Dr. Roy Spencer and I have been watching this project with amusement combined with incredulity. Somehow, this mom and pop operation have raised over $1.9 million on Indiegogo from gullible people who don’t have the skillset or decide to ignore basic physics, economics, and common sense in favor of future pipe dreams of green energy. This video that follows shows why their claim doesn’t make any sense, none at all. The best part? The impetus was for this idea was global warming. Here is what they say about the birth of “solar roadways”:
Years ago, when the phrase “Global Warming” began gaining popularity, we started batting around the idea of replacing asphalt and concrete surfaces with solar panels that could be driven upon. We thought of the “black box” on airplanes: We didn’t know what material that black box was made of, but it seemed to be able to protect sensitive electronics from the worst of airline crashes.
Suppose we made a section of road out of this material and housed solar cells to collect energy, which could pay for the cost of the panel, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. What if we added LEDs to “paint” the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface (like the defrosting wire in the rear window of our cars) to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates? The ideas and possibilities just continued to roll in and the Solar Roadway project was born.
Source: http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml
Got that? Airplane black boxes to road surfaces logic, check. LED’s to guide cars down the road at night with optional Windex tankers ahead of you, check. Heating elements to melt snow and ice, but no cognizant idea of just how much power it takes to melt snow and ice versus the amount of power a dirty scuffed up solar cell will produce, check.
The most ridiculous parts of this idea don’t just include the unsuitability of solar tiles as a road surface (high friction surfaces and transparent optical surfaces are total opposites) and the ginormous production and maintenance costs involved, but also include the ill-considered support infrastructure requirements, the poor visibility of LED road lighting itself, and the short lifespan of materials involved.
All in all, it’s a colossal green tech train wreck, but these clowns may be laughing all the way to the bank, or they may be shysters, either way, there’s a sucker born every minute.
From the YouTube video description:
Well it basically proposes the union of 3 or 4 technologies. LED lights, solar panels, and glass roads.
Glass really isn’t a feasible material to make roads out of.
1) its too expensive. Just coating the US road system with roads would cost many times the federal budget.
2) Its too soft. Even with a textured surface for traction, it will wear away too quickly. Dirt on roads is basically small rocks, which are generally much harder than glass. Imagine taking a handful of dirt and rubbing it a window. Now imagine doing that with the wheels of a 20 ton tractor/trailer.
3) I have doubts about the physical properties of the glass to take the load and mechanical heat stress required of a road making material.
Solar panels under the road is a bad idea from the start. If they are under the roads, they are hard to maintain. They will have reduced light from parked cars etc. They are fragile. Not really congenial to the conditions you are likely to get on a road. In many ways building a shed over the road, or just having solar panels by the side of the road is a far better idea. However the power transport really isnt practical. One of the most efficient ways to transport electricity around is as high voltage AC. However to build those lines would probably double the cost of any construction. To bury the cables is even more expensive.
LEDs for variable road marking have been partially implemented. They are usually only cost effective in dynamic traffic management systems. For most roads its utterly pointless as the road markings almost never need to be altered. These LED are usually not easy to see (especially in full daylight when the solar panels are meant to be generating power).
However solar powered roadways has generated well over a million dollars for Julie and Scott Brusaw (a therapist and an engineer).
I’m still on the fence as to if they are just delusional dreamers or (now millionaire) con artists. A lot of this looks like just direct ‘what if’ daydreaming, but then you get the part of the promotional video where they are shoveling ground up coloured glass into a wheelbarrow, while narrating that they use as many recycled materials as possible in this project. It’s very difficult to not see that as a direct lie. They must know full well that they did not use any of that material in the construction of their glass tiles.
Watch the video:
And here is the original video pitch that earned these green dreamers 1.9 million dollars for an idea that was dead out of the gate.
This is all over facebook and most of my greenie friends have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. One of my “greenie” friends uses lots of “gas axe” time in her artwork, all that pollution, is also someone who believes coal fired power stations *comsume* vast amounts of water, well according to Greenpeace flier she saw. Pointing out facts like the water isn’t consumed, it *IS* used in cooling and is passed back to the source via an outlet, filtered and cleaner but slightly warmer, than the water taken at the inlet. Most of the water is returned, some of it goes up the cooling towers. Falls on deaf ears!
Thinking is hard work. That’s why so few people do it.
I guess that shows what a powerful scam Global Warming is.
oh that would work SO well up here in maine in winter in tree covered roads that maybe get 1 hr sunlight a day.
and temp swings combined with vehicle weight would shatter them.
would be fun to see what a bad plow cutting edge does to them, one missing road shoe and you could curl the panels up onto side of road with the wing in a really nice pattern I bet.
They really should read “The Roads must Roll” by Heinlein if they want to propose a unique, all purpose change to the nation’s Transportation system. Sure, that was written in 1940, but it was still more plausible than this proposal was.
These kids, they just don’t know the classics anymore.
“dead our of the gate” – out????
We already have solar powered roads in Canada. In spring, the heat from the sun melts the ice on the road. A clear demonstration of proof in principle. Now, can I get some $$$$ too?
“gullible people who don’t have the skillset or decide to ignore basic physics, economics, and common sense”
Exactly the problem with public policy pretending to be based upon in the sciences.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” – George Carlin
I remember “The Roads Must Roll” as OTR – from Dimension X
All of this is dumb enough but a simple workable solution was invented by Percy Shaw of Boothtown, Halifax, West Yorkshire, England in 1933 when he patented the idea of the cats eye.
A simple reflector in flexible retractable housing it works very nicely and is resistant to snow ploughs and vehicles running over the top. Different coloured reflectors delineate the centre of the road and its edges.
There were experiments with heated road surfaces where the summer heat from the asphalt surface was used to heat a large sub surface fluid mass which could then be used in winter to heat the road. However this was expensive and only effective in marginal conditions. In a prolonged cold spell the heat bank is soon depleted even in the UK.
My favorite stupidity was their idea of covering a parking lot with the solar tiles. You know, a parking lot, where lots of cars shade most of the pavement. Now THAT is a really dumb idea.
On the bright side, those getting scammed are global warming alarmists
and may finally come to realize how dumb they really are.
Don’t laugh. I predict that the Obama EPA will require these solar roadways to be in place in all 57 states by the year 2010. (And, no, 2010 is not a mistype. Gotta get moving on these things you know.)
I investigated a guy that sold limited partnerships that had a habit of failing, but he always kept the commissions, management fees and salaries. His cons were always aided by some government connection of some sort – like the small DOT grant here. Never did get him for fraud because the lawyers wouldn’t take the case because we couldn’t prove he wasn’t serious about his undertakings. Yet, he proposed to start a brokerage to sell his schemes on an ongoing basis – so he was doing a sincere con. Which is what you have here, although the debunking makes me think scienter is closer to proof here. But then, so is their underlying fanaticism.
Let’s test this at a California airport reserved exclusively for politicians. We can borrow some of their high speed rail funds to build it. Other. People’s. Money.
Please contribute to my project http://www.ImprovedSolarRoadways.com the main purpose is to extract money from alarmists to fund my party lifestyle. I promise at least 1% of the proceeds will go to google paid search so I can extract even more money from alarmists…
Thank goodness it only snows when the sun is shining. Otherwise we would need solar roads and snowplows.
I have a project there designed to reduce the cost of software development with real hardware and software. I can tell you our fundraising is not going well.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/go-forth-and-prosper/x/7082918
If only I was trying to do the impossible.
Her hubby sounds like a civil engineer – roads and stuff. It takes18 to 36MJ of energy per kilo of glass (5 – 10 (all in) kWh/kg or 2.3 -4.5kWh/lb). First figure the melt, second figure the all-in energy: mining the quartz sand and feldspar, transport, etc. Where I come from, an engineer with a stupid enterprise on public support would be decertified and possibly jailed; if it’s a scam, jail would be pretty much assured. If he was an ordinary citizen, he might get away with it.
arthur4563 says:
June 4, 2014 at 7:22 am
> My favorite stupidity was their idea of covering a parking lot with the solar tiles. You know, a parking lot, where lots of cars shade most of the pavement. Now THAT is a really dumb idea.
Yeah, but how about all the parking lots that are empty at night? 🙂
I think this is fabulous. The global warming psychosis has created a viable pool of marks for scamsters. As long as they target gullible private investors I’m all for it. A few “we lost our life savings” sob stories hitting the popular press will go a long way to discrediting the otherwise unchecked global warming mantra.
New paper indicates global warming causes dumber investors; more research needed.
Re Thunderfoot’s diatribe, Turn the maximum verbosity off.
This sounds like nothing more than a scam to get rich at the expense of the stupid.
My great idea is to put pipes in the roads and pump ocean water through them containing Dr. Trenberth’s deep ocean heat to melt the snow. That’ll kill two birds with one stone – removes the snow and removes the heat from the ocean. Maybe I should post that on Indiegogo, Radiant Roadways – A Real Solution. Hmmm….
You almost wonder if the video was done as a joke. . . . I think my favorite part is the picture of a small farm tractor sitting on the tiles, ostensibly as proof that a thousand 80,000 pound trucks an hour going down the road at 70 mph over a tile surface won’t cause any damage at all to the tiles.
I ran the numbers — at it looks to me like it would cost about $1.5 million dollars a mile for a two lane road — just for solar cells. . . . .I’ll leave it to someone else to figure out the cost of the actual tiles, the labor cost for wiring everything up, the cost of the heater units, the cost of the LEDs, the cost of the voltage inverters, and the cost of the trenches on each side of the road housing the various electronics. Then, of course, you have to figure in the cost of having the windex tanker/scrubber keeping everything clean. . . .
This is a perfect example of something the greenies would embrace. . . .
“Ric Werme says:
June 4, 2014 at 7:37 am
Yeah, but how about all the parking lots that are empty at night? :-)”
At night you say? I guess you have not been privy to a full, depth of winter, dark dull rainy day in say southern England or southern Ireland? Where people get up for work, in the dark, drive to work, in the dark, park in slightly not so dark conditions (Covering these solar “panels” with minimal solar “light” with said car), work during the “day”, then go home, in the dark, exposing the “solar road” to all that lovely “solar” after they leave, in the dark.
“Ben Wilson says:
June 4, 2014 at 7:49 am ”
I pointed this out too to my FB friends who are really keen on this. But then I point out that driving on wet glass is just a slipery as ice. And lets not forget how many of these “panels” cave in after a while…I would stick with blacktop!