Solar Roadway

[Betruger]

I've heard that suggested as a genuine suggestion in many places. How stupid!

That's right - same roads but with piezo in em. You don't need to make the roads stupidly more resistant than now, given how much road is available.

And with a few milliwatts per sq meter on average this is going to pay off how?

It is worse than solar. By at least a factor of 1,000.

I never argued it as an alternative to solar, or anything major. It only seems like a convenient source of local, small scale power.

[Soylent]

I never argued it as an alternative to solar, or anything major. It only seems like a convenient source of local, small scale power.

I'd just use a battery or a tiny solar cell if I needed a couple of milliwatts of intermittent power.

[Betruger]

Depends on the application.. Piezo in jogging clothes would work to power a wristwatch or something of that scale, but obviously not household appliances.

[Professor Science]

I thought that there were wristwatches that had piezo's in them that powered wristwatches. Or they had some kind of energy capture mechanism in them.

[Nik]

Perhaps relevant to the proposed scheme is our experience of a HV & Water utility renewal scheme...

Contractors dug a trench approx four feet wide and nine deep along a quarter mile of busy road. Okay, it was fun watching the new pipe-sections being butt-welded, the cable's mega-bobbin being unrolled...

But, where the trench switched sides, the slot was temporarily covered with textured steel sheets. Even bedded with tar, those wriggled and hopped as you might expect...

I've seen a number of 'non-traditional' road surfaces tried, and traffic is very unforgiving. IIRC, damage goes as the fifth power of axle loading, so one over-loaded or mis-loaded truck provides disproportionate wear.

Then there's 'oily weep' and 'diesel drips' to soften the surface...

Um, I've often wondered how much and how far light would penetrate concrete if much of the aggregate was pea-sized glass, 'cats eye' stuff.

Problem is safety, of course. One accident on new surface even slightly attributable to grip or even novelty, and the lawyers clean up...

And then a 'mega mover' comes along with an oversized load, leaving a trail of destruction...

Um, perhaps better to put piezo pick-ups on the sides of traditional road to collect the vibration. All you need to do is *glue* sensor to the road-bed...

[Skipjack]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/06/sola ... ge-the-wo/

So, I do just hope that they subject this protype panel to a lot of tests and the same stresses it would see if it was on a real road. So lets have some hick drives his truck with spikes on the tires over it. Or have a 16- wheeler bursts a tire on it. Or lets see what happens when a (god forbid this from happening in a military- country like the US) M1 Abrams tank decides to go for a stroll on it. Or an accident happens on it and a hazmat truck spills acid, or gasoline on it (and it is set on fire).
Or what happens once a billion birds shit on it, or 1 million punks have spit their disgusting chewing gums on it?
I am also interested in knowing: does this thing burn? If so, that might be a bad idea on a road. You know accidents do happen and things start to burn. We had an accident where a truck cought flames in a tunnel here. Many people died, I dont even want to think what would have happened if the pavement was more flamable than the tar on the road already is.
So many questions. I do sure hope the DOE does ask all of them and test for them. If we never hear of this thing again, then I we know it was a piece of dung. I assume that is what will happen anyway.

[alancj]

Sounds like another idea that an imaginative and technically incline 9 year old might come up with. I had ideas like this... ones that sound cool when you don't think in terms of costs / benefits vs alternative ways to do the same things. I would file this with the other "innovative" ideas that I've seen and read about in popular media, like, say, the "farming the sky" idea (placing our farmland in skyscrapers). All ideas that would look great in the next big box scifi movie.

So the reasoning in these concepts is to find a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, then pick the worst way to solve the non-problem, like land scarcity.

Seriously, we go from worrying about hail and wind to thinking of ways to keep an axial from digging a crater into the panels when a truck smashes into something at 80 mph.

Now.. If you want to make a road bed last longer, may I suggest cast basalt? It's really hard, and it's just common rock. I know some highways are built using precast concrete slabs trucked to site, the same could be done with basalt slabs. I'm sure it would be more energy intensive than making concrete, since the whole mass needs to be heated, rather than the cement fraction, but the result is much more robust.

Adding heating coils to road beds would be great, if the polywell turns out, then that could be done. No more iced roads! I like the idea of roads that light up, and ones embedded with sensors and whatnot to allow a decentralized computer-controlled transportation network. The potential to cut vehicle deaths would be huge.

Running power and data under the road is all fine and dandy; and guess what, a lot of places already do that... I live in one. There is no reason you need solar road panels to bury cables. And when neighborhoods with wires strung every which way have enough residents fed up with the looks they are welcome to foot the bill to improve it themselves. Far better than a third party deciding what's the priority, spending someone else's money, supposedly for their own good.

BTW, anyone here seen transparent concrete? Search Google, pretty cool stuff.

-Alan

[KitemanSA]

The potential to cut vehicle deaths would be huge.

WARNING - WARNING - SUBJECT DRIFT COMMENCING!

The way to cut down HUGELY on traffic deaths would be to require that all DRIVERS be positioned IN FRONT OF the bumper. Traffic fatalities haven't dropped HUGELY because every "safety feature" they put into vehicals makes drivers feel safer so they drive more hazardously.
Conservation of risk.
Just a thought.

[BenTC]

In small towns in Italy that have narrow streets, they have been taking down all the stop signs and found a marked reduction in accidents. Apparently drivers were ignoring the stop signs anyway, and people going the other way who thought they had right-of-way were getting hit. Now everyone from each direction is compelled to LOOK for other cars.

[TallDave]

In small towns in Italy that have narrow streets, they have been taking down all the stop signs and found a marked reduction in accidents. Apparently drivers were ignoring the stop signs anyway, and people going the other way who thought they had right-of-way were getting hit. Now everyone from each direction is compelled to LOOK for other cars.

Beautiful. Just beautiful. Classic "unintended consequences of government intervention leads to suboptimal outcome" scenario.

[krenshala]

Now.. If you want to make a road bed last longer, may I suggest cast basalt? ...

And basalt is nice and dark, so it should absorb a decent amount of thermal energy during the day, making things easier to de-ice. Not on its own, but better than tarmac or concrete does now.

Running power and data under the road is all fine and dandy; and guess what, a lot of places already do that... I live in one. There is no reason you need solar road panels to bury cables.

The problem is that while, in theory, the cables under the roadway are safer from being cut, the exact opposite is true if that section of road ever gets worked on/upgraded. I'm in Austin and I've seen first hand how often the road construction crews can dig up fiber backbones, taking down large areas of phone and data services because they are working on one of the interstates (I-35) that had cables buried under it to keep it 'safe'.

[MSimon]

Heat is bad for solar cells.

[hanelyp]

I'm thinking that if you want solar panels along a road, the best place might be on canopies above the traffic. Just like they build solar collectors above some parking lots.

[chrismb]

The potential to cut vehicle deaths would be huge.

WARNING - WARNING - SUBJECT DRIFT COMMENCING!

The way to cut down HUGELY on traffic deaths would be to require that all DRIVERS be positioned IN FRONT OF the bumper. Traffic fatalities haven't dropped HUGELY because every "safety feature" they put into vehicals makes drivers feel safer so they drive more hazardously.
Conservation of risk.
Just a thought.

..or the often-proposed 6 inch sharpened spike sticking straight out of the centre of your steering wheel. that might make folks drive a bit more safely.

Look at it this way - if you had a car that could drive into anything or anyone at any speed safely without doing damage or causing you injury (like a videogame car) then how would you drive it? It is only the fear of damage and injury that makes us drive 'safely', else we simply abuse the safety features. Give the driver more safety features and make them feel safer and there can be only one logical consequence!!..

[PolyGirl]

Well there is life in the Solar Roadway still. Solar Roadways Awarded DOT Contract to Pave Roads with Solar Cells.

Danger Everyone Danger, Original Posting back on track.

Regards
Polygirl