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 7:39 pm
“DirkH
“Because the Fusor can for principal reasons never deliver an energy surplus.”
So why are people still trying to invent cold fusion?”
Cold fusion – better called LENR – has nothing at all to do with the particle collision principle in a Fusor.
Recent lecture from MIT:
Cold Fusion , 2 laser experiment, kinda pumping the system with phonons,
and once its going it keeps on going even when the laser is removed
excess power production kept on going for weeks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkPxOhjNlgM
MIT Cold Fusion IAP 2014 Thursday January 30, 2014 (Full Lecture
Fusor research on the other hand:
Fusor style experiments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement
Some people try to make it oscillate, hoping this might result in energy gains:
http://www.lanl.gov/p/rh_pp_park.shtml
Forward2050 says:
June 5, 2014 at 4:24 pm
“I find it interesting that the naysayers resort to name calling and negativity as their primary arguments.”
Making assertions up of whole cloth is not an argument. A realistic cost assessment and requirement analysis is not negativity; it is professionalism.
Tells me that you are not a professional.
Phil Mason (aka “Thunderf00t”) has done an excellent job of covering multiple bases with discussions of the fatal flaws of this scheme, in a manner accessible to the mens populi. Although it seems at times repetitive, such is sometimes necessary to reach the average listener. I would like to see what he would do to the ‘space elevator’ (aka “skyhook” cable-to-orbit) scheme.
muddmike says:
June 6, 2014 at 6:29 am
Who are you paying for all the damage you do by just being alive? Profiting from things you had nothing to do with. Aren’t you ashamed?
Me? I’m greedy.
I understand that just by living I use up resources and pollute, and I try to minimize the damage I do. I don’t do anything I can to pile up money that I will lose when I die. I also try to help others to understand that they too can minimize the damage they do.
I fact the biggest problem with the solar roads plan is that it lulls people into thinking that technology will magically solve all of our problems, so they can continue living the wasteful empty lifestyle of consumerism. This is the same problem that is caused by people saying that technology will continue to find oil and coal, so they do not need to evaluate their lifestyle.
DirkH says:
June 6, 2014 at 5:28 am
Your LANL link is bad. And BTW the work that Park is doing (if he is the one I’m thinking of) is only very loosely related to the fusor. The density is much lower and the gas composition is VERY different.
I fact the biggest problem with the solar roads plan is that it lulls people into thinking that technology will magically solve all of our problems, so they can continue living the wasteful empty lifestyle of consumerism.
I aspire to that “empty” consumerism. And I design technical devices to ameliorate our (mine and everyone else’s) difficulties.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/go-forth-and-prosper/x/7082918
A new Polywell Paper is out: arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1406.0133.pdf
The Park (J.Y) mentioned by Dirk up thread is one of the experimenters.
This should be clickable: http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0133
M Simon says:
June 6, 2014 at 6:54 am
“DirkH says:
June 6, 2014 at 5:28 am
Your LANL link is bad. And BTW the work that Park is doing (if he is the one I’m thinking of) is only very loosely related to the fusor. The density is much lower and the gas composition is VERY different.”
THANKS! I should remember to test my links before posting. Maybe it worked and they moved it all into Area 51, together with the web page.
Here’s a writeup from 2010.
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.de/2010/08/los-alamos-does-inertial-containment.html
(OH! It helps against Global Warming! How very fortunate!)
As to loosely related – of course. But the general idea of using a spherical field is still there.
muddmike says:
June 6, 2014 at 6:51 am
“I don’t do anything I can to pile up money that I will lose when I die. ”
So you’re a leech – paying no taxes yet using the infrastructure the taxpayers paid for, and being smug about it.
Did the writer of this article or any of the posters care to look at the website’s FAQs? They address all of the issues mentioned here. And the indiegogo money is to do more research to iron out issues and bring costs down. Even if we never see solar roadways on every street in America, this is an excellent forward-thinking technology
Just use perpetual motion engines in the vehicles and we won’t need any of this “small minded” stuff.
Remember the” Everlasting Gobstopper” A jawbreaker that never melts,
We’ll get some of them too.
“I think you only knew Solyndra was stupid in hindsight”
The issue wasn’t whether it was stupid. Lots of stupid ideas get funded privately. Waste your own money all you want.
The issue was that 1) DOE knew the company was going bankrupt and gave them a loan anyway 2) the loan they got was subordinate to those owned by the investors 3) who were major Obama donors/bundlers.
That’s why government doesn’t belong in the product development or venture capital businesses.
People who don’t want their cars messed up but don’t have the time to swerve and brake to avoid hitting
No worries, the ice cream road will have a sustainable, delicious, and high-traction waffle-cone surface.
all those kids licking the highway. And all the possums, deer, and bears as well.
I think you mean “toppings.”
DirkH says:
June 6, 2014 at 9:16 am
“So you’re a leech – paying no taxes yet using the infrastructure the taxpayers paid for, and being smug about it”
I work and pay taxes, I just don’t try to do extra things to pile up money for stuff I don’t need.I give it away any excess to worthy causes, unlike solar freaking roads.
Life is more than piling up the most and coolest stuff. At least for me.
“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.”
Surely you’re not under the impression that if they hadn’t done that, billions of computers wouldn’t talk to each other today?
I see no urge to pay Intel homage to the Internet.
And I see no urge to credit DARPA or ARPANet. It’s a nice protocol, but it could easily have been done by someone else. The same can’t be said of Intel’s contributions.
Chris says:
June 6, 2014 at 10:55 am
Did the writer of this article or any of the posters care to look at the website’s FAQs? They address all of the issues mentioned here. And the indiegogo money is to do more research to iron out issues and bring costs down. Even if we never see solar roadways on every street in America, this is an excellent forward-thinking technology
I have read the FAQ page. They DO NOT address the scratching of glass or its durability when faced with the stresses imposed on it by actual traffic. They do not completely describe their laboratory tests. I believe their 250,000 pounds of force was a static force test, which is much different than the pounding that traffic, particularly stopping, starting and turning.
The only video they have of “traffic” is that small tractor driving slowly over their “parking lot”. Tractors are designed for soft ground, so the tires are low pressure, which spreads out the load. That is not even close to an 80,000 pound semi driving at 80 mph with 100 psi tires.
In the FAQ section they also admit that melting snow “might not be practical in some northern climates”. I take that as meaning any place north of Alabama.
They also have been collecting power output data for months but won’t release it until after they get their money.
THANKS! I should remember to test my links before posting. Maybe it worked and they moved it all into Area 51, together with the web page.
Actually San Diego, last I heard. It seems to be working, last report was confinement is excellent. I believe they’re now trying to test proton-boron11 fusion, which has much better aneutronicity.
Polywells may not pan out. But government is throwing tens of billions into tokamaks that everyone already knows have no plausible path to commercial power (even the ARES vaporware designs for 50 years out have plant power densities far behind today’s light water reactors, meaning they cannot hope to compete economically). Of course they do provide decades of wonderful makework for teams of PhDs who only understand “breakeven” in terms of power balance equations, and naturally the consensus is they have the right approach.
continue living the wasteful empty lifestyle of consumerism.
I assume you’re posting this from a Buddhist temple, probably high in the Himalayas, where you and the other monks have forsaken all worldly possessions.
Fusor style experiments:
Polywells are really an Elmore-Tuck-Watson fusor with a shielded anode grid. They’re sort of a hybrid: magnetic confinement of the electrons, electrostatic confinement/focus of the ions. That lets them achieve much higher densities. For instance, at similar field strengths PWs should have 62,500 the power of ITER, without the ELM instabilities because magnetic curvature is good everywhere.
This is typically very confusing to tokamak fusion scientists, who aren’t used to operating at the quasineutral limit in a driven system, and they usually seem to expect the whole mess to collapse into a Debye sheath and not do any fusion.
Of course no one knows for sure how they will scale.
Howdy All,
1. I’m just an old highway engineer from the Midwest with jurisdiction over 900 miles of roads. 160 miles of pavements, the other miles are have rock (gravel) and dirt surfaces. Given my current funding constraints and material properties, I can’t keep my concrete or asphalt roads at the service level that we want now . Solar panels on roads? Sweet Jesus – My vocabulary lacks the words to fully describe the absurdity of such a scheme. Switch locations
.. That is all.
ML27
Robinson is an entrepreneur whose Institute does a lot of things. I don’t think the “several scientists working for the Heartland Institute” (assuming they exist) are making “millions of dollars writing d___r articles for the fossil fuel industries.” Heartland is very small potatoes compared to the huge ‘environmental’ NGOs (to which the oil companies contribute) and to western governments themselves, and only a fraction of Heartland’s work is focused on CAGW.
Unlike the multitudes of scientists in government agencies and academic departments, the small coterie of scientists and engineers who frequent sites like this one are not receiving any largess from “fossil fuel” companies. They spend their own time and money to try and bring rampant climate Lysenkoism to a halt. They are Davids battling the “climate change” Goliath.
/Mr Lynn
It could be worse, some lunatic may tell us HUMAN carbon dioxide warms the planet.
Then try to steal trillions by creating a ‘trading’ scheme for trading paper credits in human CO2.
Nah that’s too far fetched. No one would ever fall for that
Well the only part of the criticism, that I would disagree with, is the assertion that LEDs are not bright enough for daytime applications.
They most certainly are, and in fact the biggest unsolved problem of LED lighting, is “glare”.
They are just too bright for street lighting. Well unless you want to make them very inefficient.
The glare of white LED street lights, and also auto main headlights is an unsolved problem.
It is not a problem without solutions; they just have not been implemented.
It’s a second law thing. The luminance (radiance) in a lighting or radiation system is an invariant under all optical transformations (refraction / reflection)
You can’t make them brighter, and you can’t make them dimmer, while conserving all the energy.
The game can only be changed with scattering processes, and the problem is to do that, and still make all the flux go to the right places.
No I’m not going to tell you how to do that. Well unless you have plenty of grant money.