Solar Freakin' Roadways

You could get more energy simply using the roadway for heating water and use the heat to run Stirling engines.
 
Electric-Mayhem said:
Yes...but its energy that the cars are already imparting onto the road, so its just capturing it.

I was just offering something with a similar idea to the Solar Roadways that gets rid of many of the inherent issues people bringing up.
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:no: A rock-solid road doesn't take significant energy from the car, that's why rolling on a smooth road is so efficient. If you introduce something that gets pushed down by the cars' weight you're basically driving uphill all the time. After all, if the cars' weight pushes something down then something else has to make the car go up again. That's the petrol/diesel in your tank.


GRtak said:
You could get more energy simply using the roadway for heating water and use the heat to run Stirling engines.
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Yeah, you could probably have pipes running underneath that make hot water... but I doubt that overcomplication of road building and maintenance could in any way be cheaper than building the collectors, pipes, and engines elsewhere to make power.
 
Yeah that's the entire point here. I think the money and time are better used making solar panels somewhere else, and leaving roads alone.
 
I've seen solar panels mounted on the noise protection walls alongside Autobahns in Switzerland. That's a useful combination of roads and electricity generation, you need that space and the wall foundations anyway, and don't make anything needlessly complex.
 
They've already doubled their goal apparently so hopefully it works out, really this is something the government should be investing in since it's the government that's supposed to be maintaining the roads. My only question would be what the surface is like to drive on, I think it would be quite good for urban and suburban environments. Any tech which could help lead to the end of coal fire plants is a good thing I think.
 
But it's glass! Its frikken slippery and fragile!

The only way to make it strong enough is to make it super thick or reinforce it with some sort of metal mesh. That'd just make it extremely expensive and more light getting lost.
The only way to make it grippy would be to remove the slickness of the surface so that'd make it even harder for light to shine through.

I keep feeling like these guys scammed 2 million bucks out of gullible people.
 
Look at the video i posted. It debunks the original concept completly. Roads need to be covered with asphalt. Solar panels do not belong on them.

If anything we can have solar panels above them.
 
nicjasno said:
Look at the video i posted. It debunks the original concept completly. Roads need to be covered with asphalt. Solar panels do not belong on them.

If anything we can have solar panels above them.
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I hadn't watched the video you posted but I had to stop it very short into it because frankly he's a small minded mealy mouthed idiot who basically thinks he knows everything for certain because he watched a video and jumped to conclusions. These people asked for money so that they can develop the technology and they got it, good for them. Maybe they fall flat on their faces and this mealy mouthed idiot will have some truth in his boring rant but I'd rather they tried then didn't.
I don't care for ney-sayers.
 
That "foul mouthed idiot" makes some good arguments. He's not against it but makes the good point that it's all way too expensive, needlesly complicated, resource intensive, requires a lot more, more expensive maintainance than normal roads and offers very little benefit in the end.

Plus, the traction capabilities of glass, especially after some use and the fact that after it all gets dirty, much less sunlight gets to the cell underneath. Nevermind what a semi driving over it repeatedly would do to it.

I'm all for solar panels. But not on the road surface.

Also panels on parking lots... useless during the day when there's cars on all spots and useless during the night, where the parking lot is empty, but there's no sunlight.
 
No matter how much they test it, it's still one of the worst ideas I've ever heard of. It doesn't even deserve discussion..
 
Aston Martin said:
What if they trialed it, maybe with people's driveways?
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Building a carport style roof over the driveway is going to be cheaper, can be angled towards south, and gets less shade on the panels from the neighbour's badly trimmed tree. Plus free carport.
 
Four Five Eight said:
I hadn't watched the video you posted but I had to stop it very short into it because frankly he's a small minded mealy mouthed idiot who basically thinks he knows everything for certain because he watched a video and jumped to conclusions. These people asked for money so that they can develop the technology and they got it, good for them. Maybe they fall flat on their faces and this mealy mouthed idiot will have some truth in his boring rant but I'd rather they tried then didn't.
I don't care for ney-sayers.
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You're calling Thunderf00t an idiot? The guy has phds in several areas and is an actual scientist. You dont even have to be one to find a gigantic list of problems with this concept most of which can't be solved.

I wonder how much Cold fusion would get from idiots crowd funding it if it was a thing back in the 90s.

Being a nay-sayer for no reason is one thing, but being skeptical about outrageous claims - specially when they request money - is something different.
Look at their presentation video. Don't you think it's "too good to be true" kinda scenario? Well guess what, if it sounds like it is, then it is.
 
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I think this was all an April fool's joke that they thought they could get fools to give them money for.



Well, it worked!
 
They should blow all the money on booze and whores and just release a statement afterwards stating "Needs more development and funding."
 
Aston Martin said:
They should blow all the money on booze and whores and just release a statement afterwards stating "Needs more development and funding."
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We already have governments for that sorta thing.....
 
First I was like "Oh, cool idea." Then I thought about it for more than 8 seconds and thought yeahh that's not gonna work.

..And yet, they've raised more than 2 million dollars? :blink: That's insane for an idea this dumb and outrageously unrealistic. (While totally inadequate for any realistic infrastructure project.)

As Thunderfoot put it in one of his videos, they could've done the R&D for some 20 dollars and saved themselves from embarrassment. But then again, these idiots seem so delusional in their belief that they'll probably never realize how embarrassingly stupid this is.

Curiously, this probably won't be the first irrationally ridiculous project that comes out of the increasingly uneducated and unscientific masses.
 
The Department of transportation (or whatever its called) had already given them 750 thousand dollars as a research fund.

Wasn't that enough to make a small road of just the glass parts, no fancy solar panels or LEDs or anything, just the glass road, and drive a car up and down realizing just how unsafe it is?
 
The trouble is, they apparently have built a small car park or - worse - a patio. No frequent heavy loads, no meaningful lateral or longitudinal force, and so on.
Making a small road section out of glass without the electronics as a test bed would be a great path to take... IF you wanted to seriously test the feasibility of your invention. Which they obviously don't want to do, because it would fail horribly.


Let's put this nonsense to rest? :dancinglock:
 
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