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Like the title says I'm not a huge fan of most the alternative energy plans that I hear about. They tend to be highly impractical and applicable to only a highly specific region or area. That being said this is freaking awesome:

Solar Power Road Panels

Basically this group is working on developing super durable solar panels that could be used on roadways. The first prototype is in the process of being built. A few aspects of this IMO still need to be refined (the top will be glass, which will be hell for traction), and I can't find good technical specs on their website (estimated costs, power output, etc) but the potential of using the roads as a power grid are huge.

This is something I wanted to share, and definitely think it's worth keeping an eye on.

looks interesting. I can see if these are use in patches for like street lights and such (depending on power output)

I wonder how durable it will truly be. I mean we are talking about cars and trucks running over and over and over and over either it has to be nearly indestructible or maintenance would be a bitch.

Seems to me like they can just mount these along the sides of the highway and wire the cars to the road via some kind of ground scraping wire...?

Chazwozel said:

Seems to me like they can just mount these along the sides of the highway and wire the cars to the road via some kind of ground scraping wire...?

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No it is actually the entire road, see here:

http://solarroadways.com/intro.html

Interesting idea, but not sure if it is pratical, in Brazil specially, people might steal the panels >.<

I wonder how it would hold up to snow plows scraping across it.

What about repair? Snow removal? How do they hold up in weather? I mean, CONCRETE buckles in the weather extremes or creates potholes. What are the temperature ranges that these will support? Will accidents cause us to have to repair large swaths of roadway, too? When the sensors start to fail for whatever reason, how easily are they located?

It's a nice idea but I question the practicality.

---------- Post added at 10:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:20 AM ----------

Interesting. We both missed this part:

Since each Solar Road Panel™ manages its own electricity generation, storage, and distribution, they can heat themselves in northern climates to eliminate snow and ice accumulation. No more snow/ice removal and no more school/business closings due to inclement weather.

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---------- Post added at 10:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 AM ----------

WARNING! WARNING! A-OOOOOOOOOOO-GUH!

Our Roadway Infrastructure: Trucks with hazardous materials can be tracked and monitored. Suspected terrorist's vehicles can be tracked. Public buses and school buses can be tracked. All in real time. These vehicles can be fitted with controls to shut down their engines and/or lock up their brakes in the event that they are commandeered with malintent.

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That's a lot of surface area - these things would have to be really cheap to manufacture.

More security A-OOOOOOOO-GUHs for me.

Imagine being able to put “eyes and ears” on the ground anywhere in the world without putting human lives in danger. Drop a Solar Road Panel into the hills of Afghanistan via parachute. The parachute detaches upon impact and is retracted beneath the panel. Camera modules open and aim in every direction. A satellite dish configures itself for communications to anywhere in the world. Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina control the direction of the infrared cameras and watch the images on their computer screens and call in strikes when needed.

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Hmmm. And we'd have these EVERYWHERE?

---------- Post added at 10:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:33 AM ----------

The more I read the more I don't like.

Imagine what you can do with this kind of control: the dashed road lines that you see on highways can "travel" alongside you at the designated speed limit. If your car is moving faster than the lines, you are going too fast. If your car is being passed by the line, you're driving too slowly. You can maintain the proper speed while never having to look at your speedometer.

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If a vehicle crosses the center line too many times within a given distance, a ring of LEDs can be drawn around the vehicle, which will travel with it indefinitely. This will warn other drivers of a potential danger and will alert law enforcement officials of a potential problem. It may just be someone tuning their radio, eating a Big Mac, reading a map, or applying makeup (we've seen all of these), but it may also be an impaired driver on his/her way to taking out a family of four.

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I gotta go with repair and cost on this one. Concrete is a million times cheaper and a million times easier to fix. If you're gonna spend the money to retrofit every roadway with these panels, you might as well install a magnet system (similar to monorails) so we can just have hover cars.

I just don't like the tracking and police state-ness of the whole thing. Cameras? Automatic flagging of cars deemed to be reckless? Seems draconian.

Dave said:

I just don't like the tracking and police state-ness of the whole thing. Cameras? Automatic flagging of cars deemed to be reckless? Seems draconian.

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A good reason to worry. However as hard as they're pimping it I'd figure that most of it will go away to keep costs down. To me the real value of this is the decentralization of our power grids and integrating it with the already existing road infastructure,. This is where their focus really needs to be.

Yes, but they also want to lessen the impact on wildlife by adding walkways for animals when redoing the roads.

Dave said:

WARNING! WARNING! A-OOOOOOOOOOO-GUH!

Our Roadway Infrastructure: Trucks with hazardous materials can be tracked and monitored. Suspected terrorist's vehicles can be tracked. Public buses and school buses can be tracked. All in real time. These vehicles can be fitted with controls to shut down their engines and/or lock up their brakes in the event that they are commandeered with malintent.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Don't drive a GM vehicle, Dave. That quote describes Onstar. And we don't need special road panels to reach Orwellian heights. Britain's littered with cameras already.

Why are you so paranoid all of a sudden?

---------- Post added at 12:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:24 PM ----------

NYC, too, I think was gonna add thousands of cameras to watch traffic.

This is by far not the first time roads have been suggested as a solar energy source. The typical way it's been done is the opposite of radiant heating: run water filled pipes through the asphalt, which are heated indirectly. Unfortunately, it's a maintenance nightmare.

Photovoltaic paint, anyone?

Another article.

Also it takes energy to make heat to thaw the roads to get the solar energy to make the heat. Now could it be done with power from neighboring panels? sure, but then they have to make sure there is heated drainage to allow the melt water to leave the road. Otherwise water freezes in the drains and water builds on the roads where it's dammed in by ice and solid block slush in the unheated areas. Plus if it starts snowing at night... oy. Sounds like more of a venture capitol fishing expedition to me.

I like the concept, but their pitch is terrible. Pure silver bullet salesmanship. Instead of promising to end the worlds energy problems with their product, they should attack the mini-van majority. When I was building my home, had someone approached me about adding these items to my driveway to power my house, I would have considered it. The items would have paid for themselves before my house was paid off.

Doing it that way, they would avoid getting crushed by the multi-billion dollar infrastructure industry.

You think nuclear is impractical, but replacing roads with solar panels as practical? What?

EDIT: Okay, you said "most". There are a lot of currently impractical alternative energy proposals out there, to be sure. But I think, unlike nuclear (especially thorium), this is one of them.

Re: Intelligent roads.
Great idea. Lots of problems to be solved. Concrete doesn't fail because it gets beaten up by the weather. It fails because the ground underneath heaves and drops with the climate changes, and the traffic becomes more punishing. If roadways were more flexible, this would be less of an issue, but then you would have other problems (less abrasion resistance, rutting, washboarding).

Re: Big Brother.
The technologies already exist, it's just the headache and the populace/market that keep them in check. Dubai is far more Orwellian than Britain (for now). There's nothing that says that the cars of today can't just light up a big sign reading, "SPEEDER" on the back if the speedometer goes above 70, or even that just phones your info into the local constabulary so their computer can auto-issue you a citation and then keeps the line open with GPS so they can find you. It's just that (duh) people wouldn't buy a car with these features, no matter how much 'safety' you would get. And the mfrs know it. The water temperature hasn't been raised enough yet for the frogs to tolerate quite that much heat.

Most [STRIKE]spooks[/STRIKE] law enforcement agencies are plenty happy to track you by your ICCID (GSM) or ESN/MEID (CDMA) anyway since it is much more reliable than tracking your vehicle (your phone is much more likely to be on your person than left in your car). So the issue of whether or not the car needs to be the tattle-tale is pretty much moot before the smart road even gets built.

Not that I'm alarmist. I'm not. But the 'if they really want to, they already can' part still holds.

--Patrick

YAOMTC said:

You think nuclear is impractical, but replacing roads with solar panels as practical? What?

EDIT: Okay, you said "most". There are a lot of currently impractical alternative energy proposals out there, to be sure. But I think, unlike nuclear (especially thorium), this is one of them.

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I'll be honest, I don't really consider Nuclear Power to be that Alternative. Of course a lot of that happens to be from living in an area with a nuclear power plant.

I would be all for a large increase in our nuclear power usage in this country, sadly all the alarmists will never allow it to happen and stick with 30-40 year old information as to why we shouldn't.

Covar;357968][QUOTE=YAOMTC said:

You think nuclear is impractical, but replacing roads with solar panels as practical? What?

EDIT: Okay, you said "most". There are a lot of currently impractical alternative energy proposals out there, to be sure. But I think, unlike nuclear (especially thorium), this is one of them.

Click to expand...

I'll be honest, I don't really consider Nuclear Power to be that Alternative. Of course a lot of that happens to be from living in an area with a nuclear power plant.

I would be all for a large increase in our nuclear power usage in this country, sadly all the alarmists will never allow it to happen and stick with 30-40 year old information as to why we shouldn't.[/QUOTE]

But but, three mile island and Chernobyl. Right? I mean that's all that can happen when you have a nuclear plant.