[Astro]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Solar road way?
You are kidding right.
First of all they can't build a regular road that doesn't start to break down after just a few years.Then you are going to integrate solar cells more fragile than a potato chip into the road surface and drive 80,000 pound trucks on them. That sounds like a terrible idea.
Have you ever dont any road work? Its miserable work, I have gone out to do repairs on their machinery and you wouldn't believe all the deep gouges, divits and nicks the road way accumulate from tires falling off, trailer tires blowing out and the driver just keeps going the tire shreads apart and then they ride it on the steel rim to the next exit, items falling off trailers, junk getting ran over hung up under then dragged under vehicles. Then when a tractor trailer tire blows do you have any idea how much force the tread belt swings around with? Hitting the ground with every rotation.
Thats just what we need, a road that suffers millions of dollars in damage and stays closed for who knows how long after a tire blow out or vehicle fire.

So the current system requires complete road replacement or resurfacing every few years. As you say it is horrible work, requiring massive machinery and large costs in terms of man power as well as the inconvenience to motorists as the roadway is closed down or the number of lanes reduced for extended periods.
Compared to a system that reports any damage and one person in a pickup truck could bring out a replacement section. Unbolt the damaged section(s) and take the damaged piece away for repair or recycling. Road users inconvenienced for a few tens of minutes, not days. If the damage affects a large number of sections then they know that by the number of sections reporting damage so they can send an appropriate number of workers and replacement sections to get the job done within a few tens of minutes.
The cost of traditional road repairs, dozens of road workers, large numbers of very heavy machinery, transport and logistics it all adds up. I don't know how much it would cost to resurface 50 meters of roadway but i bet replacing 50 damaged road sections would be quicker and cheaper. Especially as the economy of scale kicked in and the cost of road sections dropped to a handful of dollars each.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Its starting to sound like a bad idea, but wait there's more.
In addition to all that, any where up north that sees deep frost has compression ridges, these compression ridges shatter concrete and asphalt with ease. Also any where up north that sees daily freeze thaw cycles has roads that only last a few years before they start to look like a mosaic. Dont for get most of the roads in the US see a snow plow and road salt most winters.

As the video showed, the sections have integrated heaters that keep them clear of ice and snow. No snow ploughs causing damage, no salting of the roads to cause cars to rust out in a few years. As you say the existing system has compression ridges that shatter the existing roadway requiring yet more maintenance.
And yes those heaters will probably consume most of what is generated but the roadway will remain safe, clear and undamaged by the cold season. The rest of the year the heaters wouldn't be used. Also we are talking of heating to keep the temperature only high enough to prevent ice and snow.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Aside from being an epic waste of money on an unimaginable scale that wont work in most places I see no problem with it.

Almost the same statements were made when it was proposed to put reflectors on the roadway. The inventor eventually had to use his own money to install them on a section of road to prove they were durable and increased safety. Once he did it was obvious to everyone the benefits and boom everyone everywhere wanted them on their major roads.

Maybe the engineers won't be able to make them durable enough, maybe they will. Who knows until they try. Some ideas sound crazy until somebody proves them and then everybody says, of course, why didn't i think of that.


But it is more about the lighting and the benefits it would provide in terms of road safety and reduced need for the millions of street lights lighting unoccupied roadways for the benefit of nobody. That was the focus of my post. The ability of the roadway to sense vehicles and only light sections of roadway that are in use.
Yes, replacing street lights with LEDs would reduce the power consumption but they would still be on all night.

And to bring this back to topic.
The mix of power sources that make up the grid power would benefit from the reallocation of the street lighting power to electric vehicle recharging. No additional demand would be placed on the grid by the electric vehicles. Especially good as any increased demand would normally be made up for by increasing coal consumption rate at the power stations as it is easier to do that in the short term rather than build more hydro, geothermal or solar power stations.