Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

sciencealert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 349 posts

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#21

Post by dghughes »

jcranmer wrote: post #10
trilila wrote: post #3

“Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack “the road was only producing half of the expected energy” - great, so just 2 km of a solar road could power the streetlights of an entire city the size of Tourouvre, 3700 people. We shouldn’t raise the white flag so quickly. I think we need a second iteration at le…

> “Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so.

> Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so.

More like 18 months in my region of the world.

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#23

Post by Athas »

close04 wrote: post #19
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #9

This article from 4 days ago says a solar road in the Netherlands is doing well, so it seems like the French road is just a bad design? I don’t know if they are in fact different hardware: https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-first-solar-road-turn...

The one in the Netherlands seems to be a 70m solar cycle lane. Cars will destroy a surface a lot faster than bikes. Maybe (dedicated) bike lanes would be a good place to start with this.

That sounds like a good idea. It would also give cities more incentive to keep the like lanes well maintained (even in bike-friendly cities, bike lanes are usually less well maintained than motorways). One problem is that bike lanes are often located close to shade-providing buildings or vegetation.

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#24

Post by blunte »

GhostVII wrote: post #18
trilila wrote: post #3

“Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack “the road was only producing half of the expected energy” - great, so just 2 km of a solar road could power the streetlights of an entire city the size of Tourouvre, 3700 people. We shouldn’t raise the white flag so quickly. I think we need a second iteration at le…

Cracks don't cause a regular road to fail entirely, while if a solar panel cracks in half, it will most likely stop working. Also I don't see how solar roads make any sense when there is so much unused roof space and parking lots. Putting panels over a parking lot is much easier since you don't have to build them to withstand many-tonne automobiles, they will always be in full sunlight instead of being covered by dir…

I suspect the idea was partly that we already have to build infrastructure for roads; why not make the roads also a source of power?

In practice it will take many iterations to reach a point where it makes sense. Or it simply may never make sense.

The recent articles about some California farmlands being converted to solar fields does make sense. They were running out of water, but they had a lot of land to use for something.

Even if solar roads can work, there's still the problem of relatively inefficient tranfer of power over long distances. It makes little sense to spend a lot of money to make a solar road that's far away from energy consumers since a lot of the energy produced by the road will be lost in transit.

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#27

Post by toasterlovin »

Nextgrid wrote: post #8
remote_phone wrote: post #4

It was a failure but I’m glad they tried it. Hopefully something like this comes to fruition and we learn more and more with every iteration. Solar roads are a great idea. Maybe it means it needs daily sweeping with electric vacuum trucks or something but if it’s producing enough electricity then it’s worth it.

I just don’t see how it’s worth it at all compared to putting solar panels on top of buildings. Solar panels on buildings don’t need to be as rugged, don’t need to be cleaned daily, etc, and they also can be oriented towards the sun to maximize output. Solar roads are a solution looking for a problem. I can imagine they’d be useful to squeeze out an extra few % of output in a world where everything else is covered in…

And the craziest thing is that the sunniest parts of the planet are completely uninhabited, so land is plentiful and cheap. As opposed to urban areas, which are the most expensive real estate that exists.

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#28

Post by pgeorgi »

remote_phone wrote: post #4

It was a failure but I’m glad they tried it. Hopefully something like this comes to fruition and we learn more and more with every iteration. Solar roads are a great idea. Maybe it means it needs daily sweeping with electric vacuum trucks or something but if it’s producing enough electricity then it’s worth it.

I think putting a roof on streets (on a relatively light aluminium/carbon fiber scaffold) for the panels is less outlandish than trying to fix "solar roads" by adding maintenance vehicles (or solar roads themselves, really).

It keeps away rain (which improves driving), doesn't expose the panels to the weight of tractors, has similar safety properties (the panels need to react quickly on any accident related impact and isolate affected circuits to avoid electrocuting passengers), and if slanted, is somewhat self-cleaning in wind or rain.

I agree though that it's nice that somebody did a field test. That idea sprang up again and again and it helps to have some real world data: people anticipated the cracking issue, but who argued against solar roads because of leaves killing the efficiency?

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#29

Post by trilila »

GhostVII wrote: post #18
trilila wrote: post #3

“Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack “the road was only producing half of the expected energy” - great, so just 2 km of a solar road could power the streetlights of an entire city the size of Tourouvre, 3700 people. We shouldn’t raise the white flag so quickly. I think we need a second iteration at le…

Cracks don't cause a regular road to fail entirely, while if a solar panel cracks in half, it will most likely stop working. Also I don't see how solar roads make any sense when there is so much unused roof space and parking lots. Putting panels over a parking lot is much easier since you don't have to build them to withstand many-tonne automobiles, they will always be in full sunlight instead of being covered by dir…

So after my erroneous comment, i have learned that roofs, parking lots and bike lanes are better candidates. I just dint want to give up on converting asphalt to energy generators.

Re: The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure

#30

Post by Mountain_Skies »

nordsieck wrote: post #7
remote_phone wrote: post #4

It was a failure but I’m glad they tried it. Hopefully something like this comes to fruition and we learn more and more with every iteration. Solar roads are a great idea. Maybe it means it needs daily sweeping with electric vacuum trucks or something but if it’s producing enough electricity then it’s worth it.

> It was a failure but I’m glad they tried it. ... Solar roads are a great idea. It was a bad idea. Even in theory. The only positive thing about it is that it captured the imagination of lots of people who know nothing about solar or roads.

The frustrating thing was that pretty every problem that arose during these trials were already known. Those who spoke up were ridiculed for being naysayers. There's a balance between those who reflexively oppose everything and those who have an informed opinion based on experience and knowledge. There was quite a bit of overlap between those who strongly supported solar roadways and the "I f*ing love science!" crowd that have turned science into something indistinguishable from magic.

The original installation in Idaho ran into predictable problems almost immediately. The much larger installations had very little justification for going forward other than it was very popular with a rather vocal group of voters. Doubt any of the politicians, celebrities, or their fans who pushed this and dumped all over those with credible objections will apologize for their part in the boondoggle.

Post reply on HN