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.
I call BS. I left CMU in 1974, and didn’t really get involved in the TCP/IP protocols until 1985. I do have the 1982 “Internet Protocol Transition Workbook”. I just checked – I don’t see any reference to Intel.
Intel is the reason the Internet exists. Without PCs, why would you build an Internet?
The Internet was not invented by DARPA coming up with a protocol any more than U.S. auto transportation was invented by the people who make traffic signals.
Andyj says:
June 4, 2014 at 2:19 pm
I see nobody here are engineers.
Aerospace. Commercial. Industrial. Aircraft RATs, Black Box data recorders, and other aircraft systems.
Without PCs, why would you build an Internet?
And perhaps more to the point, if nearly everyone owns machines capable of BIPS, what are the odds industry isn’t frantically trying to come up with some protocol for them to talk to each other directly? TCP/IP happened to be around and workable, just needed to add a few trillion dollars of infrastructure and presto! you had a serious competitor to the fax machine. Well, according to Krugman. Turned out a little different than he expected, mainly because PCs can do a lot of things fax machines can’t.
These guys are not even producing anything like ARPANET, which was at least eventually useful. It’s fine to be the guy who thought up Facebook in the 1970s, but there’s not much practical difference between being ahead of your time and having a totally unworkable idea because of laughably inadequate technological means.
Philip says:
June 4, 2014 at 2:45 pm
> It was around 1974 that Vinton Cerf et. al. created TCP.
I met Vint Cerf at DEC in 1978 Feb 6, he came to tell the network group there what sort of things they were missing out on (this was the era of proprietary protocols), I pumped for everything I had missed since leaving CMU.
I know the date because that was the start of the Blizzard of 1978 in New England. Vint didn’t make it out of Massachusetts that Monday evening, but he did make it to his hotel. He finally got out Thursday. So there is a climate/weather connection in this thread!
He even made it into my recollection, see http://wermenh.com/blizz78.html
They are developing durable, impact resistant photovoltaic cells.
I could never understand why my durable, impact resistant ice cream never took off. Investors kept waving their arms and uttering nonsense phrases like “not useful attributes!” I blame Wall Street.
I think you’re all missing the point. Indiegogo is all about attracting *investors*, not solving engineering or environmental problems. All these people need to so is create enough buzz to get *public* money on board. If you were to invest in this at the crowdfunding stage, then some government somewhere (anywhere…) decides that this needs to be done, then your investment will pay off because that government is throwing money at the company you’ve invested in. Doesn’t matter how shitty or useless the product is, it could well pay off for investors.
I mean, think about it: who wouldn’t want to drive on roads made of ice cream?
this entire article is stupid. the scientific method and innovation is about trial and error so no the idea is not perfect but if they keep trying they’ll figure out the solutions to all of your arguments about why it wont work. The only way they can keep trying is for someone to fund the research and development and their tests (hence indigogo). Your grandparents, if anything like you probably were skeptics of the wright brothers. but the kept trying figured out the solutions and now we cant even imagine a world without airplanes.
talldave2 says:
June 4, 2014 at 9:29 pm
The leading reason to build the Internet was that the ARPAnet was full – 64 IMPs, some sites had two, each IMP could handle four hosts.
The reason to redesign the protocol was to apply things people had learned from the ARPAnet’s half duplex protocols. Instead of having two connections for a FTP control interface (and one more for each data transfer), switching to full duplex protocols let you send a message that both had data and also the acknowledgement for the previously received data.
Without Intel-based PCs, both the ARPAnet and Internet did well. Like I said before, Vaxen were the primary system for much of university and industry access to the Internet. My first access from home was through a dialup line to a college in town, then later through dialup but not to AOL, I could have used a dumb terminal just fine.
Windows PCs didn’t garner Internet protocol support from Microsoft until Windows 95, though there were various third party sources like FTP Software for several years before. It was the advent of the WWW that convinced Bill Gates that he had to get on the TCP/IP bandwagon – there were too many non-microsoft systems out there that didn’t and never would speak the Microsoft networking protocols.
By then AOL had been connecting people to the Internet for a couple years though their dialup, and in 1995 debuted aol.com. So between 1982 and 1995 the Internet did pretty well without Intel PCs.
I’m currently using an Intel PC (running Linux); my previous system used an AMD 64 bit processor. There are plenty of AMD and ARM processors (especially in cell phones) talking to the Internet these days. I see no urge to pay Intel homage to the Internet. Besides, they never have learned how to design a decent processor – Microsoft’s mass market was a much greater influence.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Sounds great, right? Think of all the square meters of road surface on the planet. Of course, that stuff is comparatively expensive, brittle, not tough. It simply will not hold up to traffic. Keep in mind that it needs to be mirror smooth, not the best thing for traction. Who would risk driving on a road that would give you no stopping power nor cornering control while wet?
It is hard to believe anyone would give a dime for such an endeavor. Of course, as George Carlin pointed out, it is discouraging to realize how dumb the average person is, and it is scary to realize that half of them are dumber than that.
talldave2 said on June 4, 2014 at 10:05 pm:
People who don’t want their cars messed up but don’t have the time to swerve and brake to avoid hitting all those kids licking the highway. And all the possums, deer, and bears as well.
Harold Camping got far more for far less.
@rechard
The Wright brothers invented the airplane. PV cells have already been invented. These people want to put PV cells on the road. That’s the last place you would put solar panels after indoors and under a shade. Dirt and dust are the mortal enemies of PV cells. They block solar radiation. Where do you find all the dirt? On the ground. Dirty tires roll all over the road.
@m_simon
Why are people still trying to invent cold fusion? Farnsworth already invented the Fusor in 1964 and high school students have made Fusor machines for fun.
MarkW says, above
Everything above absolute zero radiates heat….
I agree BUT not what I said. Heat radiating from a cold area will not raise the temperature of any area hotter. This is scientific fact, through the laws of thermodynamics, Planck’s law etc. The GHE theory requires this to happen.
A lot of really smart people said that humans would never be able to fly, much less send a man to the moon. Are we crazy or stupid to dream big? Maybe. While a lot of smart people are providing lots of really good reasons why something can’t or won’t be done, other people are actually doing it. We create our own reality.
From johnmarshall on June 5, 2014 at 1:07 am:
Do you accept that blankets keep you warmer than without them? The room is colder than your body, the blanket is cooler than your body but not as cold as the room. Yet the cooler blanket keeps you warmer than if it was not there.
The blanket slows the transfer of heat to the room. The greenhouse gases slow the transfer of heat to space, thus keeping the planet warmer than if they were not there, even when they are cooler than the planet.
Your musings on thermodynamics and Planck’s Law and misguided and moot. This is not an ice cube that’s boiling water. This is a slowing down of the rate of heat loss. Your musings do not apply.
It makes sense. In french “gogo” means : patsy, zany. Perfect kind of people for a fundraiser 😉
Andyj says:
June 4, 2014 at 2:19 pm
> These will also make you electricity. Apart from being hexagonal, what’s not to like?
Instead of being part of the “Rat Race” we’ll be part of the “Hive”. Drunk drivers will be Bumble Bees, car carriers will be Queen Bees. The Highway Patrol can still be Bears and will be looking for money, err, honey.
Come on MarkW, answer or continue to live in an environment shrouded be rules imposed by idiots
Nothing wrong with “dreaming big.” I am impatient to go to the stars. I think Maglev trains and spaceship launchers would be fabulous (cf. James Powell et al, Maglev America: How Maglev Will Transform the World Economy, StarTram: The New Race to Space, http://www.amazon.com/Maglev-America-Transform-World-Economy/dp/149232759X ). But a “solar roadway” is really a dumb idea. There is a difference.
/Mr Lynn
“MarkW says:
June 4, 2014 at 6:33 am”
No. Does NOT radiate “HEAT”. Radiates IR in various bandwidths. Humans, usually, “feel heat” in a very narrow bandwidth of the IR spectrum, usually 1 micron. ALL objects above aboslute ZERO radiate IR. Is that heat? No!
I use to live in NH as a kid, melt this 😉 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201419586204900&set=pb.1632187392.-2207520000.1401983793.&type=3&theater
[snip – language – no need to use “deniers” and f-word in rants. Feel free to resubmit sans those policy violations – Anthony]
philjourdan says:
June 5, 2014 at 9:44 am
No, those three companies comercialized Ethernet, that’s almost certainly what you’re thinking of. While you can transport Internet protocol packets over Ethernet, there are many other message types that can be too. E.g. DECnet and other public and proprietary protocols from Microsoft, Novell, etc. You can have a very active Ethernet with no Internet protocol activity at all.
These days, of course, most Ethernet traffic is Internet packets.
Long haul Internet traffic is not Ethernet.
@Ric Werme – You are correct. However, tangental to that is the fact that Ethernet was the goose that got the Internet going. An open, if inefficient, standard, that made connections cheap. It has now even morphed to WAN connections. Of course the Ethernet of today is nothing like the DIX standard of years gone by. But the kernel is still there.
mike says:
June 5, 2014 at 2:28 am
“A lot of really smart people said that humans would never be able to fly, much less send a man to the moon. Are we crazy or stupid to dream big? Maybe. While a lot of smart people are providing lots of really good reasons why something can’t or won’t be done, other people are actually doing it. ”
No they don’t. They didn’t perform the emergency stop test.
Mr. Inventor said “the technology is ready, now it’s time for manufacturing it.”
Yet he didn’t do the emergency stop test.
So his assertion that the technology is ready was a lie. As an electrical engineer he knows that a technology must be tested. So it was not an oversight, but a lie.
And all of this is excrutiatingly funny. His fanboys gave him 1.5 million for that! Man! Genius!