Solar roadways

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Or, you know, just stick them on top of roofs and not have to bother with designing solar panels capable of withstanding multi-ton vehicles repeatedly running over them?

It sounds like a good idea, but it also sounds like something a 5 year old would come up with.

 

[spartan231490]

So many problems with this, I don't even know where to begin. Sure, they might withstand the trucks, but do the give the trucks good grip to stop? Can they stand up to the heat for a whole summer? What about the cold of a whole winter? Not to mention, towns can't even afford to maintain asphalt roads, do you really think they'll maintain this system? Which begs the question, when these break or heave, what will happen? Will any dangerous chemicals be released? Will it short out? How do they hold up to the oil and rubber and exhaust and god knows what else that comes off on roads? Who's going to clean this gunk off regularly so that they can continue to generate electricity? What about accidents? Do the panels contain flammable chemicals? That's just the obvious, I can't even imagine all the problems that might arise.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The latter, though I guess you could slope them to avoid that, at least to an extent.

Or just maintain them or use heater elements, or both. I'm missing out on why this is such a "bad" idea, living in the Northeast and knowing people who do this to positive returns.

Private individuals, yes, but this is presumably going to be a government funded thing. Currently there is no funding to get anything on this scale done much easier where it would be most effective, talking about the difficult and less cost efficient option in places where it wouldn't work well is rather odd.

 

[slippereend]

Most of the points that you guys address are discussed on their indiegogo page and on their FAQ page.
I wanted to make a selection of these answers for you guys but it's such a load of text that it's probably better if you check it out for yourselves

http://solarroadways.com/faq.shtml

 

[slippereend]

Another vid which might explain this a bit better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU#t=371

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Going to make resurfacing and painting roads a lot more difficult, but sure. I love solar panels. Of course I'd be more delighted with ones you can put on your roof that don't take 20 years to pay themselves off.

 

[Bertylicious]

What's the best thing about a 1 square kilometer concrete car park? It's well cheap.

If you then wire in lighting it gets more expensive and becomes a pain in the arse to fix when ever something goes wrong because you've got to dig through concrete. This would be worse because you'd have to dig through a well expensive solar panel. Like, imagine you needed a plug re-wired in your living room so you had to take a sledgehammer to your telly; it would make you said, no?

A solar car park would ultimately fill whoever owned it with despair and misery.

What about some manner of shrubbery that could be planted along the roadside and then, when the gardeners trim them, the off-cuts can be used for bio-fuel?

 

[fenrizz]

Spoiler

Since I am actually a registered roadway engineer by trade, I have quite a bit of skepticism about this. To me this all sounds like a wonderful pipe dream, but could never fulfill its promises. I have three main issues with this.

Number 1: Longevity. You know, it's great that they've done all these tests for impacts and ability to support heavy truck loads, but no tests can reliably predict fatigue loads and long term impacts. You can do cyclic load testing which gives a more accurate result, but there is still a lot of error. I would also like to know how much differential settlement between panels these can handle before all the conduits and integrated stormwater treatment fails to function. I know with utility companies, a 1" settlement is about the maximum they can handle before seeing serious issues. But they use flexible pipe to handle these settlements. As soon as you incorporate fixed conduit like concrete, small amounts of settlement would cause large problems. And you will get settlement, there is no avoiding it. No matter how well the road subgrade is prepared, water intrusion, vibratory impacts, temperature differential, etc etc etc will lead to settlement of some degree.

They mention that these can be placed on top of existing roadway surfaces, but a roadway is only good as its weakest link. Frequently maintenance crews will pave over cracked asphalt roads, but that is just a temporary band-aid. Those cracks will propagate upwards to the new surface. There would be no difference with this system. Every road has a practical design life, I don't care what the material is... hell it could be paved with titanium and it would still have some functional design life. Asphalt roads are typically 25-35 years... you might be able to push 50 years if you use a thicker pavement section. Concrete roads can go for 100 years with minor maintenance. I would love to see how this compares.

Number 2: Installation Labor. This is great and all, but the labor required for initial installation must be astronomical. You know why asphalt and concrete is such an appealing roadway surface? Because they have machines and equipment that can pave miles upon miles in a single day. From what I can see, it looks like every individual panel must be bolted down to the underlying surface with four bolts. Can you imagine the amount of work and number of laborers required to bolt down every single panel? And what happens if there are fitting issues in the field and one of the panels doesn't quite match up to the existing field conditions, this would be a nightmare waiting to happen. And this is an installation process that I could not see being automated in any effective way.

Number 3: (and most important) Cost. Have you noticed that they haven't disclosed approximate cost in any of their videos or FAQ's? I can only imagine the initial costs are astronomically higher than traditional roadways. And traditional roadways are already freaking expensive. As a rough estimation number, you can figure $1 million per mile of asphalt road, even more if its a concrete roadway. How many times more expensive is this system? 2x? 5x? 100x? I just can't imagine this being cheap.

Sure, you could argue that the generating power will offset that cost, but where is the break even point? It's gonna take "x" number of years before you recoup that initial investment. Going back to point #1, is that break even point longer than the design life? If so, then this road system would not be fiscally viable. Plus, most roads are publicly owned. Good luck trying to convince voters to support building a road 10 times more expensive than a normal road and its going to take at least 50 years to recoup that investment.

Anyway, I hate to be such a skeptic. It looks like a great idea on paper, but I just don't see this ever being financially/functionally practical.

My thoughts exactly!
There is no way this will ever be a viable solution, the cost will be astronomical.

If you want cheap power there is only 2 ways of doing so (that is eco friendly at least):

1. Hydro Electric Power
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Fusion may become viable in the future.

Wind power and solar power are both pipe dreams (at least in the foreseeable future) as they will never be cheap and efficient enough.

 

[Spitfire]

If they can produce solar panels cheap enough to make it viable to cover entire roads in, then I say, more power to them!

Look, I'm trying really hard not to be cynical here, seriously.

 

[John Crofford]

In 2010, the payback period was estimated to be 22 years. Assuming that the cost of the solar cells themselves is the primary cost driver, that should be down well below the estimated life of the system as per kwh prices have gone from 21 cents to 11 cents.

The estimate from 2010 was made before the specific composition of the glass was determined, though, so I will be looking for more updates.

 

[John Crofford]

It seems like a bit of a gimmick, there's almost no chance of damage if you stick solar panels on a roof, whereas sticking them on a road subjects them to heavy stress and possibly vandalism. Also I would be interested to know how efficient this technology is in comparison to existing panels, and whether it costs more per unit.

Also, the whole point of generating solar energy is to maximise the amount of sunlight you get hitting panels - that will not happen if cars are stuck in traffic jams on top of your power plant for a considerable number of hours each day.

The estimates for electrical production that they are using only consider the peak 4 hours of production. If you are having serious traffic jams for a large part of the 10AM to 2PM period, then your city needs better-distributed lunch options.

Their production estimates also include the fact that their panels will be horizontal and often in unfavorable latitudes. Their estimates are based on testing in Idaho, about 50 miles south of the Canadian border, during the winter.