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.
Dr. Strangelove says:
June 5, 2014 at 12:07 am
“@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.”
Because the Fusor can for principal reasons never deliver an energy surplus.
Steven Mosher says:
June 4, 2014 at 11:53 am
“The government has a bad track record of picking short term winners and losers. take Solyndra.
That bet was stupid and everybody in the valley knew it was stupid. We knew it was stupid because we had watched china crush whole industries.”
a) Solyndra wasn’t stupid because China; Solyndra was stupid because it directs only a tiny fraction of the photovoltaic cell at the sun.
b) If Solyndra stupid because China, and you and everyone in the valley knew it, why then is Solar Road not stupid because China and all the valley knows it? Help me, why could China not build hexagonal solar road tiles cheaper than the US if they were able to crush other industries?
c) Just like Solyndra, Solar Road does not use solar cells optimally. As even well used solar cells mostly exist only through government subsidies, this obviously kills the Solar Road.
I think you only knew Solyndra was stupid in hindsight and now you’re walking around telling everyone how obvious that one was. That’s stupid.
I love this discussion about technologies before their time. I was a developer for a very early connectivity product in the 80’s which allowed PC’s to define/access remote drives (like on a DecSystem 20 or VAX) and also allow the remote users to control the PC. It was essentially a hi fidelity DOS emulator. Then we made it a black box, so it supported any WAN network protocol (like Token Ring, Ethernet, Frame Relay, whatever) as well as any LAN protocol like Netbios, Banyan VINES, Novell. It was a big hit with the banks, as they could then route Novell traffic over DecNet. When TCP/IP became popular, we then developed what I called “Port Multiplexing”, which is now known as NAT. We even had venture capital from Bain. Our biggest problem was getting information from Microsoft on internal Windows stuff. I can remember talking to Steve Ballmer and asking him about the SMB protocol. He said, “We can’t talk about that, it’s the family jewels!”.
Bottom line is the company had a nice $5M buyout offer, blew that deal and went bankrupt, mostly due to idiotic management, emerged from bankruptcy and failed again because it lost the resources to keep up with the ever changing marketplace…
Phase I of the project is complete. They have $1.9 million of funding. Time for Phase II: Picking out a retirement home in Belize.
Greenie schemes and dreams all have one thing in common; they are built on the CAGW lie. They depend on the cost of “carbon” emissions going up in order for them to stay afloat, as well as the marketing boost that the bogus idea they are helping “save the planet” gives it.
Best headline for any news story about this:
Solar Roadways passes $1.4 million in crowdfunding: Just short of the $56 trillion required, but not bad for a crazy idea
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/183130-solar-roadways-passes-1-4-million-in-crowdfunding-just-short-of-the-56-trillion-required-but-not-bad-for-a-crazy-idea
Does anyone want to join in my plan that I am going to crowd source?
It is called Eco Freaking Unicorns! These unicorns will eat toxic and radioactive waste and breathe in CO2. Each day they will poop a ton of carbon free coal substitute and pee a barrel carbon free gasoline substitute. They will live forever, and can cook, clean, raise and educate your children. As an added benefit, if your drink their sweat it will make your penis larger.
I bet I can out raise the solar freaking roads people, and my plan is more likely to succeed.
Nah, it’ll never work. PeTA will shut you down because it involves taking advantage of animals or something. Besides, you left out the part that gets you high, so right there you’ve lost the Colorado youth investors.
I forgot.
If you don’t think this will work, and don’t support it, you are evil and probably work for the oil or coal companies.
Steve M, thanks for the old war stories. You are of course right: ideas develop into success in very unlikely difficult to predict ways.
Sure things turn into couldabeens. The next big thing turns into a neverwuzzer. The you-gotta-be-kidding blows up and changes everything.
The ignorance of the inventors of this mom & pop solar road in glass technology is mind boggling. Mind you, Although the criticism in the “Solar Freakin’ Roadways” video that tempered 12mm clear glass is $324 per 9 sqft is off base, clear glass is totally inadequate for PV applications, and finding enough low iron containing raw materials to make low iron glass probably is a fool’s errand.
I find it interesting that the naysayers resort to name calling and negativity as their primary arguments. Is it really necessary to call people stupid or idiots because they are interested in supporting a project which they believe could improve the planet?
I agree that this technology has a lot of issues to address. I don’t think that this would be argued by the inventors. However, that is exactly what funding is for. Those of you who are quick to vent and rage about the wasted money and ignorance of others for supporting research into this idea, would probably have laughed at Marconi and Edison as well. World changing products and systems are not born out of whole cloth, ready to go. They require someone to believe that the almost impossible, might be achievable and worth working for.
Most importantly, whether this product ever works or not, I believe that the article and many of the comments show a frightening degree of short shortsightedness. Our country’s infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating and in need of a major overhaul of some kind. It is better to be thinking of a 21st century solution than a 19th century one. The investment will be huge, what ever we do, but we need a long term solution. Asphalt is a petroleum product, Constant wear on asphalt roads adds carbon to the atmosphere. We will, eventually, run out of oil. What will we use on the roads then? The cost of something like this would be enormous, without a doubt. However, the costs of updating infrastructure, maintaining an energy supply and mitigating climate change are all going to be paid by someone. We can shoulder part of the burden and try to make a difference or we can hide our heads in the sand and leave the costs to our children ,
Pointing out that a project like this would require 384 billion tons of low iron glass is not name calling, or for that matter negative Forward2050 . It points out the complete lack of understanding of scale. Todays US glass manufacturing capabilities hover around 7 million tons annual capacity. To make this amount of glass in todays terms would require 55 thousand years – assuming you could find the raw materials and ignore all of the other glass needs the US may have.
My biggest complains is that they are making claims they can never possibly fulfill. They estimate that their panels will work at the full rated power of a high end panel that is pointed directly at the sun, and is cool. A significant percentage of tiles will be shaded, some almost all of the time. How much sun shines of a sidewalk directly on the north side of a large building? They list that their electronics are rated to 125 C. How efficient are solar cells at that temperature. The sealed glass panels make this a solar oven. At that temperature LEDs also deteriorate rapidly. They claim at 20 year (175,000 hour) lifetime for their panels, yet LEDs at room temp are only rated to last 50,000 hours where their intensity is down to 70%. What will their intensity be after 100,000 hours be at the higher temp? I would be amazed if even 1 out of a million panels lasted 20 years, since the complexity gives many failure points.
They claim they will repair their sealed panels. Who repairs sealed electronic modules? It is rarely cost-effective.
They have been collecting power output data for their existing panels for months, but will not release it until they have a full year of data. (and they have collected the marks’ money)
The only traffic that their test “parking lot” has apparently seen is a small tractor driving very slowly across it. Oh, I forgot, the poodle walked on it so it must be durable.
How tough would it be to put out a few panels and drive cars over them at traffic speeds? This would show how many scratches the panels would get, then multiply that by 10,000 + vehicles per day.
They seem to ignore that these panels are going to be subjected to massive vibrations, which will cause many problems including loose electrical connections.
I calculated that melting a single 8 inch snowfall off of 1 mile of two lane road would require a minimum of 22,000 kW hours assuming the snow was at 0 C and the melt water was at 0 C, and that the heat would all go into melting snow. In the FAQ section they now admit that it might not be practical for ‘northern climates. I assume northern climate is anything north of the Florida panhandle. If they don’t use heat, eventually dirt will plug the the drains around the bolts, and they will fill with water and freeze. Now you have an ex-panel.
You, sir, are the one hiding your head in the sand. We won’t ever run out of oil—not just because we keep finding more, but because we can make it from coal, and then from plants. And repaving our roads with glass solar bricks (that are not even aimed at the sun) is a ridiculous idea that has nothing to do with “updating infrastructure” (especially since it would make the roads useless for transportation). Nor do we have any capability to “mitigate climate change.” I gather from this that you subscribe to the myth that “carbon” (i.e. CO2) produced by man has a measurable effect on the Earth’s climate, and that somehow producing electricity from fabulously expensive glass-brick roads will “mitigate” it. Neither proposition is correct, and I defy you to produce any evidence that they are.
I won’t even speculate on what you mean by “Constant wear on asphalt roads adds carbon to the atmosphere.” If you mean particles of asphalt, then probably so. Is that a problem? Tire wear produces particles of artificial rubber, too.
/Mr Lynn
L. E. Joiner says:
June 5, 2014 at 5:15 pm
“We won’t ever run out of oil—not just because we keep finding more, but because we can make it from coal, and then from plants.”
You are correct. We will never run out of oil, but we will reach a point where the only oil we can get has a negative EROEI, taking more energy to produce the oil than the energy it contains. Tar sands “oil” is already at the point of requiring the input of one barrel worth of energy, usually clean burning gas, to produce two barrels of dirty bitumen. This is not to mention the destruction and poisoning of vast areas of formerly pristine forest and waterways.
You apparently also believe in the myth that there is a great conspiracy by climate scientists to get tens of thousands of dollars in research grants rather than getting millions of dollars writing climate change denier articles for the fossil fuel industries.
@muddmike – Very well stated.
I’m very skeptical, but clearly there is no shortage of people willing to pony up money for this idea. Let them install it over a section of roadway, and then test it for a while to see how it works, and how much energy they can realistically generate. Far better they get this going with private money than bilk taxpayers for a pie-in-the-sky idea. Generation and delivery of electricity using the roadways is going to be fraught with technical challenges. It seems like we have a pretty good idea of how efficient solar panels are, and can probably make a good guess as to how much power they’d generate on a road surface – seems to me like it should be a simple task to calculate how much energy these will actually generate, and whether or not it would actually save any money.
What I do see is that they got some government money – and then started a campaign to get even more money from investors. What happened with the government test they did? According to this website:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/06/crowdfunding-solar-roadways
They have gotten several grants from the FHA.
What turned me off was the whole “Solar freaking roadways” hype monolog of the video. Sounded like a circus barker to me – but I didn’t invest (anything more than any of these rest of us with taxes in the game did).
DirkH
“Because the Fusor can for principal reasons never deliver an energy surplus.”
So why are people still trying to invent cold fusion?
Please name me one skeptical scientist who gets some of those “millions of dollars writing climate change d*nier articles for the fossil fuel industries.” Just one. There aren’t any. In point of fact, the oil companies have put unseemly amounts of money into whacko organizations like the Sierra Club, in order to appear politically correct I assume.
On the other hand, the federal government has been spending billions of dollars on “climate change” (née “global warming”) research, skewing academic science to the point where practically every research grant has to throw in some putative connection to “climate change” in order to get funded.
As for oil, tar and shale oil wells are still making tidy profits, and as I said, down the road we can always make petroleum from coal and from plants, if we need to.
/Mr Lynn
Here is the one you asked for, Arthur B. Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, now making way more than he ever did as a professor.
There are several scientists working for the Heartland Institute.
They make a profit selling tar sands oil. I guess you believe that if you make a profit, then it is good. Drug dealers and contract killers also make profits.
The main reason they make a profit on tar sands oil is they don’t have to pay for environmental destruction they do to get it out of the ground. So far they also haven’t had to pay for the deaths, illnesses and loss of livelihoods of people living downstream.
imagine doing that with the wheels of a 20 ton tractor/trailer.
Try a AB-Quad road train pushing close to 200 tons, plenty of sunshine on the Stuart Highway and the smooth surface will make it easy to scrape up the dead roos.
Solar/wind powered atmospheric CO2 extractors. I don’t have the chutzpah to crowd fund it myself. So I’m giving the idea away. The CO2 extracted could be used to enhance the growth of plants that are commonly grown under artificial lights. I’m thinking the first example of this technology would be VERY welcome in Colorado.
There is never a shortage of customers for snake oil.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649389/Witch-doctor-conned-wealthy-patients-saying-problems-fixed-sacred-tree-Amazon-pocketed-5million.html
A lot of really smart people said that humans would never be able to fly
They were right. Human’s still can’t fly. It is why airplanes were invented. Airplanes can fly. And CARRY humans.
Dr. Strangelove says:
June 5, 2014 at 12:07 am
I actually like Polywell Fusion. Look up “M. Simon Polywell Fusion”
Ric Werme says:
June 4, 2014 at 10:40 pm
The ARM is not a decent processor. My favorite so far was the Mot 68000. Not perfect. But very close.
You ought to consider joining the 68k Mac Liberation Army!
https://68kmla.org/forums/
/Mr Lynn