One of the best ideas ever (solar roads)

Wise Guy
Soldato
Joined
23 May 2009
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It's so simple but brilliant. Replacing road surfaces with solar panels with LEDs inside which can display road markings, pedestrian crossing etc. It would replace the power grid and you can run all the data cables through it too.

http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways/

I wonder how it would hold up to grit and stones and ice though. $35 trillion to implement.

http://www.americainfra.com/news/solar-roadways/

Would look like Lego roads

100209solar2.jpg
 
They'd be able to run sensors along these roads and have proper self driving cars too.
ALL THOSE CRAZY MOVIES ARE COMING TRUE!
 
Driving on wet or even icy glass, I don't think they've thought this through properly.
 
1) Speed bumps
2) Grip
3) Costs
4) Environmental costs

IIRC solar panels only rarely do the world any good, the environmental costs of creating them are too high for the lack of a need of fossil fuel to be offset in most cases, and the creation of entire road networks to replace the whole power grid?
 
Why not just but solar panels on everyone's roofs? Engineering solar panels an a grid to cover road networks is OTT.. especially when we have all this free space in the world.
 
isn't this going to depend on some massive leap in solar panel design?

After all they use some pretty rare materials.
 
It wouldn't be long

Before these roads

Would be abused

By Marketing toads

Burma Shave
 
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isn't this going to depend on some massive leap in solar panel design?

After all they use some pretty rare materials.

Aye and as the article says each panel will cost $7000.

Though hopefully the more they're made, the more efficient the become and cheaper too.
 
I understand. Wonder if there are ways to replace the rarer materials with common ones. No idea though, I admit that's scraping the barrel a bit.
 
Yup, wouldn't work, as has been stated, the USA needs Arizona covered in solar panels to run the country off solar power, and every manufacturing plant going, plus being built plus every panel ever made and it would take something like another hundred years or more to do it and cost trillions and simply not be possible.

Solar tech as it is now, is completely unfeasable on any grand scale, because we can't produce the things on any grande scale, they are VERY expensive to make and use expensive materials.

Solar panels need as suggested to find an uber cheap material that can work in place of the expensive parts they need now, considering thats basically the main goal behind every group researching solar panel, and no ones found anything, its unlikely to happen, every cheap ass material will have been tried by now, any more effective material is likely to be something that needs manufacturing, which is unlikely to be cheap.

The simple question is, why? Why do we need led road markings? Paint is cheap and road painters creates unskilled jobs, something the country is desparate for(real jobs, not pointless created ones but ones that are required). Why put an incredibly expensive and delicate thing under cars, solar panels are already expensive and fragile, why add huge expense to the R&D to make the durable enough for the roads, or add further to R&D and production costs and put led's and cables through them?

The only upside is space, the USa don't really want to give up Arizona to make a big huge mirror, neither does anyone else, roads you do need(as of now).

But Solar panels are grande scale completely economicall unviable right now, adding them to road surfaces would simply drive up the price dramatically, making them even more out of reach in terms of cost, and considering not a single place currently making panels is producing "uber hard wearing road solar panels" it would mean adding decades on building new factories to build these panels not a single country in the world can afford to buy
 
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