One of the best ideas ever (solar roads)

drunkenmaster said:
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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.
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On a bit of a tangent...that particular argument only applies to solar panels, not all solar tech. While obviously useless for road surfaces, other forms of solar tech can be of some use in some circumstances. It's feasible to make a useful power station from what are essentially mirrors. Relatively cheap to make in large volumes from common materials and the numbers work out if you have them in a desert. It's about generating electricity from heat rather than the light used by photovoltaic panels. The mirrors gather heat, the heat is used to generate electricty by a variety of means. Concentrated solar power.

EDIT: This isn't purely theoretical - there's a 30MW CSP power station in Seville and the completed power station there should generate 300MW. It's also by far the best looking power station in the world. Less pretty but in some ways more practical CSP power stations exist in the USA and China. They're talking about getting more than a GW from the USA ones, and that's a fair sized power station. This stuff works, scales almost linearly with space (lots of space in deserts) and has practical generating costs now.
 
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Hatter The Mad said:
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.
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You could put them on roofs as well, after all most American roofs are made of asphalt like the roads and the price keeps going up on shingles. There's no such thing as too much energy, and the cheap ultra-thin solar films they are developing might make it possible one day. They are going to have to replace asphalt road surfaces eventually because it's made from oil. And for ice I'm sure they could texture it and embed some kind of grip in to like like on epoxy flooring.
 
Wouldn't the screens produce some form of heat so ice couldn't settle? Probably most silly question ever.
 
Solar panels on roofs have a couple of little problems:

i) It's impossible to make that many photovoltaic panels, regardless of cost. Not enough materials.

ii) They're just simply not very good and a ridiculous waste of money. In the UK, for example, it would take an average of 120 years for the value of the electricity generated to equal the cost of the panels and that's assuming your house is facing the right way and the panels never break or deteriorate in any way and require no maintainance.
 
simisker said:
It wouldn't be long

Before these roads

Would be abused

By Marketing toads

Burma Shave
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Imagine those robots making these road panels with LED or LCD embedded inside all day for Google, and as you drive by the road surface detects your car's google ID and displays targeted adverts like Gmail while your car drives itself (to GMart to pick up some GMilk) :p
 
Angilion said:
Solar panels on roofs have a couple of little problems:

i) It's impossible to make that many photovoltaic panels, regardless of cost. Not enough materials.

ii) They're just simply not very good and a ridiculous waste of money. In the UK, for example, it would take an average of 120 years for the value of the electricity generated to equal the cost of the panels and that's assuming your house is facing the right way and the panels never break or deteriorate in any way and require no maintainance.
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This company got 500 million in private investment and 4 billion in contracts last year.

They use a nano particle solar ink and print it on to aluminium foil.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/nanosolar/
 
kwerk said:
This company got 500 million in private investment and 4 billion in contracts last year.

They use a nano particle solar ink and print it on to aluminium foil.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/nanosolar/
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That's a major advance. 16% efficiency on a roof in the UK though...I think that's not enough to be of much use. It would have to be dirt cheap and very low maintainance, enough for people to do it for the sake of it. But if they're simply printing it, maybe it might get that cheap. If you could wallpaper your roof with it for a few hundred and save £50 a year, you might.

I think solar simply won't cut it here as anything serious. The only way I can see solar working here is to have it generated in north Africa and sent here using HVDC lines. You'd only lose about 10%.
 
Angilion said:
The only way I can see solar working here is to have it generated in north Africa and sent here using HVDC lines. You'd only lose about 10%.
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SO which north African state are you willing to conquer/hand over the ultimate extortion material to?
 
Tefal said:
SO which north African state are you willing to conquer/hand over the ultimate extortion material to?
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Well, we could continue to do it in the middle east instead. Plenty of deserts there too.

Generating all our electricity requirements in the UK would be nice, but this is about solar power. Do you have any ideas regarding how to make solar power that effective in the UK?

I think it's feasible, but not using solar power.
 
Angilion said:
Well, we could continue to do it in the middle east instead. Plenty of deserts there too.

Generating all our electricity requirements in the UK would be nice, but this is about solar power. Do you have any ideas regarding how to make solar power that effective in the UK?

I think it's feasible, but not using solar power.
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Nope solar power isn't ever going to be major here (aside from minor water heating for homes).

If we have to use renewable tide/wave power is our best bet.
 
People have already mentioned wet weather, but also, on sunny days, you'd be blinded by the glare off the road. :o
 
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