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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

#311

Post by Canada »

caymanjim wrote: post #225

This was not at all a failure. They built a 1km experimental road. They gained valuable information about real-world performance and technical challenges. It's not as though they built a 100km long six-lane highway with unproven technology. They built a tiny one-lane trial to test a promising idea. It was overhyped by politicians, but what isn't? Maybe they even steamrolled over engineering red flags. That doesn't me…

But it wasn't a valuable experiment. Absolutely nothing was learned from it. It's some combination of delusion and fraud. Here's a video from 2014 discussing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds

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

#312

Post by wereHamster »

emj wrote: post #304
voxl wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets see the easily falsified napkin math then

EVblog has some great videos about how bad solar roadways are, starting in 2014, and a good recap video in 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpwx-8s1M38

And also an update this year just after the failure of the experiment was announced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk

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

#313

Post by mschuster91 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #273
tootie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe they were really unaware. They either overestimated the durability of their devices or were running a quasi scam.

The latter is quite likely. I have come across quite a few “green” initiatives over the past several years which are extremely questionable in their technicals - and all are taking public money, mostly from European Development Funds in the EU, and from similar bodies elsewhere. They are usually highly visible, buzzword bingo initiatives. You see these projects in the press - a group grinning in hard hats, a colourfu…

> An anecdote: a service station near my home in north wales proudly announced that they had received a grant to put on a turf roof, solar and wind power. EU funding. Three years on, and they’ve just announced that they’ve received a grant to do exactly the same thing. Plumbing the Europa site shows that the previous grant was paid, and the project reported as completed - but they never did a thing. I’ve seen the same cycle being pulled elsewhere.

This should be reported to media, police or both - this is fraud.

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

#314

Post by scotty79 »

belorn wrote: post #122
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...

The advantage that people wanted to get is that in the end you also get a road. Roads take up space, cost money to build and maintain. If you build it next to the road the road need twice the amount of space and still require the space, construction and material for the actually road. If you build it above the road you get all the issue of overhead roof on a road (trees that fall on it, wind, height limitation). In a…

You get two in one but for double the price of both combined and then some. Not to mention the horrible quality and durability of the two things you get.

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

#315

Post by Darkstack »

Grue3 wrote: post #277

Made me think, what roads would actually be suitable for this? They have to be: 1) cleaned often 2) have very little traffic 3) have a very large surface And one of the solutions that pops up is: airport runways! They have a huge area, way larger than necessary to land a plane. The surface is always kept in good condition. The traffic is minimal, except for a few very busy airports. Some airports handle just a few pl…

I'm no expert in roads, airplanes, etc but a car weight 1/2 tons but i would not land an airplane (between 300 and 500 tons)onto something like a solar panels road, and for safety measure i think it's not optimal (fire, etc...) ?

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

#316

Post by hmd_imputer »

celeritascelery wrote: post #199
hmd_imputer wrote: post #31

Solar Freaking Roadways! Do you guys remember this viral youtube viral video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU

When I first saw that video I thought, “this has to be a joke right? They can’t actually think that is feasible.” And here we are…

The video attracted so much undeserved attention that many engineers felt that they had to produce a corresponding debunk video explaining why it is such a useless idea and why asphalt is currently our best option on building roads.

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

#317

Post by kwhitefoot »

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…

> pressure-based generation

That would simply inefficiently make the vehicles less efficient.

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

#318

Post by Zarel »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #249
caymanjim wrote: post #225

This was not at all a failure. They built a 1km experimental road. They gained valuable information about real-world performance and technical challenges. It's not as though they built a 100km long six-lane highway with unproven technology. They built a tiny one-lane trial to test a promising idea. It was overhyped by politicians, but what isn't? Maybe they even steamrolled over engineering red flags. That doesn't me…

The trouble with this viewpoint is that there are an endless number of things we could be trying, and it's more or less a zero sum game. The idea was terrible on paper, easily falsified by back of the napkin math. The same amount of money could have been spent on, eg, testing the commercial viability of smoothing out grid loads by making ice off peak for cooling.

The question, when you see something seemingly very dumb, is always "what am I missing?"

It seems unlikely that well-funded scientists are _that_ stupid. It's more likely either that we're missing some reason why solar roads are more efficient at first glance, or that they have some ulterior political motive where wasting the money is intentional. Either way, laughing at them for missing things every internet commenter immediately thinks of seems like a mistake.

That said, in this case, my first thought is, "we definitely haven't run out of better places to put solar panels". The specifics don't matter much when the US has plenty of unused space to put solar farms (even just "next to the roads"). I'm pretty confused by how far the idea's gotten.

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

#319

Post by maxdamantus »

Zarel wrote: post #318
reitzensteinm wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with this viewpoint is that there are an endless number of things we could be trying, and it's more or less a zero sum game. The idea was terrible on paper, easily falsified by back of the napkin math. The same amount of money could have been spent on, eg, testing the commercial viability of smoothing out grid loads by making ice off peak for cooling.

The question, when you see something seemingly very dumb, is always "what am I missing?" It seems unlikely that well-funded scientists are _that_ stupid. It's more likely either that we're missing some reason why solar roads are more efficient at first glance, or that they have some ulterior political motive where wasting the money is intentional. Either way, laughing at them for missing things every internet comment…

In a world where funding is largely about your ability to market your product, I don't see why it's that unlikely. It's not even that they're particularly stupid, just that the market isn't magically immune to things like the sunk cost fallacy.

If people are still paying you for an idea that you might be somewhat sceptical about, are you going to stop doing it anyway? Maybe you will, but I imagine there are plenty of people where the money will just confirm their biases towards their work.

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

#320

Post by stephen_g »

stephen_g wrote: post #255
SllX wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It’s simply a waste of money if we can do the maths and see that it’s always going to be vastly worse than putting them on roofs, on gantries over roads, or literally almost anywhere else but on a dirty, flat surface with huge pressures on what we already knew were fragile and durable cells. There are several factors, each alone that make this idea a non-starter. All these were known from previous experimental result…

(Note that when I say panels need to face north, that’s because I am in the southern hemisphere. Obviously in the northern hemisphere it’s the opposite so should face south).
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