Have we discussed solar roads?
 

I thought we did, but I cannot find it. If someone links the conversation I will commit ritual sudoko--twice!

I believe that members here said that solar roads were stupid, but of course, people always push stupid ideas, like me singing karaoke.

Seriously, no.

Apparently Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com kept saying that it was a terrible idea, but his readers kept trying to explain it, using increasingly small words, and probably adding "Ya gotta listen to me!"

I do not remember reading that France actually decided to do this, apparently [planning on] paving about a megameter of roads with solar panels, costing 5M € (5.7M USD, $7.5M Canadian--do we have enough currencies? :) )

[Edit! I missed that they specified the test project was 2,800 m², so 1,785.71€ per m²! $189.67 per square foot.]

A "cost of €11,905 (US$ 14,000) per installed [per actual] kW [generated]. (An average rooftop solar system in the US costs $3,140 per installed kW)"

I do not know how French rooftop installations vary from here in the U.S., but that costs 4.46 times as much.

Edit! Source! :D https://www.treehugger.com/solar-tec...-expected.html

It produces 2.28% of the original estimate.

The "300mW big Cestas solar plant near Bordeaux cost a tenth as much per installed kW."

73.3% the capacity for 7.33% the cost?

Readers insist that we need this for induction charging (Which is also stupid).

How would it make more sense to drive over solar panels than run power cables from rooftop solar?

This says that induction charging may be 90% efficient, although the images that I have seen showed chargers sitting on garage floors, not embedded a couple of inches underneath. If your car has 6" of clearance and the charger is 2" tall, that is 10% loss over 4", but how thick are solar roads? If they are only 2" thick and the chargers are immediately underneath, now they are transmitting 8", through a road!

What would be the fine for driving with chains over solar roads? :)

We've talked about this before, or maybe it was painting the roads white, which is probably a slightly less worse idea only because it would waste less money.

Actually, reflecting solar heat back to space seems like a more cost effective means of reducing warming than trying to sequester parts per million CO2 from the air.

I'm not saying PV roads can't be cost effective, but I don't think the odds are favorable.

Seems like a better idea would be putting the solar panels over the roads. Now your roads are protected from bad conditions and you have all that existing real estate... no eminent domain required.

Still more expensive than a solar farm on the ground.

I shared something about Plasti-dipping roads.

I do not understand why solar parking is so scarce here in Arizona, but covered roads would be a different complication. Of course, they would need to be angled, so unless you have one giant piece, it would not necessarily provide shade or protection from rain (or snow).

I am sure this would cost less than solar roads, though, and you would not have semis and cars with radials poking out of tires.

Edit: I missed that they specified the test project was 2,800 m², so 1,785.71€ per m²! $189.67 per square foot. I added this to the original post.

I don't know why solar in general is so scarce in Hades. As I understand it, property taxes are very low in AZ, so improvements such as solar where it's so bright should not suffer a big penalty.

As I've always said, if I were motivated to put solar on my roof in Oregon, I'd instead sponsor an Arizonian. I win due to more solar production, and the Arizonian wins from a lower energy bill.

Yeah they are a waste of time and money.
Talk about it on the dumpster fire known as "the climate change consensus"
I tagged it under "lies" and "scam".

It would be more efficient and durable to put the panels on the car,
Solar roads are very easily damaged and very expensive.

Far better to actually use the used junk tire mixed roads developed in the 1980’s since you would eliminate cracks and extend the roads lifespan, less road construction is less polluting but somebody might not like having lightly used side roads that last a 100 years without disintegration.

I never understood why anyone would even try solar roads. The properties needed don't match.

I like sound screens; they act as wind screens too. Large parts of the A12 have sound screens already and I can see consumption drop when I pass them.

New sound screens are being built on the north bank of the A12 between De Meern and Harmelen. They have solar panels, or rather they are solar panels...

No doubt the solar sound screens are not as cheap as regular sound screens, but the added cost may well be less than what's needed to build the same capacity in regular PV paneling and this way it takes up no extra space at all.

A far better way to combine solar and roads imho.

I figured this would have already been talked about here but I did a few searches using "solar road" as keywords and didn't find anything here.

I'm sure most of you are aware that Jinan, China has already installed a 1km, two lane section of solar highway, totalling 5,875 square meters which can generate up to 1 million kWh/year. The cost if the solar highway came out to $458 per square meter. More info HERE


I saw THIS video a few years back and thought it was an awesome idea, but sadly they just simply are not cost effective. HERE is an article that talks about the issues the company has had with the panels.

After discovering that they weren't cost effective, I started to think, maybe it's due to how thick and durable they have to make them in order to stand up to being driven on by cars/trucks every day. So I looked to see if anyone had installed some solar sidewalks or bike paths. Turns out they have... Score 1 for the Netherlands, who built a 230ft solar bicycle path. The solar bicycle path did turned out to be much more cost effective than the solar roads but when compared to ground or roof mounted arrays there's simply no contest. The solar bicycle path ($3.7 million) was only able generate 3,000kWh (which is more than they expected) in it's first 6 months, while the same amount of money could have purchased 520,000 kWh of ground mounted solar. For some reason they have called it a success and have expanded the pathway since it's original construction. A little more info HERE

As much as I love my solar panels, I think for road use we're probably better off with vertical axis wind turbines, like THIS. Although those have their own set of problems due to having moving parts.

The thing is, if the solar roads cause even 1% more rolling resistance, the energy production is more than offset by the loss in vehicle efficiency.

Generally speaking, trying to achieve 2 vastly different goals in 1 product results in both goals being suboptimally met.

Yeah - solar roads sounds good - UNTIL you think about it.

Solar panels belong on your roof not under your tires

solar money way
 

I have seen the basic premise on SR
downsides
costly
low energy generation
good way to get crowd funded a literally use other peoples money OPM
survey says SR are limited and not worth

Likewise, you don't want the rubber worn off of everyone's tires smeared all over your solar panels.

So, the CR-Z? :)

Snow plowing, sanding and salting your solar panels - would be awful!

I can't help but remember I-80 over Donner Pass (California/Sierra Nevada). When I last drove that stretch (a few years ago now), traffic had worn ruts into the concrete deep enough that I worried about high-centering the Insight on them.

Did you stop at the restroom at the summit?

I did a few years ago and it was the most palatial restroom Ive ever seen. The lobby is larger than a house, and the men's wing (I presume women's as well) had floor to ceiling glass block windows so it's flooded with light.

Have often stopped there. Used to drive that way fairly frequently, as it was the best way to get from my old place to the north Bay Area. Nowadays California 88 over Carson Pass is shorter, and a much nicer drive even though the rest area at the pass is a bit on the primitive side. But fortunately I can now use electrons instead of driving :-)

Why solar roads are dumb.
https://youtu.be/O0yn-xBjb9c

Why solar roads are dumb.
https://youtu.be/O0yn-xBjb9c

Why you double-posted? :)

I have dodgy internet being out in the country.

You can delete Permalink #20 or 21 and then everyone will wonder what Xist is on about this time.

Solar road ways strike back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff-3MhQ7ri8
Phil mason agrees, solar panels belong on the roof, or next to the road.

Twelve seconds in I knew it was Thunderf00t when his voice cracked on 'probably'.

Stopped clock.... Low hanging fruit....

Solar roadways is memetic herpes, it just keeps coming back.

They had this nice roof on city hall to put a working solar system on:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1628968597

Next to the road is where all the garbage from the road ends up. It's the dirtiest place on earth.

...Says someone who doesn't live next to a train yard. :)

I lived next to a train yard from 2011 to 2017.
When I say next to the road I mean like on ground mounts. Even then a drunk driver or some one avoiding deer could take them out.

It was a redpoint5 comment.

Frankly, I don't know about the dirt in the air, there's a main street between me and the yard. I am sure about what the French call metal hurlant.

If you see visible dust the day after cleaning, you have a contamination issue.

In the level 2 clean rooms back at hughes, you could clean the whole room with one handi wipe and not get it visually dirty.

I have a whole-house fan that blows through a MERV 11 filter. My standard for comparison is a paper towel on the car's windshield. If two days from a clean windshield it's light gray that's normal. While the accelerationist arson is in season, dark brown in two days.

SA's use of hyperbole is rubbing off on me.


At my previous job, I would on occasion pull a perforated tile up from the floor of the fab to crawl underneath to locate a network jack. Presumably this is where weeks/months/years of dust would accumulate, and I crawled in a white bunny suit. I'd find dropped pens, fasteners, and paper clips, but upon exiting the subfloor I appeared just as clean as when I entered.

That was another nice thing about servicing PCs located in a clean room; there was no dust to contend with.

It amazed me how much silicon dust could accumulate in PCs located in the rock crushing rooms and not affect operation.

In Arizona if you crack your windows you will see dust on your dash the day after wiping it, although I seemed to get more from my sun shade than the desert.

Hey, thanks for stopping by..... your thread.

I decide to get away from the ecomodder stuff so I went to Slashdot. The number one story? The Pinnin Farina Battista.
tech.slashdot.org Sportscar Manufacturer Debuts World's First All-Electric High-Performance Hypercar (newsweek.com)

What exactly is this 'emotional reaction' of which they speak, hmmm? My bet is that they are using Yamaha elctric motors, but I haven't seen confirmation. Yamaha Electric Motor for Hyper-EV | Prototype

The rest is just regular Slashdot-y stuff
T-Mobile is Investigating an Alleged Data Breach That Would Affect 100 Million Users (vice.com)
Contractor Accuses Huawei of Stealing Technology, Pressuring Them for a 'Back Door' (livemint.com)
The Case Against Working Remotely Full-Time (msn.com)

Does that include home visits?

The Worst 5% of Power Plants Produce 73% of Their Emissions (arstechnica.com)

(that's on a per country basis)

Ethereum's Cryptocurrency Will 'Jettison' Mining for Speedier Proof-of-Stake (bloombergquint.com)

The problem with current events is they keep making more all the time.

In places I worked the floor is where the filtered air came from. Also the Halon which was weird because the halon opened all the floor tiles trapping you in the room.

We tore apart a pc that was being replaced at a cement kiln and were surprised that it even worked because the fan was so worn that it didn't spin and everything had a 1/2 inch of cement on it.

There was a mention of solar roads on the news, but I cannot find anything!

Thanks for keeping us up to date!

I have yet to read here a strong case made for why road surface Solar is a good thing, plenty of valid downsides shared so far.

I look at it a little differently, seems like the issue might center around better utilization of real estate, which has merits.

My suggestion, there is a lot of land that is taken out of typical use by high overhead often high voltage long distance power lines. I don't believe the powerlines cast any shadow on to ground mounted solar panels at these heights, the areas are already allocated/permitted, they are somewhat secure, they provide some lightning protection for the solar panels. they have already an access road in place, the ground is cleared of vegetation and often graded/level, the powerlines terminate to where solar needs to go anyway I suspect, and they already are in place and take up a lot of acreage. The one question above my pay grade, is solar effected by any induction effects that are bothersome at the distances and location this solution be utilized at?

So why not?


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