Solar Freakin' Roadways

[Molly]

Well, the price will go down drastically as soon as you mass produce the stuff. So, if they actually decide to do streets with the panels, it probably won't be much more expensive.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100917758

And this is just copper. You'd need constant supervision of the road, especially if they use a material that is "3 times rarer than gold".

Which material would that be?
Tantal and all the other stuff isn't worth stealing cuz you can't just sell old capacitors, the recycling process is kinda high-tech. Copper is just sold/bought by weight cuz of big chunks of it.

[FleetFox]

So conservative, it will be good in the long run for economy too.  I would pay for a better future, that our future generations may have.  Once they can mass produce the product, it should be fine.

Unfortunately not everyone is as selfless as you its a really great idea imo, will be interesting to see how this develops.

[Ikarus]

I don´t think they´ll be used for roadways any time soon because of:
- energy efficiency over the years depending on dirt/grime/oil on the road
- maintenance (especially routes which are under heavy use and have to be renewed after a couple of years)
and all in all the simple fact that they haven´t been tested enough yet

BUT there´s a big potential for smaller areas/squares/parking lots as Cruise already said:

Also this will not be an instant thing. They have already reached the stretch goal they wanted, but more is always nice   They plan on starting out small, as they should, with driveways, parking lots, parks, and other small areas just to test the waters and get the ball rolling.

I´m curious of what people are going to create with these plates

[Nightmare798]

Because if they did, this whole fossil fuel empire that is spread across half of the world would go to hell, along with the few individuals that profit from them.

Energy crisis is a lie, that is spread by power plant corporations to make people buy energy at constantly higher prices, lining up their pockets with metric fucktons of cash.

But that is nothing new.

[Bulzur]

Seems interesting on paper.
But i have no idea how they calculated the energy it would give.

Let's look on a portion of a road. During the day, thousands of cars go through it. Blocking the sun. At night, no one rides (or only a few), but there's no sun.
It's even worse for parking lots, if there's a car there all day long.

For that reason, it's obvious i'd rather have solar panel on my roof, than on my parking.


Engineering point of view :

So they did a test with a tractor going on it, and it didn't broke.
Great. Did they run some virtual solution and ran 100 000 tractors on it, or fully loaded truks ? It isn't safe because it sustained one push. This push must be low enough for the material to let it in it's elastic phase. And even then, there's something called "fatigue", that states that a repetitive load will still cause strain on the material.
Look at our roads, they need upkeep. It's not that expensive for our current road, but if we're speaking in solar panels, that will be more. And if one is damaged, since they seem to be linked, how will it go for the others ?
They showed an image of a boulder blocking the road, and thus signs on the road prior to that zone, telling to slow down. Does that mean the solar freaking panel can sustain a fall of a boulder ? Is there some kind of weight detection on them, to differentiate between an animal crossing and a goddzilla crossing ?

This really feels pre-pre-pre alpha. It feels interesting, so i'll keep myself informed. Thanks for sharing that info. But i'm not hyped for it. Definitely not.

For it to be commercially viable, you'll need to be able to make profits under 10 years, usually. For "regular" solar panels on your own roof, you're already counting in years, because let's face it, electricity isn't that expensive. For this type of solar panels, undamaged when a tractor goes on it, with potential LEDs and some kind of cables linked together to "write" warnings, it's going to be way too much expensive for states or persons considering getting it.

Vote for me. And i'll put solar freaking panels on our roads.
Once elected : By the way, taxes will go up 30% for the next 20 years to cover for the expenses. And there may be problems since it's a fairly new technology. But hey, it's green energy, so it's definitely worth it, right ?


I just don't see it happening.