Ive seen so many of my friends post about the recent solar freakin roadways Indiegogo campaign, and Im getting tired of writing the same rebuttals over and over. It sounds nice but its fundamentally a very bad idea in many areas that will never work and this is why no one has been willing to commercially fund them, and why the government pulled future funding when they couldnt overcome their obstacles. Their science is incredibly misleading, there is no usability studies, and they have no experience with how this will last in real life. I feel bad for the forty thousand people who have funded them over 1.8m so far because they basically threw away their money at someone whom I wouldve respected before this campaign but their outright misdirection means I now wouldnt trust them to tell me the time of day. The only viable idea in their entire proposal is embedding LEDs underneath the road, but this would almost exclusively be useful for artistic reasons or in driveways, certainly not in main roads. Its just a very, very bad idea to drive over glass that you need to keep optically transparent. Its literally impossible to meet all the requirements in any vaguely-cost-effective manner using any currently-known materials, or even any materials in research that will be theoretically ready within the next thirty years. Over the lifespan of Asphalt you would literally save almost 90% of your TCO by just installing solar panels on a conventional stand over the road, where they can be aimed correctly & wont be constantly shaded or have their protective glass cover damaged. This video only briefly mentions some of the problems with grip/braking distance and it doesnt even touch on the much higher noise pollution their tessellated raised surface would provide, nor the decreased fuel efficiency from increased tyre deformation. It doesnt mention the complications with either per-tile inverters vs bundled inverters, whichever way they were planning to boost the voltage. It doesnt mention the massive amount of interlinking connections that will corrode & require constant maintenance. It doesnt even mention how this plan will require digging up the telecomms pits, underground power conduits, gutters & stormwater drains beside roads so that they can install their new and revolutionary idea for a channel beside the road that houses telecomms and power lines, PLUS-amazing-invention-here it collects any rain runoff too... much like what is already there. And dont get me started on their claims that this husband-and-wife pair have developed glass way harder than anything in existence, despite the fact that they have zero background experience in glass manufacturing & zero large-scale manufacturing abilities.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 02:21:42 +0000
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