The Video Thread

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Oblio

Oblio

Utah
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Sadly because this makes WAY too much sense so it will probably never happen, at least not in my life time. I hope I am wrong.

 
Selix

Selix

Lord Nagafen Raider
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Oblio_sl said:
Sadly because this makes WAY too much sense so it will probably never happen, at least not in my life time. I hope I am wrong.

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Two potential problem areas. Rare earth minerals and needing engineers to fix your roads instead of any Joe who can fill a pothole.
 
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Grez

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Selix_sl said:
Two potential problem areas. Rare earth minerals and needing engineers to fix your roads instead of any Joe who can fill a pothole.
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A very recent development in LED technology allows for LED manufacture without rare-earth metals. No idea about the solar panels though. I suspect that damaged hexagons could be easily replaced by simple road crews. The damaged hexagons could then be sent to some kind of repair facility.
 
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Lohk_sl

shitlord
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I would think theft would be an issue, no?
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Selix

Selix

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Grez_sl said:
A very recent development in LED technology allows for LED manufacture without rare-earth metals. No idea about the solar panels though. I suspect that damaged hexagons could be easily replaced by simple road crews. The damaged hexagons could then be sent to some kind of repair facility.
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Look at 1:29 in the video. How much of that underground work is going to be needed for each mile of roadway? How often will that stuff break down and need troubleshooting? What if it happens across 1000's of miles of roadway? Powerline falls down and shorts out the power supply for half a city? Now you need 100's of engineers working round the clock to check everything?

Sure I want this kind of technology to but these are only the simple problems that I as a non-engineer can come up with. Imagine what someone with experience could think up.

How much damage would cleaning trucks bristles do to these things over time? How much wear can they really take? Hell if these things aren't cheap and contain sellable metal what is the thievery potential?
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Oblio_sl said:
Sadly because this makes WAY too much sense so it will probably never happen, at least not in my life time. I hope I am wrong.

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Doesn't make sense because it's too costly. I base this on zero information and all common sense. Solar energy isn't blocked by not enough land mass, it's blocked by cost of the panels.

SolarRoadways_sl said:
How much will your panels cost?

We are not yet able to give numbers on cost. We are still in the midst of our Phase II contract with the Federal Highway Administration and we'll be analyzing our prototype costs near the end of our contract which ends in July, 2014. Afterward, we'll be able to do a production-style cost analysis.
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aka if we told you how much this cost nobody would give a shit.

Why the Solar Roadways Project on Indiegogo is Actually Really Silly - Equities.com Global Financial Community
solar_sl said:
So How Much Would These Cost?
But why NOT use our roads? I mean, roofs, roads, who cares, right? Well, in short, because we drive our cars there. Our big, metal, heavy cars. There's currently a virtually endless supply of places you could install solar panels that DON'T have cars driving over them and, as such, don't require fancy high-tech glass covering them. Or, for that matter, don't mean you have to worry about the long term wear-and-tear of millions of tons of steel and rubber driving over them at high speed every year.
This, I'm guessing, is why the question of cost doesn't come up at any point in either the IndieGoGo video OR the couple's website. It's why their idea doesn't actually make any sense. This is basically just a pitch for a new way to install solar capacity that would cost a lot more than the ways we currently have for installing solar capacity. Which might make sense if we had already exhausted our options for places we could build solar panels on the cheap (we haven't).
And, not only would it be pricier to install the panels, they wouldn't work as well. Solar installations that can move over the course of the day to follow the sun's path are way, way more efficient than ones that simply lay flat. Not to mention the parts of our roads that are, you know, shaded.
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Callous_sl

shitlord
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Oblio_sl said:
Sadly because this makes WAY too much sense so it will probably never happen, at least not in my life time. I hope I am wrong.

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this is a ludicrous idea.

there's no shortage of empty space to put solar panels - they cost a fortune to produce and, given that, the one thing you want is an unobstructed path between the sun and the panel. every car driving over them blocks out the sun, covers them in mud and wears out the surface of the panel.

solar panels are smooth and glassy so that they don't refract a lot of light - this is the opposite of what you want from a drivable road surface with a lot of grip.

as soon as these charlatans can give some figures about the costs per-mile per-lane for these, expected life time, how they age, how much energy they actually produce etc. etc. then fine. but at the moment they're just liars who long ago realised how crazy the concept is.
 
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Iwazaru_sl

shitlord
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Most of the engineering problems people are complaining about are pants on head retarded. You are correct, you are not an engineer. Leave it at that and don't comment on the technical challenges. The real issue is the costs of setting up and maintaining the infrastructure (to include the panels themselves) vs how they hold up to various types of wear. They may end up being great for parking lots and slow traffic areas but not for highways. Network and power distribution problems are easy comparatively. Considering they are problems we have already solved in other areas.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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Why the fuck wouldnt you just build the shit right next to the roads, instead of on it? Ohh hey we gotta replace some tile, better cause a 60 mile detour. Its a stupid fucking idea and you dont need to be a engineer to know why.
 
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Callous_sl

shitlord
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Iwazaru_sl said:
Most of the engineering problems people are complaining about are pants on head retarded. You are correct, you are not an engineer. Leave it at that and don't comment on the technical challenges. The real issue is the costs of setting up and maintaining the infrastructure (to include the panels themselves) vs how they hold up to various types of wear. They may end up being great for parking lots and slow traffic areas but not for highways. Network and power distribution problems are easy comparatively. Considering they are problems we have already solved in other areas.
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What's this about paving a parking lot with solar panels, just so >60% of the surface can be covered with parked cars during daylight hours?
solargrayscale1-400x223.jpg


The cost of paving a road with solar panels versus covering a rooftop with them, and the return you would get from that solar panel roadway versus the ones on a rooftop, is such an astronomical difference that putting them on the road doesn't even make sense. Paving the roads with them would only be a last resort to meet our energy needs once we've already covered every rooftop and canopied every parking lot with solar panels. It's not going to happen, because we would never get to that point, and even if we did, I can guarantee that it would be more cost effective to build a solar panel canopy over the top of the *unshaded* roads than to repave them with solar panel tiles and then have to maintain it, especially considering the return for each option.
 
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