Solar Roadways Aren't Worth the Investment

Omg, it's captain hindsight the thread

Captain-hindsight.png


Real men don't have to try anything. Real men know. Real men do.
 
travisty said:
Failure is not a bad thing when trying out new ideas. Not every one of them will work. When one does it will more than pay for the others.

Remember too that solar panels are dropping in price exponentially over time. What's not viable today could be viable in a few years time
Click to expand...
No, you only "gotta try" when it's honestly unknown what the results will be. I have zero engineering and energy development experience and I can tell you it won't work. The thing about the ground is it has dirt. It makes things dirty, which covers solar panels, making them not very effective. So in order to "gotta try", you first need to explain why the flaw I'm seeing won't be a problem.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
So like.... they couldn't have just created a very small sample section of road and simulated certain frequencies of traffic going over it (with a moving crane arm or just turning off the panels briefly, or something) and then extrapolated from there to figure out what the energy production was going to be, how durable it would be, etc? I'm just trying to figure out how much homework they actually did. I didn't follow this when they started. If they didn't at least do what I pointed out, then obviously they're really bad at this and they should just stop.
Click to expand...

Basically it started out as little more than a basic idea with some rough green-board prototypes and no actual working units.

From there it was crowd-funded, and eventually idiots in various governments talked themselves into throwing governmental money at it.

The one ACTUAL install of "Solar Roadways" was essentially a demonstration patch in a park (not even on a road). It basically has produced next to no power, has caught fire TWICE, and has spent a majority of it's time in a broken non/semi-functional state. The LED systems in them are, unsurprisingly, nearly invisible unless you're standing almost directly over them. PIctures of the install show shockingly stupid, shoddy install practices with massive gaps in panel trim, etc. And they haven't even had FOOT TRAFFIC on them.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Solar roadways are a fantastic idea if they cost close to the same as asphalt. Like, a truly great idea.
Click to expand...


Nope. Not even then.

Their install procedure is ridiculous.
The LED systems that are supposed to provide traffic marker/lane dividers are invisible at any distance and from a driver's viewing angle.
The fact that they'll spend 99.9% of their life covered in road grime, and that flat-on-the-road is stupid, means they'll never generate any appreciable power.
And that's not even taking into account the durability issues.
 
Chas said:
Because you have a higher quotient of people who think that the fact that they have an education means they're "smart".

It doesn't.

It simply means they were "smart enough" not to drop out, and indicates nothing beyond that.
Click to expand...

Chip on your shoulder, much?
 
Merc1138 said:
It amazes me that even on hardocp of all places, there are people who post here that can't grasp why this was a fundamentally terrible idea from the get-go. Even with fantasy assumptions about the eventual cost of solar panels, it still makes no damn sense, but they just keep on.
Click to expand...

Because science fiction is popular.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Solar roadways are a fantastic idea if they cost close to the same as asphalt. Like, a truly great idea.
Click to expand...

Nope, not EVER. Because if you had these amazing cheap solar panels to do this they'd still generate an even BETTER ROI if installed on buildings or elsewhere such that they could be placed at the optimal angle for the latitude, AND where they wouldn't be shaded by rush hour traffic every day.
 
Joust said:
Chip on your shoulder, much?
Click to expand...

Nope. I'm college educated. I have a Bachelor's in Nursing and another in Information Security Systems.

While the first was quite informative and useful, I eventually burned out. Not unusual for male nurses.

As for the second, I basically got it because it was a prerequisite for a bunch of jobs I was interested in.
In reality, very little of what I was "taught" in these classes was information I hadn't picked up ON MY OWN. So I paid for a piece of paper that says "Yeah. He knows this shit."

But I've met too many stupid people with degrees who think that, simply because they have their piece of paper, that they're infallible and their opinions are actual facts.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Solar roadways are a fantastic idea if they cost close to the same as asphalt. Like, a truly great idea.
Click to expand...
If it would cost the same to make solar panels as to pour asphalt, it would still make more sense to put the solar panels somewhere where cars and trucks don't drive over them, and buildings and trees don't cast their shadows on them. So, no, there is no hypothetical scenario where this would make any sense unless we ran out of places where to put solar panels, and the only remaining unused surfaces were the roads.
 
dangerouseddy said:
tarmac the roads and stick solar panels in fields or on roofs, so much more efficient and cost effective. so many youtube videos explaining what a pile of crap solar roadways are.
Click to expand...

Or install panels over the roadway kind of like parking. You can angle them and other fun stuf. Should up efficiency, and maybe you can get some increased life out of the roadway and reduced snow clearing costs or something.

What they did was clearly the stupidest approach at the time. Not sure why they did it.
 
gunbust3r said:
No you don't "gotta try". It takes a solid 4 seconds of thought to figure out not to put your solar panel on the flat surface with the harshest duty cycle available...
Click to expand...

Unfortunately some folks will not accept common sense, or estimates from certified sources, and so they decide it must work because they want it to. Then you waste a bunch of money and time on silly pet projects like this.
 
travisty said:
Failure is not a bad thing when trying out new ideas. Not every one of them will work. When one does it will more than pay for the others.

Remember too that solar panels are dropping in price exponentially over time. What's not viable today could be viable in a few years time
Click to expand...
Would you also try pouring water into a bottomless bucket before you accept that it won't hold it?

No, the only things that need trying are the experiments where we don't know what would happen. And in controlled environments where we are aware of every knowable variable. Thanks to advancement in physics and science those experiments are almost exlcusively restricted to particle accelerators by now.

I know mythbusters is fun to watch, but that's not how science works. That's entertainment, with completely uncontrolled experiments, that serve no purpose other than to waste 45 minutes of air time.
 
I said this long time ago when people first started talking about it. I can't tell you how many friends of friends thought this was going to save the world.

Asphalt is one of the most recycled materials on earth, so you are not doing much there.

You are having to make glass that is strong enough to hold up to the stress, you have to add power networks under the road and out to a substation. Glass is HORRIBLE for traction, their first ideas were to texture the glass, which I think they ended up doing, however friction efficiency was still horrible and it wore down SO fast. It gets dirty, dirt, sand, mud, rubber from tires, oil etc etc, plus blocking of the sun anytime something goes over it. Zero tracking ability and has to also be below the surface under thick glass. Cheaper to build next to or over the road ways with normal solar panels, or like people are doing now, and just install them where the power is going to be used.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PaulP
like this
Chas said:
Because you have a higher quotient of people who think that the fact that they have an education means they're "smart".

It doesn't.

It simply means they were "smart enough" not to drop out, and indicates nothing beyond that.
Click to expand...


Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

Nothing worse than trying to deal with an educated moron, someone who thinks they are all knowing because they have a degree from a major college.
 
Joust said:
I think this is a terrible analysis. It's like needing to transport goods to China in bulk, fast, and cheap. Ok - first we need to assume we have a high speed rail bridge that's 8,000 miles long - and then our transportation will be awesome! Clearly this is the solution.
Click to expand...

Could someone hid this post before the government here in California sees it and decides to build a high speed train to China? :p
 
M76 said:
If it would cost the same to make solar panels as to pour asphalt, it would still make more sense to put the solar panels somewhere where cars and trucks don't drive over them, and buildings and trees don't cast their shadows on them. So, no, there is no hypothetical scenario where this would make any sense unless we ran out of places where to put solar panels, and the only remaining unused surfaces were the roads.
Click to expand...

And even then, no.
Because we'd have basically papered the planet in solar cells at that point we would have somewhere between 100-500 PETAWATTS of total generation capacity, with something like 4-20 petawatt/hour peak at any given hour of the day.

Currently earth's TOTAL consumption is something in the neighborhood of 18 terawatt hours per day. So you're talking something 222-1111x our current consumption.

Other problems.

We simply don't have the natural resources (nor manufacturing capability) to PRODUCE that many panels in any reasonable length of time (basically, by the time you finish producing your first run, your first-installed panels will be reaching EOL.

We simply don't have the natural resources (nor engineering capability) to STORE that kind of energy. That much battery capacity is simply impossible to produce. And other forms of energy storage simply aren't capacious enough or flexible enough, or are geographically unfeasible.

Thermal crisis. With all that power comes thermal issues. Large solar facilities create an amplified "heat island" effect.
Now imagine coating the planet with them. Perma heat-island.
Not to mention the heat generated during conversion and transmission.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PaulP
like this
M76 said:
If it would cost the same to make solar panels as to pour asphalt, it would still make more sense to put the solar panels somewhere where cars and trucks don't drive over them, and buildings and trees don't cast their shadows on them. So, no, there is no hypothetical scenario where this would make any sense unless we ran out of places where to put solar panels, and the only remaining unused surfaces were the roads.
Click to expand...

Seems like we're missing a piece of the pavement puzzle. Perhaps the brilliant, fast-forward thinking designers assumed there'd be no issue closing the solar roads between dawn and dusk. Another shining project thwarted by the annoying devil of dual usage.

But, there's still time to launch my pet project - in case there's more investors with lots of money and little critical thinking - my solar project is probably better anyhow. First we ship lots of solar panels to Mercury. Then build a roadway from Mercury to Earth using, uh-huh, solar panels. Imagine driving right into the sun (or close enough to wear thick shades) in your EV which is powered 'wirelessly' from the solar road you're driving on! Prospectus available printed on paper made from stardust. Or call now! Nigerian Star Princesses standing by.

:p
 
M76 said:
Would you also try pouring water into a bottomless bucket before you accept that it won't hold it?

No, the only things that need trying are the experiments where we don't know what would happen. And in controlled environments where we are aware of every knowable variable. Thanks to advancement in physics and science those experiments are almost exlcusively restricted to particle accelerators by now.

I know mythbusters is fun to watch, but that's not how science works. That's entertainment, with completely uncontrolled experiments, that serve no purpose other than to waste 45 minutes of air time.
Click to expand...

Actually Mythbusters is a great show for basic scientific method.

The actual experiments are simply "sexed up", as they get higher ratings when things break, burn, explode or disintegrate.

I mean, what's NOT to love about homogenizing an area with a cement truck packed to the gills with ANFO?

I admit, it gave Destructo-Me a full on Kaboom-Chubby.
 
Chas said:
Nope. Not even then.

Their install procedure is ridiculous.
The LED systems that are supposed to provide traffic marker/lane dividers are invisible at any distance and from a driver's viewing angle.
The fact that they'll spend 99.9% of their life covered in road grime, and that flat-on-the-road is stupid, means they'll never generate any appreciable power.
And that's not even taking into account the durability issues.
Click to expand...

So, even if a solar road had the exact same cost as an asphalt road you've been programmed to hate "green" so much that zero expenditure for even minimal gain is just unacceptable.

That's impressive social engineering.
 
I always thought there would be challenges with this tech. It was an interesting idea, and worth testing to see if it made sense, but apparently it didn't.

Now lets move on to other ideas.
 
PhaseNoise said:
What I DO like are solar panels over parking areas. Cooler cars, someone making power - awesome.
Click to expand...

I love that . FDry's market place has a few stores like that. It looks pretty good on curb apeal, provides clean energy and gives us shade which is badly needed in Phoenix.
 
travisty said:
That's a nice idea and all but feels has always been greater than reals. Look at whole language (phonics is better). Look at the climate 'debate' (yes global warming is human driven).
Click to expand...
"Phonics lessons were seen as rote, old-fashioned, and kind of conservative."

"By the early 1990s, the idea that kids didn't need phonics had taken hold in many schools and teacher preparation programs, and was even a guiding principle behind reading instruction across the entire state of California."

But of course.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
So, even if a solar road had the exact same cost as an asphalt road you've been programmed to hate "green" so much that zero expenditure for even minimal gain is just unacceptable.

That's impressive social engineering.
Click to expand...

It will never cost the same, because you are not factoring in opportunity costs. The effort to make and maintain solar roads would be better spent going to more efficient solar projects or other renewable sources of energy.
 
PantherBlitz said:
It will never cost the same, because you are not factoring in opportunity costs. The effort to make and maintain solar roads would be better spent going to more efficient solar projects or other renewable sources of energy.
Click to expand...

Well, duh? It costs almost a thousand times as much to build a square foot of solar road than it does a paved road. Hence the reason for my post.

I never factored any costs at all, I literally said if the costs were the same, it was a dismissal. You're arguing because you enjoy the feeling.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
So, even if a solar road had the exact same cost as an asphalt road you've been programmed to hate "green" so much that zero expenditure for even minimal gain is just unacceptable.

That's impressive social engineering.
Click to expand...
Even if it cost the same to build a solar roadway as it does a normal asphalt road, you're still spending more money because most roads in areas where the power would be useful already exist. You know, the places that have the most roads? Re-paving an asphalt road is not the same as building a new one. So even if it cost the exact same amount of money to build a solar roadway as it did an asphalt road, you're still having to spend MORE money to replace the existing road and that doesn't take into account other problems due to having segments of road out of service.

When it would still be easier to just put the damn things on rooftops.

Twisted Kidney said:
I never factored any costs at all, I literally said if the costs were the same, it was a dismissal. You're arguing because you enjoy the feeling.
Click to expand...

Because you're still wrong even if the costs were the same.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Well, duh? It costs almost a thousand times as much to build a square foot of solar road than it does a paved road. Hence the reason for my post.

I never factored any costs at all, I literally said if the costs were the same, it was a dismissal. You're arguing because you enjoy the feeling.
Click to expand...

Glass and other options used for the panels are a horrible driving surface, hurts fuel economy and braking distance etc. They wear at a much faster rate as well, installed cost is not the only factor. If you could make everything the same, as a normal road, from life span to life time cost etc, sure, go for it. But that will never happen.

So until then, build normal solar farms, not pie in the sky bad ideas that are eating funds that would be better spent somewhere else.
 
Did anyone consider how dirty it would get with it being driven on regularly? I bet nobody asked that question.
 
The only reason I'm giving this project a mulligan is because I think deep down inside, we all want to create a real version of this:

 
Good thing somebody is always trying. Otherwise we will have coal plants right in the middle of every city. I'm loving this postmodernist world.
 
snowcrash said:
Good thing somebody is always trying. Otherwise we will have coal plants right in the middle of every city. I'm loving this postmodernist world.
Click to expand...

Without those coal plants, you would not have any of those cities. People enjoy hating on coal without ever understanding the impact and positive it has had on the world as we know it.

This is also not trying, this is trying to get a government grant from people who don't know better. That money would have been FAR better off being given to a proper solar farm, as anyone with the most basic understanding of PV and power systems would be able to tell you, it was a laughable idea at best.
 
They would have been better off just putting one or two solar panels on every rooftop they could with the same amount of money.
 
Someone explain the math to me quickly, my head hurts from re-reading these two lines over and over and trying to think about it.

Energy generated is only 50% of what it was supposed to generate and the road capacity factor, "which measures the efficiency of the technology by dividing its average power output by its potential maximum power output is just 4%.
Click to expand...

So it generates 50% of what they said it should generate

Then the "road capacity factor", which sounds like a completely made up term if you're not talking about auto or foot traffic, the efficiency is based on dividing the average power by it's potential maximum power. So I read this two ways, one .. is the 4% number is wrong because they just said it is making 50% of what they thought it would, or the 4% is right, but if they're only making 50% of what they thought they would then they thought this "road capacity factor" would actually only be 8%. So is 4% really abysmal? It's only 50% of what they predicted it would generate, then they predicted 8% which is still abysmal?
 
BlueFireIce said:
Without those coal plants, you would not have any of those cities. People enjoy hating on coal without ever understanding the impact and positive it has had on the world as we know it.
Click to expand...
Yup, and almost completely wiping out an indigenous people across most of a continent ended having a positive impact on the world as we know it too... so yay, lets continue to do that as well.
 
Captain Canada said:
The only reason I'm giving this project a mulligan is because I think deep down inside, we all want to create a real version of this:

Click to expand...

Damn, the game seems so slow when you're not playing yourself. I haven't played even half of them, but which ones I did play I remember focusing at the local area around the kart instead of staring at the road way ahead and it seemed so much faster.
 
while impractical the thinking behind making use of all that wasted energy that roads absorb and radiate away is not entirely dumb.

farfetched and borders on fantasy maybe, but still it is a damn shame we make so little use of all the damn energy that this planet is bombarded with on a daily basis.
 
cageymaru said:
Installing solar panels on roadways to generate electricity, fight climate change and create new revenue streams for countries was a bold idea a few years ago. France installed them on the Tourouvre-au-Perche highway and the early results from years of data logs are abysmal. Energy generated is only 50% of what it was supposed to generate and the road capacity factor, "which measures the efficiency of the technology by dividing its average power output by its potential maximum power output is just 4%." When compared to a solar plant that has the ability to track the sun as it moves across the sky, the roadway costs 10 times as much to build and generates only 1/3 of the power. Also it is pointed out in the article that there are only 2 billion square meters of roadway in the UK, but 17 billion square meters of rooftop in urban areas alone.

Unable to benefit from air circulation, its inevitable these panels will heat up more than a rooftop solar panel too. For every 1C over optimum temperature you lose 0.5% of energy efficiency. As a result a significant drop in performance for a solar road, compared to rooftop solar panels, has to be expected.
Click to expand...
No shit. Did the math when this broke.

Solar anything isn't worth the investment, unless you are trying to live off the grid in the desert. The efficiency is utterly terrible, it has to be replaced every 20 years, it's not reliable and the costs are exorbitant.

Cyraxx said:
Why are DEVELOPED nations the biggest morons? We have the smartest morons too albeit, but god damn we have people that do some of the dumbest shit....
Click to expand...
More like biggest scam artists. Billions of dollars are thrown away on bullshit PhD projects.
 
Last edited:
sfsuphysics said:
So is 4% really abysmal? It's only 50% of what they predicted it would generate, then they predicted 8% which is still abysmal?
Click to expand...
I think this is correct. Typical capacity factor in Europe is in the low teens, utility solar in the American SW desert is in the mid 20%, so 8% is terrible. 4% is so bad they should have just painted the road to look like solar panels and put the solar panels somewhere else.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
No shit. Did the math when this broke.

Solar anything isn't worth the investment, unless you are trying to live off the grid in the desert. The efficiency is utterly terrible, it has to be replaced every 20 years, it's not reliable and the costs are exorbitant.

More like biggest scam artists. Billions of dollars are thrown away on bullshit PhD projects.
Click to expand...

I think on an end user basis solar can be worth it, if you consider what some people have to pay per kWh in some areas. In my neck of the woods (Dallas) it makes zero sense whatsoever unless you just have to be 'off the grid' for whatever reason fits your fancy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top