Comments on: Solar Roadways Awarded DOT Contract to Pave Roads with Solar Cells

By: rzwo

rzwo — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:50:11 +0000

cool… now roads will be closed for polishing

By: Olo Baggins of Bywater

Olo Baggins of Bywater — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:50:59 +0000

Use them in parking lots? Really?

By: OvenMaster

OvenMaster — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:15:51 +0000

Won’t work in crowded places like LA. With all the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the panels’ area will be COVERED most of the time, and generating mere pittances of juice.

By: The more things change

The more things change — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:45:23 +0000

The price point is ridiculous. I love solar power, but this is the wrong application and the wrong solar tech. Too expensive. And roads are among the worst candidates. They’re the dirtiest and most likely to be covered with debris, which would block sunlight from hitting the panels. Stupid idea.

By: Dallas

Dallas — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:33:44 +0000

It seems quite a few Republican quack engineers have converged on this topic for their 2 cents (I’m being generous).

Needless to say, they never read the FAQ, nor done any research yet freely making use of their pie hole to communicate their redesign.

By: SB

SB — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:07:47 +0000

There are plenty of places to put solar panels where they won’t get constantly run over. If they are not generating energy from the act of the cars running them over why not run them down the side of the roads up in the air.

That would be too easy. The roads here in California are crappy as it is, why would you want to replace a 12 foot section of road that probably costs 50 bucks or so with a $6,900 panel. Both will be destroyed from driving on them.

Idiots!

By: pecker

pecker — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:49:26 +0000

This story made me think of the brief time I spent working in the public sector. If ever we got to the end of an accounting period and there was still money left unspent in a budget, management would really flail around looking for anything to spend it on. They sometimes bought the most absurd and inappropriate things.

By: Ask Lesko

Ask Lesko — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:26:04 +0000

Apparently the guy who came up with this idea got a hold of Matthew Lesko’s free money books.

By: Mr Diesel

Mr Diesel — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:08:33 +0000

Reason to be optimistic. Great use of public right of way to generate clean energy and feed the eventual smart energy grid. Yeah right.

Thank you Prez Obama for putting the country back on track to stupidity.

By: Dallas

Dallas — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:39:17 +0000

Reason to be optimistic. Great use of public right of way to generate clean energy and feed the eventual smart energy grid.

Thank you Prez Obama for putting the country back on track to greatness.

By: Krazy Joe

Krazy Joe — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:56:59 +0000

Now someone please tell me how you stop on wet glass? Good idea, but it just will not work as a road surface.

By: H. Friedman

H. Friedman — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:58:34 +0000

Look for these on Woot Selloff soon!

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:56:12 +0000

As always I see a bunch of nay sayers spouting off. When I was a kid The USA was a nation of Can-Doers, hell we made it to theh moon. Now everybody’s too worried about paying taxes to remember. Since I don’t live there anymore, it don’t matter to me. Leave all the technological experimentation and development to the europeans and the asians. Later, when all the bugs are worked out, you can buy it from them at an elevated price with your deflated little dollars.

By: Thornton

Thornton — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:28:15 +0000

The Key to this is the glass… It’s the thing they have spent the least amount of time on. He went to some university and some guys there told him that can make any kind of glass. This is what this whole crazy idea is based on. What happens if I have a rock in my tire? I’m I going to scratch the glass all the way to work? I guess we can’t have gravel roads or drive ways any more.
What If I blow out a tire and my rim hits the glass? How does the road crew patch it? What if it’s a huge truck? Also all LEDs will block light so the panels are going to be even less efficient. Everyone who has even looked in to putting up a solar panel known’s it at least has to face south on an angle. Are we going to outlaw trees next to the solar road because they block too much sun?
Watch the video on the site. It’s crazy in a bad way.
I can’t wait until the video of cars driving over this stuff makes the Failblog

By: Buzz

Buzz — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:45:03 +0000

Couldn’t you generate more road-illuminating power by having these things a little squishy, so that energy from the weight of vehicles was spinning a little generator pneumatically? Advantage: works at night.

I’ll build a prototype of that for you that is 12 x 12 feet for just $100,000 if you like.

Solar: it’s not just for breakfast, anymore.