The Solar Roadway

Perhaps solar side walks and shingles might be a better starting point. Still, I could see it working for railroads very easily.

Bob Wilson

 

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

 

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.

 

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 ...

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Oh yeah - solar meth lab; go carbon free, and blow your self up - before your teeth fall out. People .... they're just great.
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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.

 

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?

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.