The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by gbrown » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

jostmey wrote: post #104

When I walk through a forest, it is full of life. There are dozens to hundreds of critters living above and below me everywhere I walk. When I walk through developed areas, it is lifeless pavement. Anything that reduces humanities footprint, leaving more land to Nature, is probably a good thing. I hope people don't give up on solar paneled roads.

If solar panel roads cause more waste and carbon emissions, while supplying less actual power, I certainly hope we give up on them. The ecological calculation requires science and engineering, not vague feelings about what's probably good.

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

#172

Post by mettamage » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

Hmm...

Can we just applaud that people are trying something new?

Or are we going to shoot it down because of pessimism?

If you know so well what works, then do your best and make it happen or write a guide on how to do experiments that almost always lead to success.

They didn’t fail fast, but they failed with relatively little costs. What is 5 million to the national GDP of France?

It seems to me they were trying something new, were brave and paid the price. In most cases you get nothing back.

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

#173

Post by red75prime » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

teawrecks wrote: post #167

aniijbod wrote: post #162

Does anyone but me have the suspicion that the animosity towards solar roads was something to do with a 'nerve being touched', some kind of 'triggering'? Sure, they might not work out, but lots of stupid-sounding ideas ('a horseless carriage? Whatever next?') have turned out to work, just as much as lots of somewhat futuristic but nonetheless sensible sounding ideas have turned out not to be here yet ('flying cars ar…

Yeah I don't know why the article is so negative. Any engineer would look at this and say, "cool, a few more problems to solve" not "well golly, I guess there's nothing we can do about a few leaves".

Like placing the panels above roads, for example. It helps to get optimal inclination of panels too, and reduce stress levels, and eliminates losses from cars' shadows, and simplifies maintenance, and reduces pavement costs.

Some ideas are just plain stupid.

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

#174

Post by Mountain_Skies » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #16

cryptoz wrote: post #5

Why wasn't that strip of land right by the road converted into a solar strip instead? It looks like that shoulder has almost as much physical area to it and would take a lot less wear and tear. I never understood this idea to begin with.

I think the idea was to take advantage of land that cannot be used otherwise.

Most roads are in rural areas with plenty of room next to them. The inventors were very aware of this, being from Sandpoint, Idaho.

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

#175

Post by zzzcpan » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #169

zzzcpan wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an experiment that can yield anything or teach us anything if there is no paper and no data. A fraudulent startup maybe.

How big is your laboratory? Is it a space you rent out, or is it all the known Universe and all of its history? We’ve been learning things by trial and error a lot longer than we’ve been practicing the Scientific Method. You don’t always get the data you want. You don’t always get someone to summarize the data in a nicely formatted paper published in a respected journal. You get what you get and if not quite like it,…

Not how it works. It's not enough to try something, you have to share the knowledge with the community, otherwise there will be no progress until someone else willing to share the knowledge tries the same thing again. So, it's as good as didn't happen if there is no paper and no data (doesn't have to be a peer reviewed paper or anything like that).

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

#176

Post by Retric » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #117

Smithalicious wrote: post #47

I never managed to see the advantages of having a solar road compared to just having a normal road with solar panels next to it. Or above it. Or literally anywhere else. In fact I can't think of many areas that still get direct sunlight that would make for a worse place to put solar panels than on the road...

I have serious doubts these experiments will lead to commercially successful implementations, but I don’t think it is useless to do them. Reason? Solar cells keep getting cheaper and cheaper. That makes the costs of scaffolding to hold the cells take a larger and larger share of installation costs. In the limit where cells are essentially free, putting cells everywhere there is some large horizontal area will make se…

Except we don't actually need that much solar power and ground based installation is really cheap.

Further road surfaces need to be transparent for solar to work, handle high loads, channel water off the surface, and provide lots of friction in a wide rang of weather conditions. It’s an extremely difficult problem, but solving it without massive reduction in panel costs is kind of pointless.

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

#177

Post by thaumaturgy » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #172

Hmm... Can we just applaud that people are trying something new? Or are we going to shoot it down because of pessimism? If you know so well what works, then do your best and make it happen or write a guide on how to do experiments that almost always lead to success. They didn’t fail fast, but they failed with relatively little costs. What is 5 million to the national GDP of France? It seems to me they were trying som…

Yeah, this is how I see it too. It was an experiment. It failed. Things were learned from deploying it into a real-world environment. This may contribute in some way to a future technology, as often happens.

HN of course is full of people who are experts on every topic, so naturally there was no need to actually perform this experiment. They could have just accurately predicted its faults and performance from theorizing alone after reading just a few articles about materials science and the properties of modern roads.

While we're busy talking about the obvious and predictable failure of this experiment, we should also take a moment to also revisit the obvious and predictable failure that was Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306

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

#178

Post by en-us » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #156

Animats wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be worse.[1] Remember the schemes for recovering energy from traffic on sidewalks and roads? Pavegen pivoted to collecting info about people walking on their sidewalks, rather than energy. [1] https://pavegen.com/

Talk about ethical whiplash. I feel especially bad for any engineers that joined to make the world a better place then found out they would be designing tracking systems...

Yeah it sure would be awful if that happened to anyone. Imagine joining a company that claims to help the world and instead you design unbelievable tracking and surveillance systems. Ha ha. Ha. sobs

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

#179

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

Smithalicious wrote: post #47

I never managed to see the advantages of having a solar road compared to just having a normal road with solar panels next to it. Or above it. Or literally anywhere else. In fact I can't think of many areas that still get direct sunlight that would make for a worse place to put solar panels than on the road...

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by gen3 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

Endy wrote: post #145

dumbfoundded wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Bromide and chlorine are okay for humans to consume. Sunlight turns these into to bromate which is a carcinogen. https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-s-really-going-on-w...

Okay, but do bromide and chlorine naturally occur in the water in that area? Or was it because of human meddling?

It's used in the water cleaning process to make it drinkable.