A large number of people are supporting the development of a concept using solar cells embedded in roadways, which promise to illuminate the road, melt snow, increase safety and "pay for themselves." That last bit has me intensely skeptical. I'd be interested to know what the Prius-crowd thinks of this idea: Solar FREAKIN' Roadways! - YouTube Would Solar Roadways Work? A Government Engineer Discusses the Controversial Technology : Greentech Media
Perhaps solar side walks and shingles might be a better starting point. Still, I could see it working for railroads very easily. Bob Wilson
I think a kid with a hammer could do a million dollars of damage in a single afternoon. Even if the use Sapphire-glass, which is another pipe-dream. The video by EEVblog points out about a dozen show-stoppers for this idea.
The goal of using every available space for solar collectors has merit. So I look forward to more experimentation to find out what works and doesn't work. This is an area that still sees progress. I'm skeptical about hydrogen powered, fuel-cell vehicles because hydrogen is such wicked stuff. But I am willing to watch the fuel-cell experiments and see if they overcome the challenges. Bob Wilson
Seems like the worst space to pick for solar panels. There are a lot more space on rooftops, open deserts and parking lots which could use the shade.
There is a reason that this planet developed trees as the ideal solar collector. The higher the better. Period. No matter how you cut it, if a solar panel can function on a roadway it can function vastly better and vastly cheaper as a roof, shaded parking lot, etc. The whole purpose of a road is to a) have something on it and b) have something by it. Unfortunately, really loser ideas that are considered jokes by commercial firms usually depend on governments to support them.
That's true, unfortunately. Governments have participated unwittingly in many scams over the years. Here's one that duped a lot of police departments: Hundreds of US police forces have distributed malware as "Internet safety software" - Boing Boing
If law enforcement agencies are so gullible and careless about checking things out, it's no wonder that the Solar Roadway campaign got more than double what they were asking for.
They can't pay for themselves if you can't find 'em http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/technology/24solar.html?_r=0 I got room for 4 more panels before our array/inverters are maxed out. Maybe I should wait until the gubment installs 10's of thousand everywhere. Unlike the poor folks in the picture .... what's 4 panels among 10's of thousands ... .
There's been a rash of solar-panel thefts from ranchers, oil companies and private homes around these parts also. Police think it may be criminals trying to build alternate power systems so that authorities can't track power consumption patterns through the grid, which can point to grow-ops.
Oh yeah - solar meth lab; go carbon free, and blow your self up - before your teeth fall out. People .... they're just great. .
The Solar Roadway concept seems to have captured the imaginations of countless eco-minded people, including the founder of Indiegogo, the news media, all the way to the Whitehouse itself. I think the relevant fact is that most engineers do not appear to support this concept, and plenty of them have had their say: I'm convinced the numbers don't work, but I'd like to hear what the tecchie types in this forum have to say. Also the eco-types as well.
A solar roadway makes no sense from any technical viewpoint. Solar covered parking lots make fantastic sense. 1) Solar production close to a user. 2) No agricultural or nature land affected. 3) Car want the covered parking spaces. 4) Weather and rain protection.
Fully one-third of the continental land-mass of the USA is government-owned; plenty of space for panels. Anyone who sees any advantage to putting solar cells under glass in a roadway or parking lot must be smoking something I'm not.
I don't yet have an hour to watch the last two videos. Does either side show a cost estimate per energy unit delivered? My first impression (not yet having seen all the video arguments against) is that the basic solar roadways concept (excluding electric ice melting, LEDs, etc.) is a great idea -- for sometime in the distant future, multiple generations hence, after materials processing costs have fallen sharply and we start running short of space for solar roofing! But due to its much higher strength and durability requirements, and lower output due to greater surface soiling, it will always be more expensive than solar roofing. I just can't foresee the costs becoming anything close to reasonable in my lifetime. The vast majority of those U.S. government lands are quite inappropriate for solar panel farms. I'd much rather see solar installations placed atop existing human-made impervious surfaces, rather than desecrating additional natural and agricultural surfaces. For parking lots, that now means solar-topped shade structures, not pavement. Here are solar panels used as a freeway sound barrier wall:
You've got to be kidding right? If you think there's a shortage of remote, open spaces and deserts which are totally unoccupied, I invite you to use Google Earth.
You've got to be kidding, right? Just because it isn't occupied by humans, build upon, paved over, or plowed under, doesn't mean is it unused or useless or worthless in its present natural form. We've damaged or destroyed far too much habitat already without understanding what it was really doing. P.S. I grew up within the continental U.S.. Google Earth shows some logging but no modern human settlement, just National Forest and Wilderness, for more than 50 kilometers south to south-east behind the house where I grew up. I still claim that that area is not appropriate for solar farms.
Cost determines what will happen. I would expect the most cost effective future solar panels will not be panels, but a very thin substrate. Instead of putting panels on a roof, the solar future would be embedded in the roof. A lot of this is done now in small scale, but will certainly become more mainstream. What sounds good and what is good are often very different. Someone has an avatar of a sexy, but failed solar technology somewhere on this forum as a good example.
