Their claim is that the panels would be uber durable, lasting 3x as long as asphalt, and using a material that was self-cleaning to some significant degree. Yeah, I’m a bit skeptical too but still quite a concept.
Of course there are other ideas out there for harvesting the solar energy that hits the roads. This one just uses the heat already collected in asphalt to generate power.
This solar roadway is quite possibly one of the stupidest ideas that I have ever heard. It is definitely the stupidest thing that I have heard this week–but it is only Monday. 
Roads (including the whole public right-of-way) are not only used for transportation. Below ground, you will also find water distribution pipes, sewer lines, drainage lines, gas lines, telephone conduits, electric power conduits, cable TV conduits, and fiber optic lines.
I work for a water/sewer utility. Every time we repair or replace a water/sewer line, we have to restore the roadway cross-section. Even with a simple roadway consisting of asphalt, this is very expensive. The cost to replace solar panels on the roadway surface would be prohibitively expensive, to say the least.
The idea of using heat from asphalt is not quite as stupid as the solar panel idea, but it is still likely infeasible for most roads. As you can see from my litany of utilities below the roadway, there is no room for hot water pipes. Also, in much of the U.S., these pipes will freeze in the winter-- which is why we put the water distribution pipes 5 feet below grade.
P.S. To be more charitable, I will say that both of the ideas are more pie-in-the-sky than stupid, but still, they sound pretty infeasible to me except in the most limited of circumstances, if at all.
Solar panel roads?
Goof grief. Just like flying cars will eliminate all that road congestion we currently have. Or that tiny portable fusion reactors will elimate power lines and allow planes that can fly forever.
Or the ancient greeks envisioning the wonders of nuclear power once we learn to split the atom.
Good grief again.
Just BARELY enough science in there to not claim its a solution by magical wizards that will save us all.
Throw in some “fancy” and impressive math, while leaving out critical numbers, to make it look all “sciency”.
Good grief a third time.
I’m one of those who agrees nuclear is miraculous, and that it is not an extreme position to advocate reliance on it.
BUT… what about nuclear proliferation? Nuclear weapons are just as ‘miraculous’ as nuclear reactors. I know it’s not a one-to-one relationship (different fuel, etc.), but what’s really the straight dope? I have this fear that nukes are just as wonderfully easy to make as are nuclear power stations, and it’s all some stroke of luck that every schmoe doesn’t have them.
robby again I have more than a bit of skepticism myself, but, the panels are indeed modular and could be unclamped from their supports, removed, and put back into place after work on items below grade is completed. In fact the cost of tearing up and replacing the asphalt to work on pipes etc below grade is a point in favor of this particular slice of pie in the sky. The asphalt idea would be geographically limited to areas in which freezing was not an issue. But that does include many parts of this country and the world and it seems like it would be fairly cost effective as part of new construction or major road rehab.
billfish the award was given by EE (Electrical Engineering) Times - a specialty trade site for electrical engineers. I’d give it some credence as more than magical wizards based on that. I mean those guys may play as wizards for fun, but they do leave it at home.
First, let me backtrack to something Chronos said last week:
There’s no way to know if Yucca Mountain is the best place to store nuclear waste. No other site has ever been studied. That’s what the Screw Nevada Bill (1987) was all about.
Although Chronos has refused (thru a lack of giving me a wager amount), I’ll take the bet anyway.
Chronos, you’re wrong. Nevada never gave away any land. The federal government controls nearly 85% of the land in Nevada, and always has. Land west of Mississippi became part of the US when the Louisiana Purchase happened, in 1803. When Nevada gained statehood, the feds kept as much land as they could, and continue to do so today. cite
This is a small part of why Nevada doesn’t want the nation’s nuclear waste. The mistrust and resentment over not being able to use 85% of our state’s lands and resources runs deep here.
Run the numbers and get back to me. Or does someone else have to do it again?
You “we don’t need nukes, we have magical pixies” folks always go on and on about how this or that “magical” energy source, thats always just around the corner, and the cost of which could magically be reduced by some LARGE factor, and somehow will be made even doable and practical makes evil nuclear unneeded.
We know the risks of nuclear. We know the cost. We know how to do it. We’ve done lots of it. And there are plenty of real world reasons it could be cheaper.
Is is perfect? No. Is it free? No. But its on sooooo much more solid ground than anything else it laughable.
And EVEN IF these other things are remotely doable and remotely cost effective, if you can reduce CO2 output by 20 percent by doing them, you can reduce it 20 MORE by adding nuclear. Or whatever amount of nuclear is desirable/doable.
IMO all these other technologies do is reduce somewhat how much / how soon you need to build/use nuclear. At least in the short term.
Most of you anti nukes folks are anti nuke and just dont want to admit it. Us pro nuke people dont give a rats behind about solar, wind, or pixie farts. We just get tired of the irrational BS slung towards nuclear thats keeping it from being all that it can be (and has been SHOWN to be).
So, the “experts” just threw a dart at a map of America and it just happened to land on Yucca Mountain?
So, you are telling us there are hundreds/thousands/millions of OTHER suitable places in which to store nuclear waste?
There goes the arguement that we don’t have enough places to store the stuff!
Yes, its just the luck of the Irish that every crazy SOB on the planet doesn’t have his own personal nuke lurking in his basement :rolleyes:
Okay.
The math sucks.
A 4 lane one mile stretch of highway will provide all the power for 500 homes,according the award winning wizards.
Assume a lane 10 feet wide. 40 feet of lane width. Times approx 5000 feet in a mile. Thats 200,000 square feet of area. Divided by 500 homes.
So, this magic technology only requires 400 square feet of surface area PER household.
I call BS. Most stuff I’ve read claimed that even if you covered a WHOLE roof with solar power thinga ma bobs, it MIGHT, maybe on a good day, provide enough power to power a house.
400 square feet? Meh.
Which brings up another point. If that small amount IS enough to put on the roof of a house, why the frack don’t you put in on roof where it ISNT going to get run over by semi’s on a daily basis? And its CLOSER to the house where the power is needed in the first place!
And BTW, ANY engineer/scientist/non-art apprectiation major that reports such a thing to 30 something significant digits should have their balls ripped off and their degree revoked.
400 square feet is 36 square metres, which would give you about 36 kilowatts of solar power at noon on a sunny day (before worrying about the efficiency of the panels). IIRC, there is the equivalent of 8 hours full irradiance per day, but let’s make it 4 hours equivalent for safety and to account for cloud cover. This gives an effective solar power of 6 kilowatts. Estimates I’ve seen for power consumption in the US give an average of around 0.9-1.1 kilowatts (varying depending on the time of day and year), in which case you’d need solar panels with an efficiency of 17% or higher. This is higher than the commercially available solar panels I’m familiar with, but lower than the 25% efficient silicon solar cells that the University of New South Wales has reportedly created.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that a road is the best place to put them, or that it would be cost effective to use solar power for so much of our energy production.
Never mind, I see that such calculations have already been done by SolarRoadway.
Read thread, then post. :smack:
ETA: It’s worth remembering that a horizontal solar panel cannot operate at maximum efficiency. If they face in the direction of the equator they receive a greater irradiance, and if you can turn them as the day progresses they become better still.
Lets run this.
100 nuclear reactors provide 20 percent of the USA power. Lets build another 400 to make the USA one hundred percent nuclear. Assume 400 million people in the USA. Assume a cool billion to build a modern nuclear power plant.
Thats a 1000 dollars per person. Say it takes 20 years to build all these suckers. Thats 50 dollars per person per year. Hardly a budget breaker. A fraction of a per person’s share of the typical power bill.
Now, lets go to the “smart road” stuff. 400 square feet per household. Lets call that 100 to 200 square feet a person. You think you can make something like that for a measely 5 to 10 dollars a square foot?
And I still think the square footage requirement is optimistic on their part.
I’m telling you that I know more about Yucca Mountain, and how it came to be the only site studied for a waste depository, than you do. No other site has been studied, altho there were other sites that had data collected and made the early list.
A couple of pages ago, xtisme made this comment, which I laughed at.
He also said:
This thought is absurd, and wrong. I know people love to pick on Al Gore, so I thought what he had to say recently was relevant, and that it would be fun to use him as a focal point:
Turns out, he’s right. Not a whole state at all; not even close. cite
Suck on that.
So you’re saying that after ten years of study of ten different sites, they still had no idea which one was best and just chose Yucca Mountain because it’s fun to screw over Nevada?
Quoth Billfish678:
“Don’t give a rat’s behind” is a bit harsh. I for one think that we should be going gung-ho ahead with researching solar technologies and building windmills, and if we had any pixies, I’d support studying their farts, too. Nuclear, like coal plants, rely on a non-renewable resource, and eventually we’re going to run low on it (albeit after at least several centuries), and so we’re eventually going to have to switch to something else. And it may even become cheaper, with enough research, to get power from sources like solar.
But we’re not there yet. With the alternative-energy technology we have now, we can’t shoulder the full burden of the country’s needs yet. And so, in the meanwhile, we should be building more nuclear plants.
By that I meant that we (most pro nuke) don’t fear it nor wish it to fail.
If it works great! Study it and research it? Fine. As you say, eventually, we will/might have to go that way.
Honestly, I think most anti-nuke folks have an irrational fear of it and look for any reason to dismiss it.
Kind of like those folks who REFUSE to fly because its more dangerous than driving.
But, getting it ready in a 100-1000 years from now is a heck of a lot more likely than getting it working NOW.
You haven’t read any of my posts have you? But nice to know that you’ve solved the issue. We just use all the biomass in that massive strawman you keep putting up.
If other sites WERENT studied, as you claim, then there is a high possibility of other, possibly even better sites existing.
If other sites WERE studied and this was the only suitable one found, then your claim that other sites werent studied is wrong.
You can’t logically have it both ways.
Are you an electrical engineer, or is this just a gut feeling?