solar roadways are doomed to failure. Patching a crack in a traditional roadway involves throwing a patch of asphalt in the pothole by a couple of unskilled construction workers. Patching a damaged solar roadway would necessitate replacing an entire segment of roadway.
In engineering, when combining two functions in one item you're usually looking for complimentary requirements that can be used to provide synergy between the two. The requirements of roadways and solar panels are
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Patching a crack in a traditional roadway involves throwing a patch of asphalt in the pothole by a couple of unskilled construction workers.
Maybe on a quiet rural road that they can close off. On a motorway though, you are looking at lane closures, cones, emergency recovery if the hard shoulder is out of action, signage etc. The finish has to be good too, on a high speed road. Pulling up a slab and replacing it, even if you don't bother to hook up the electronics for power generation, probably has a similar cost all said and done.
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Care to reference any of these claims?
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Nope.
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Therefore your statements are baseless. Thanks for clearing that up.
Hu. No. (Score:3)
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 o
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And what happens when that glass surface gets worn by constant friction with grit and dirt? I'll tell you what happens; it will get more opaque and smoother at the same time, both reducing output from the solar panels and significantly reducing friction.
IT. DOESN'T. WORK.
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They put the thing on a bike path in Europe, it did nothing to validate the model. These things will easily be a factor or two more expensive than conventional road construction and the failures will require massive spending to fix. (you can find the pictures of the broken glass and panels on the google image search).
Do you know how you tell something is a fraud? When people are doing shit outside their area of expertise. Pond's a Fleschman were chemists claiming to do physics and none of these solar roadwa
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I'd be interested in reading/watching those debunkings, could you share some of what you're looking at?
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Then repost it here. If it even exists.
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I looked, it has now been deleted. Anyway, I outlined it elsewhere in this thread.
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No, one or more implementations of solar roadways have been "debunked" (read: shown to be impractical). That does not automatically mean all implementations are equally flawed. By your logic the very first attempt at anything must be wildly successful otherwise it will be cast aside. Yay.
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No matter how you spin it, glass is not a good surface for a roadway.
I wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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"If a portion of the power might be usable to de-ice the roads?"
Sure because ice always forms on roads on bright sunny days right around solar noon.
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Use solar power to pressurize tanks or some other form of power storage, use off peak power to keep roads clean.
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Wow....
Okay you want to use expensive solar power and then store it to melt ice off the roads... Since this is in winter you do understand that solar power will be in short supply right? And you want to build how many pressure tanks and turbines and pay for upkeep on the system?
Here let me make this really simple for you. Why not just make the roads black! The sun will heat them and keep them warm enough for the snow and ice to melt...
Wait they are black and that is not what happens could it be that in wint
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"If a portion of the power might be usable to de-ice the roads?" Sure because ice always forms on roads on bright sunny days right around solar noon.
I have solar panels that produce electricity on non-bright sunny days from morning to afternoon.
I think you are getting your solar power production concepts from 1940's tomes. And I wonder if somehow the power might be stored some way. Naahhhh, that's crazy talk.
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"I have solar panels that produce electricity on non-bright sunny days from morning to afternoon."
Are they perfectly flat or are they at an optimal angle facing south? Also what percentage of power on a cloudy winter morning do you get vs say 7 am on cloudy winter day.
And since the coldest temps at NIGHT and that ice often starts as SNOW how much would your panel make under snow and or at night... NONE.
"And I wonder if somehow the power might be stored some way. Naahhhh, that's crazy talk."
Yea it pretty muc
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I can tell you from experience that my solar panels produce about 1/10th on a sunny winter day that they do in summer.
Raining or overcast? Practically zero, 1/20th or less.
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So from your data the idea of using a solar road to deice it's self is in technical terms dumb as a box of rocks.
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"Wow, your post doesn't make much sense at all."
Do you have not read all of the the tread.
"Coloring the roads black won't help much when they're covered with white snow. If only we could draw electricity from somewhere else during the winter, which might be plentiful at that time if year."
Except the idea I was replying to was this.
"If a portion of the power might be usable to de-ice the roads?
Perhaps before adoption as roadways, these panels might be put to use as sidewalks. "
AKA maybe solar roads could dei
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Without diving too far into the website, it seems as if the design also allows utilities to run "through" the panels.. likely in molded conduits on the bottom.
Depending on the wear rate, even if it only provided enough energy to ensure no snow/ice formation as well as run the lights built in to the panels, it might be a good option. Seems like it'd be better for sidewalk applications, though, or dri
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Whatever the use for the electricity... lighting, heated road, heck.. vending machines at convenient but otherwise deserted points...
Putting regular cheap thin-film solar panels OVER the road is infinitely cheaper, more efficient (angle control) and safer than trying to replace cheap and malleable asphalt with fucking tempered-glass tiles containing expensive electronics, and having to maintain/replace those as they get mangled by heavy traffic. Have you ever seen a paved road?? Paved pedestrian walkways
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Roads don't wear significantly from traffic; they wear from temperature cycling and water infiltration.
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Terrible summary, idiot commenters (Score:2, Informative)
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 go
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> Potholes shouldn't be an issue because the solar panels include a heating element
OMG, do you have any idea how much power you need to melt an inch of snow?!? There's a reason we use snowplows!
> and reduce maintenance costs
Yeah, because we all know how great glass is in high-wear areas when it comes to reducing maintenance.
Ugh!
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OMG, do you have any idea how much power you need to melt an inch of snow?!? There's a reason we use snowplows!
I've seen lots of heated driveways in Utah, and in the mountains an inch of snow is nothing. I've only seen them while skiing, so I don't know whether the standard practice is to plow/shovel them and then just let the heat melt the residue and keep ice from forming or whether they're capable of melting a full load of snow.
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> Just pull out the old panel and add in the new panel
And you can do that if it's not a solar panel, you could use cheap materials like concrete or steel instead of glass. And yet, we don't do that, because steamrolling asphalt costs much, much less. Adding glass and electronics to the physical panel will not improve things.
> I've seen lots of heated driveways in Utah
But we're not talking about a few hundred square feet of driveway, we're talking about a few million square miles of hiway. And then one
You assume wrong. (Score:2)
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. [solarroadways.com]
http://solarroadways.com/faq.s... [solarroadways.com]
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".
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Agreed that the article is garbage. However, the comments aren't far off.
Tests on sidewalks? Why not just talk about sidewalks, then, rather than vehicular roads? If the test is viable on a sidewalk, then putting it into the road makes the test useless and you start all over again.
Potholes - heating is THE MOST energy intensive thing you can do. And having elements in one part of the panel and snow on another, that's going cause problems with differing expansions which is why we have potholes in the fir
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This is completely idiotic! (Score:2)
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
Of course it won't work, but it's probably best... (Score:3)
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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 maki
Dumbest idea ever (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Have a look at Wattway: http://www.wattwaybycolas.com/... [wattwaybycolas.com]
Their surface isn't smooth, and they claim it provides adequate grip. 10 year lifetime in heavy traffic areas, laid on top of tarmac for ease of installation.
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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 yet asphalt is not smooth either, even after snowplows have been run through many times...
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If you believe that, I've got a bridge for sale.
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Why not? These are connected to the electrical system; why can't they pull electricity and convert it to heat to avoid ice in the first place? It doesn't solve the other potential issues with these things, but as plausibility goes it seems more likely than others to this layman.
Or they can incorporate something like this. [irdinc.com]
thermal expansion (Score:2)
A sucker and his money are soon parted. (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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Monorail! Monorail!
I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map!
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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?
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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.
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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.
Re:This should be interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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
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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 st
Estimates (Score:2)
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 wou
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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.
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Go look at EEVBlog instead. Unlike thunderf00t, Dave Jones isn't a raging MRA piece of shit.
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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.
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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
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Because his points on this issue are well thought out.
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"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.
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He makes many interesting points and calls BS on the large number of unsubstantiated claims made by solar roadway nuts.
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For the record, I'm not recommending anyone take Taylor Swift's opinions on string theory seriously either.
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Isn't the whole point to generate electricity?