Here in broken California, we can’t hardly get Cal-Trans to complete regular asphalt roadways on time or on budget. While this is a nice idea, and in a perfect world it might be a perfect solution, I don’t think it will be adopted quickly by cash-strapped state governments. OTOH, maybe Federal subsidies from carbon taxes imposed by the EPA?
The design features embedded LED lights for markers. But, it’s a trouble magnet for some kids to hack the system like has been done with construction signs. This passage from the article really told me though that he doesn’t have a clue:
Brusaw says that the solar road would cost about $4.4M per mile, but those costs are offset by not needing to build coal plants, install utility poles, and build relay stations. “The taxpayers are already paying for all of these.
Umm, there’s coal power plants being built in the USA at taxpayer expense?
Solar-Powered Glass Road Could Melt Snow Automatically
By John Brandon, Fox News
It’s being called snowmageddon – and for good reason. Snow and ice are wreaking havoc all across the United States with record wind chills and more precipitation than Siberia on a bad day. If your commute is taking three times as long as it usually does, go ahead and blame the archaic highway system.
That’s right. In the 1950s, the idea of paving America with black asphalt seemed like a good idea. Now, 60 years later, we’re still using it — and still sliding all over the road.
But what if the road itself could change?
That’s the dream for Scott Brusaw, who has a novel idea for dealing with snowy roads: replace them with a glass surface embedded with solar cells that generate power from the sun and store it in batteries for use at night. In his view, such a proliferation of solar cells could also help solve our ongoing dependence on fossil fuels, because they could feed excess electric power into the grid. He has even developed illuminated lane markings that change according to current road conditions.
His company, Solar Roadways is waiting for approval on a new $750,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that will help him build a large-scale prototype to test new materials and electronics, and hopefully prove that his invention works.
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Why bother? Snow will be a thing of the past according to fools such as this. The maintenance cost for this road will be horrendous, exceeding the installation cost per unit.
Some unintended consequences come to mind:
Pot Holes
Rock Falls
Power Outages
Floods
Fallen Power Lines
Just imagine your cell phone or laptop embedded in your street with traffic over the top of them.
Yes I just shook my head when I saw this story in the news.
Great plan, create a solar highway that converts sunlight to electricity at 15%-18% efficiency, then spend a ton of money to store that energy then turn it back into heat at a 90% effectiveness to melt snow.
This replaces a blacktop surface which has an emissivity of 95+% that turns the suns energy directly into heat with no infrastructure, no hardware, no need to clean the surface to maintain efficiency, all for the wonderful benefit of getting to spend a boat load of money on initial construction and another boat load of money to try to maintain and repair something that will likely break, corrode and fail promptly.
Have any of these guys tried to maintain an electrically powered system that is constantly exposed to salty water (road de-icer chemicals and rain/snow). These panels will probably work as designed for about a month or two before they start failing faster than they can be fixed. Before you build the highway build a 100 yard long prototype and keep it working for over a year and 2 winter cycles in Buffalo New York or Chicago etc.
Not to mention the minor detail that it will cost them a billion dollars to discover that wet, dirty glass cracks more easily than dry glass (see 30 year old amateur scientist in Scientific American), And — wait for there is more — wet glass will be slicker than snot on a door knob. Even if they put a texture on the surface when it is first installed, rubber tires and wind blown grit will promptly grind that texture away and turn it into plain old frosted glass.
Good plan guys (as long as you are paying for it)!!
Larry
How will the solar cells generate the power to light the road, or melt the snow, when they are covered with snow?
I guess AGW isn’t considered fast enough to dispense with the need for this, or maybe, as Al Gore believes, the faster AGW progresses, the more snow and ice we will have to deal with.
*sigh….
I drive a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only person here that does. On thing that usually gets my attention on long drives are the battle scars of the road. You see them as you watch for stuff laying on the road that can tear up your chassis, cause a flat or send you off the the road. A lot of these scars are divots, and gouges from traffic accidents, or long scoring marks that meander back and forth across the lane as what ever item that partially fell off of a vehicle was drug for miles digging it’s shallow furrow.
$4,400,000 per mile works out to $833.33 per foot.
Asphalt is not simply fine gravel and tar. A lot of research and experimentation has gone into the chemistry and aggregate that is used to pave roads. This stuff has to be tough and durable because it gets beat up on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed the two troughs that show up on older roads? That’s not simply wear. That’s where the material has slowly oozed away from the tire contact area as the surface patches from the tires on all the vehicles have impacted as they go by.
And now they want to pick OUR pockets and take OUR money to experiment with some dweeb’s idea that no responsible company sees fit to waste it’s own money to develop.
I think Dante should have been consulted to write the motto for the Statue of Liberty…
“Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here”
ok….so i am going to go against the grain and say i actually LIKE this idea. particularly if the price more or less balances out but we have something that ends up being more functional and can carry power.
but rbateman makes some good points about possible unintended consequences!
And how much electricity do solar cells generate beneath half a meter of snow on short winter days with a low sun? And how well do they flex to cope with spring thaw, flooding, etc? And what happens when heavy trucks put their snow chains on and drive on this? This sounds like something that only has been tested in a lab, and should only be tested in a lab…
No that would’nt work. With less coal fired power station it would become colder and that would require more solar roads than at present.
What is the wattage necessary to keep 1 square meter of road at 1 degC, when the ambient is at -40C, and snow is falling at 10cm/hr?
Pave roads? I’d be happy if Caltrans fixed potholes once-in-awhile!
So what happens if the roads don’t charge up enough power to melt and keep the snow melted? I see these roads melting the snow and then having it freeze into solid ice.
This is a horrible idea.
I was under the impression that LED don’t produce enough heat to melt snow… which is why I remember having read a story about stop lights having problems in some areas because they run on LEDs and got covered in snow. traditional stop lights melt the snow without problems.
First of all where is he going to get all the raw materials to make these solar panel pavements and at what cost?
Second, I am not sure he understands traffic loading ( ESAL’s) and surface texture of the pavement versus wear.
Third, the FHWA is targeting surface friction as one of the most important variables in reducing accidents/fatalities. Many states are grading their roadway components by their friction characteristics and running skid testing on both raw material and finished pavement. I see a conflict here with a light absorbent panel and Friction ability, The friction comes from the Macrotexture ( coarse aggregate-particles approximately 3/8″ by 1/4″ ) in HMA ( Hot Mix Asphalt ). How are you going to embed particles of that size in a solar panel?
Lastly, it would probably be cheaper to install heating coils ( in new Concrete at least ) than re-vamping entire road system.
But how can a snow-covered road getting wet/icy/snow-covered between 1500 (3:00 pm) through 0900 (9:00 am) local solar time melt any snow at all?
And, once covered by blown and newly fallen snow over 1-2 inches thick during the 16 hours per day NOT receiving direct sun shine, how can the receiver receive any solar power to melt the snow under the snow-covered receiver?
How can a snow-covered receiver, or pine-tree-shaded receiver, or a receiver deep between a valley wall or embankment or next to a mountain cliff to the south receive any solar power?
Or this “only” good for tree-free, open-sided, flat-bottomed valleys where snow is not going to accumulate to any great depth? In other words, will it only be good for roads where natural sunlight will b e strong enough to melt the snow anyway? For free?
Solar panels alone are not good enough to ruin an economy now, heh? 😉
A GLASS road? Can’t say as I like that thought much. Slipping and sliding on asphalt in extreme conditions is bad enough. Slipping and sliding on glass in light rain would be no fun.
Even if the idea wasn’t totally stupid, for a whole host of reasons, it still wouldn’t save having to build fossil or nuclear power. All solar and wind has to be backed up by fossil/nuclear for when the sun don’t shine or the wind don’t blow. These people keep forgetting this. Also, we just found out in Texas that natural gas as a backup doesn’t work because no one is going to pay for the pipeline capacity to run all the gas-fired plants at the same time when they are needed.
I guess the key to getting rich is to come up with a hair brained scheme and get someone with deep pockets (we taxpayers) to fund your trial, pay yourself handsomely, then fold the company after the trial fails.
Why doesn’t this guy do us all a favor and not ask the idiots at DOT to give him any of our tax dollars. They’re likely to fall for this. Instead, stick to fleecing venture capitalists.
Also, don’t forget, semiconductor production involves creation of hazardous waste and disposal problems. Solar cells are semiconductors on a massive scale. So, there are massive hazardous waste generation problems.
See the real problem is that he came up with this nonsense scam before me. Ah, if only I could lie with a straight face, I could bilk people with half truths.
Golly, why not expand the idea to include a sort of third-rail at each side of the solar-powered roadway so all those future plug-in hybrid vehicles could keep going far behind their normal range even after their batteries are fully discharged?
Of course, a 12-volt first-rail (no need for another two rails because cars and trucks don’t run on those other two rails, dummy!) would need to carry lots of current at such a low voltage. But not to worry, recharging all those batteries could be done through first-rails made of silver-amalgamated copper because government-funded cost is of no concern. On the other hand, using DC-to-DC converters, the voltage from the solar cells could be stepped up to, say 125 volts DC to power the first-rail, and less silver would be needed.
Unfortunately, the fish and wildlife service would probably object because so many flying-fish could die if they flew into those first-rails, sort of like is happening to birds when they fly into those wonderful taxpayer-supported windmills. Too bad such a wonderful energy-saving idea may die before other government bureaucrats in the Dept. of Energy (or whatever it’s called these days), ever eager to spend more taxpayer money, become aware of its fantastic energy-saving potential! Imagine — autos and trucks powered by solar energy from the roadway!
So how do these solar cells stay clean to actually get sunlight to them?
modular road building is a good thing, how this would work out not sure.
black top is going to be more expensive as we go, silicon will remain? glass will not change as much. concrete is already cheaper to use.
nice find
Tim
This could work to keep the roads clear of snow in southern California most of the time.
A 3/4″ diameter rock stuck in the tread of an 18 wheeler’s tire should put short work to the “live experiment”.
… but if the road is covered with snow, surely it won’t get any sunlight to generate energy to melt said snow?
Or am I missing something?
Now, if we could find a way to find Trenbeth’s ‘missing heat’ and use that to melt snow, that would be a win-win!