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

sciencealert.com

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

#71

Post by deepnotderp »

WalterBright wrote: post #68
magicalhippo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! No they are not. Solar roads do not make sense, not for a looooong time anyway. So far, all of the currently failed solar road projects have failed in utterly predictable ways[1][2][3], and I'm certain nothing novel has been learned. There are so many better places to put solar panels than beneath roads. If anything they should put w…

> they should put water pipes to utilize the heat Missed by most people is that roads flex under the weight. (Stand next to the train tracks when a train goes by, you'll be startled at how much the ground moves.) Flexing of the roads it the primary cause of road maintenance - cracking and crumbling. Silicon chips in the roadbed, wires, pipes, etc, are all very vulnerable to cracking under bending loads. Putting water…

Thinned silicon is actually pretty flexible FWIW

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

#75

Post by sigstoat »

_Nat_ wrote: post #12

Solar roads seem like a really cool technology. Like, if they worked great and were affordable and everything, then awesome! But, practically speaking, they seem to violate the [single responsibility principle]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principl... ). By coupling a solar panel to a road, we're forcing the physical entity to comply with competing objectives. Seems like the future's prone to…

> Seems like self-driving cars could be designed-and-programmed to drive over just specific parts of the road meant to handle their weight, while the gaps between those load-bearing parts can have solar panels.

if you can drive that precisely, why even put anything in the gaps?

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

#76

Post by jdietrich »

blunte wrote: post #22

Fortunately we didn't give up on flight after the early airplanes. Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! We don't know exactly what they will lead to, but they often add to progress.

The solar industry knew that it wouldn't work. Anyone with a high school understanding of physics could figure out that it wouldn't work. The early trials failed spectacularly and nobody learned anything new. Subsequent trials also failed spectacularly and nobody learned anything new. People are still funding trials with exactly the same flaws as previous failed trials, presumably due to some sort of magical thinking.

Science should at the very least be informed guesswork - if you don't start with a reasonable hypothesis and don't update your hypothesis in light of the evidence, it's just alchemy.

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

#77

Post by trilila »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #36
trilila wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think the person you responded to meant for the solar panels to be above the parking lot, not the parking lot surface. IIRC, Google has quite a far solar panels in their parking lots, where they not only generate electricity but also provide shade for the cars parked there. I've also seen a couple of rather massive solar panels in central Atlanta near CNN. I was told they were installed by Ted Turner because he has a…

There was a different comment recommending parking lots, and i summed up all my thoughts in the comment above. To me it sounds like France could use some shade as well as some clean energy. Calling it quits is just not an option given the crazy heat waves of recent in Europe, and we should hold onto to anything that improves what we have right now even if by 1%.

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

#78

Post by tverbeure »

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.

> Solar roads are a great idea.

But why?

There are plenty of arguments against it and hardly any in favor?

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

#79

Post by nullwasamistake »

Endy wrote: post #65

You know, I always wondered why they didn't go for solar covered sidewalks, which would provide shade to pedestrians and power to everything that needs it. Roads seem like a better place for pressure-based generation (of anything, frankly). Still, just for the enthusiasm they garnered and the continued push toward making renewable energy generation interact with the everyday, the idealists should be commended. The en…

Solar roads and sidewalks are a PR stunt. Abrasion is no joke, nothing optically transparent survives on the ground. You can see this easily in the cellar "pavement lights" common in NYC and other old cities. Light still passes through after a century, but maybe 20% and very diffuse. Bad for solar panels.

Roads don't absorb enough energy to generate power, they're not flexible enough. They're designed to not absorb energy since it hastens breakdown. Potholes are a good example of a road surface energy absorber :) .

Solar roofs are a far better bet. Elon is onto something there, but time will tell if costs can be brought down enough. Besides the good PR, solar roofs substantially reduce heat absorbtion, important in the sunny climates solar works well in. And we have a ton of wasted roof space. Many companies would willingly allow roof panels to be put up for free if the economics for power generation were good enough.

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

#80

Post by soulofmischief »

onion2k wrote: post #66
dghughes wrote: post #26

Most solar panels are very inefficient at converting the sun to electricity so they need all the help they can get. Two things solar panels require is to be clean and to be perpendicular to the sun. A solar road achieves neither of those things.

Those things are necessary to get the opimimum amount of electricity but the point of solar roads is to sacrifice some efficiency for the benefit of having huge amounts of surface area. The amount of paved highway in developed countries is enormous, so even massively inefficient solar roads could supply all the electricity necessary and more.

Could you talk more concretely? What is the back of the napkin calculation for total power if some percent of all highways were solar?
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