The day when roads will harness solar energy is drawing near

[M II A II R II K]

The day when roads will harness solar energy is drawing near


May 15, 2015

By Akshat Rathi

Read More: http://qz.com/404847/the-day-when-ro...-drawing-near/

There are some 60 million kilometers (37.3 million miles) of roadways in the world, just sitting there. But adapting these surfaces to do anything besides passively carry traffic has proved difficult and prohibitively expensive.

- Past attempts include trying to convert the vibrations on roads into electricity. But this technology is only economically feasible on the busiest thoroughfares, which account for a tiny proportion of the world’s huge network. Others have tried to capture and store heat energy during summer and feed it through the road when the weather changes to keep it ice-free. There is even a working test-patch in Hiroshima, Japan.

- But the idea that has gained the most traction in the last few years is to embed solar cells in roads. In 2014, an American couple launched the Solar Roadways project and collected more than $2 million on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Their effort, however, is much farther from reality than the Netherlands-based consortium SolaRoad, which has been operating a 70-meter (230-foot) cycle path that generates enough electricity for one or two households.

- The principle is simple. The photovoltaic cells that generate electricity are protected by glass on the top and supported by rubber and concrete at the bottom. The glass, apart from letting light through, has properties similar to asphalt or concrete: it is durable, glare-free, and skid-resistant. Each unit is connected to a central system, where the electricity generated is fed to the grid. --- The company claims that a 12-ton truck could safely ride over the road. On the test road, however, only some 150,000 cycles have put it to the test so far. Apart from some minor chipping, the roads have continued to work well. The next step is to build roads in other local councils—maybe even a highway or two.

- Where SolaRoad stands out from competition is in the economic case for their business. For starters, the four companies involved in the consortium complement each other well: TNO is the research center, Ooms Civiel is involved in road construction, Imtech has expertise in electrical integration, and the province of Noord-Holland is supporting the project as a future customer. --- The public-private consortium has invested $4 million in the project, which includes the cost of building the test road, and is committed to scaling up. The group’s unique selling point is not so much the innovation of its core technologies, which have been around for many years, but its ability to integrate and manufacture solar-road panels in bulk.

- Another strength is in its focus. The American Solar Roadways project wants not only to harness solar energy, but also use the panels to provide light and heat for the roads on which they sit. “Instead, SolaRoad is focused on the single objective of generating electricity from roads,” Sten de Wit, a senior adviser at TNO, told Quartz. --- “If we are successful, we may look into lighting or heating.” --- SolaRoad won’t divulge what it costs to make their roads right now, but the goal is to build something that can last for 20 years. It says the extra cost when compared to asphalt or concrete roads will be recouped in the first 15 years by the electricity generated, and the extra revenue generated in the five years after that will make its solar-powered roads economically attractive. Falling solar-cell prices will only make this case stronger.

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[BrownTown]

The solar roadways project has been proven to be a scam and the entire concept makes no sense due to simple physics. Solar panels need to be aligned to be perpendicular with the suns rays and the only place that would happen for a roadway would be in the tropics. Anywhere else they need to be at an angle facing towards the equator. Also, roads are in shadow much of he time which is why solar panels are best placed higher up (like on a roof) or in a wide open field.

[Skydragon42]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

The solar roadways project has been proven to be a scam and the entire concept makes no sense due to simple physics. Solar panels need to be aligned to be perpendicular with the suns rays and the only place that would happen for a roadway would be in the tropics. Anywhere else they need to be at an angle facing towards the equator. Also, roads are in shadow much of he time which is why solar panels are best placed higher up (like on a roof) or in a wide open field.

It's a shame that everyone insists this is a scam!
I've not seem why people say it is, and I've gotten solar panels to work when the sun was not directly on them!

But anyway, I really think the traditional pavement really doe's need to be replaced!

If the solar roads don't work, they should try rubber roads, or flex-seal roads!
Think of it, if theres a bump in a flex-seal road, you can just smooth it out!

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by Skydragon42

It's a shame that everyone insists this is a scam!

No, it's a shame people allowed themselves to be duped by this scam and taken for several hundred thousand dollars. The "developers" should be put in jail for fraud.

[jbermingham123]

Its not a scam. Solar panels work wherever there are photons. I've played around with them in front of lamps, flashlights, windows, etc. Although it is true that photovoltaics function best in direct sunlight, really any light at all will make them work. Solar panels work during sunrise, sunset, clouds, rain, and even covered with snow. Hell the streetlights at night will even cause them to put out a few milliamps.

[Jasoncw]

Pavement is expensive, solar panels are expensive, and both of those things have conflicting requirements. Integrating them will make them both more expensive than they would be individually. And integrating them would make them both worse at their respective jobs. You spend a lot of money to have terrible pavement and terrible solar panels.

And what for? For futuristic novelty and nothing more. The most effective way of getting solar energy is to build a solar farm. There's tons of cheap rural land to use, and there's even cheaper land in the desert to use. And centrally located plants can function better within the existing power network, while decentralized power generation will be a very difficult and expensive engineering task (for little benefit).

It's even easier to see how little sense it makes by looking at self contained situations. If a park wants solar energy, it would be cheaper and more effective to build sidewalks and solar panels literally right next to each other rather than it would be to integrate them. Or in a city street, it's cheaper and more effective to put the panels on roofs than it is to integrate them into sidewalks. And what happens when one of the segments needs to be repaved? Right now dirt cheap immigrant labor is paid to do it and it's still expensive. To repair solar panel sidewalks you need to bring in specialized expertise which is expensive, and for a sidewalk hiring them would be more expensive than the entire repair job is today.

Why don't supporters of this explain why these things *should* be integrated? afaik the only reason is that there's a lot of surface area of pavement and that solar panels require surface area.