Solar Freakin' Roadways!!!

In reply to KatieSuddard:

Bankrupt the nation and think of the enviromental hazards of putting solar tiles everywhere........this is even coming from the guy who says berkeley the enviroment.

I'd like to replace all the roads with high speed trains and trams.

Mass transit is still far more efficient from a financial and environmental standpoint than the same amount of people using electric cars. Why don't we have more trains and trams and public transit? Because its incredibly difficult to acquire land for public projects, and because the American public believe that "we're took spread out" and "public transportation is for poor people."

No, we'd rather fantasize about solar roadways.

The people working on this got their Indiegogo funding, so they're going to do something with it, presumably.

I, too, am skeptical, but I really hope it does turn into something fruitful. I am enamored with the idea of solar energy, but I have difficulty believing it'll be instituted until absolutely fiscally necessary.

Yeah. I think it's a really cool idea - not for the solar energy but because how badass would a giant screen to draw E36 M3 on my yard be?

Basketball, helo pad, holiday themes, massive twister mats, thousands of zombie corpses, Chess playable from google earth.

The free electricity is just a bonus.

Honestly, I could see this being great for driveways, BUT it would be expensive as hell.

Call me crazy, but I think roofs are a better place for solar panels.

there are a lot of flat roofs that could be covered in solar. Think of all the schools, Malls, offices, and warehouses that could be generating power. They even make window glass that both generates power and shades the interior from the sun's heat while still allowing light to pass through.

I personally would like work to put solar on the roof of the parking garages

I want this E36 M3 on my driveway so I can make giant LED dong logos pointing at my neighbors. Because yes, I am perpetually 12.

Weren't tires designed for typical roadways and their friction? Would solar panels have totally different friction coefficients and need totally reengineered tires?

From what I remember from paving roads*, the biggest reason the roads are E36 M3 is because we're basically just digging up the road, reheating it, and slapping it back down.

*Granted, I was a shovel jockey years ago so I don't remember much more than I never want to pave again.

In reply to Grizz:

That's pretty much all they're still doing on main roads.....our secondary roads just get a coating of oil and fine gravel(motorcyclist's hell)

Tar and chip isn't much better for cars. I'd rather drive on dirt or gravel than clean that crap off of something.

In reply to Grizz:

I just cleaned tar off my bike with DFT's "Waterless Carwash". Worked a lot better than I expected.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Until it's proven to be cost effective, I'm not getting too excited.

FTFY

how would these hold up to a snow plow blade winter after winter?

edizzle89 wrote: how would these hold up to a snow plow blade winter after winter?

Supposedly they would heat themselves to keep snow and ice from ever forming on them. Which I would assume would make them foggy as hell in the winter considering all the warm water around them.

GameboyRMH wrote: $10k per hexagon is pretty expensive though

Judging by how often potholes are repaired, I'd assume that costs about the same.

Grizz wrote:

edizzle89 wrote: how would these hold up to a snow plow blade winter after winter?

Supposedly they would heat themselves to keep snow and ice from ever forming on them. Which I would assume would make them foggy as hell in the winter considering all the warm water around them.

Yeah but the designers admitted that the heating would take more energy then the solar panels could produce so basically every place that snowed a lot would become and energy drain.

Lease the medians in the southwest, put substations off the exit ramps to recharge EV's ?

Medians seem like a very good place for solar panels.

In reply to nicksta43:

And all of our insurance would go up the first time someone lost control and knocked out 2 mil worth of them......

Probably a good idea once we run out of pretty much every other area solar panels can be easily mounted (roofs, open fields etc). Nice future, future idea, but until then...

nicksta43 wrote: Medians seem like a very good place for solar panels.

I always thought we should put trains in the medians.

93EXCivic wrote:

Grizz wrote:

edizzle89 wrote: how would these hold up to a snow plow blade winter after winter?

Supposedly they would heat themselves to keep snow and ice from ever forming on them. Which I would assume would make them foggy as hell in the winter considering all the warm water around them.

Yeah but the designers admitted that the heating would take more energy then the solar panels could produce so basically every place that snowed a lot would become and energy drain.

true, but the energy to buy and fuel the plow trucks isn't exactly free. Plus salt, salt mining, salt hauling, etc.

There's a more in depth cost benefit here. Still a pie in the sky idea, but I like the general idea in that we already build something anyways.. .give it a dual purpose. Alleviates all the NIMBY concerns and is at least partially offset in cost by what we're already paying anyways.

I really want to love this idea, but I don't think our society is sufficiently evolved for something like this to work. If we line the streets with tiles that cost $10k each, there will be no shortage of thieves that would steal them. Heck, for $10k each, people will literally kill for these things. Public works can't keep up with replacing safety railings and whatnot that gets ripped off for scrap money. This would be orders of magnitude worse. Perhaps when the cost is comparable to a stone paver, or a layer of blacktop, but that's going to take some serious cost reduction.