China Is Building a Solar Power Highway (electrek.co) 131
China is building roadways with solar panels underneath that may soon have the ability to charge cars wirelessly and digitally assist automated vehicles. "This second solar roadway project -- part of the Jinan City Expressway -- is a 1.2 mile stretch," reports Electrek. "The building technique involves transparent concrete over a layer of solar panels." From the report: Construction is complete and grid connection is pending, but is expected to be complete before the end of the year. The Jinan City solar highway is formed with three layers. The top layer is a transparent concrete that has similar structural properties with standard asphalt. The central layer is the solar panels -- which are pointed out as being "weight bearing." The bottom layer is to separate the solar panels from the damp earth underneath. The road will be durable enough to handle vehicles as large as a medium sized truck. It was noted by engineers that wireless vehicle charging could soon be integrated and automated car functions could take advantage of the inherent data in this this already wired roadway. No details were given on which solar panels being used. Two separate sizes could be seen from the images. It looks like the solar panels are covered with a film to protect them from workers moving over them. Notice in one picture there is an individual sitting down with wires showing between the solar panels connecting them.
All the better to fuel the war factories (Score:2)
so they can mow down their citizens with brand new tanks.
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Many, many years ago I had the opportunity to see an asphalt road after a tank had driven over it. Left a few scratches. I think you probably won't want steel treaded vehicles meandering down your solarized roads.
If they work well enough to care about after a few weeks of ordinary use.
Which seems unlikely.
OTOH, this can't possibly be as crazy an idea as it sounds.
Re:All the better to fuel the war factories (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be good (Score:2, Funny)
Silly Chinese. If they'd only read Slashdot comments, they'd know that solar power is unpossible and they'd go back to scrubbing coal clean like the US and get their jobs back and be great again. I mean, it's not like the Chinese have ever been any good at big public works projects, anyway.
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The problem is that the physics doesn't work.
You've got some derp on your chin, O' Great Defender of All Things That Appear Slightly Sciencey From a Distance.
(Hint: If the physics didn't work, the engineers wouldn't even complete their design! Engineering is a math-driven field. The plans were not drawn up by neckbeards on slashdot.)
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'cause engineers never finished a design that couldn't work, amirite?
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I certainly wouldn't get my hopes up. The project director is Mr. Sun Dun Gawn, the project manager is Fu Ling Yue. Their US business arrangements are through the offices of Dewey, Cheetam, and Howe located in Harvard Square. Technical assistance is provided by Paul Murkey of Murkey Research, assisted by Marjorm O'Error.
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Re:This should be good (Score:5, Insightful)
solar power is unpossible
Not a single comment has ever said that.
What they have always quite consistently said:
1- Solar PV is inefficient.
2- Solar roadways is one of the least efficient ways of making solar PV.
3- Solar roadways doesn't make sense if you have roofs that are not yet covered or land to spare.
China doesn't need to read Slashdot to understand this, they just need to take highschool physics. But while you're being quite facetous about big public works projects which China are very good at, they mostly do it for busy work and utterly fail the cost benefit analysis of doing them.
Only some 1/3rd of the major logistic infrastructure projects make any sense, all the rest do is put the country in debt: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep... [oup.com]
Heck there's entire books describing how China builds almost entire cities that end up as virtual ghost towns: https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-C... [amazon.com]
Mind you when I lived there it was incredible to commute to work. An 8 lane highway with maybe 2 cars on it. Traffic you could only dream of.
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What they have always quite consistently said:
1- Solar PV is inefficient.
2- Solar roadways is one of the least efficient ways of making solar PV.
3- Solar roadways doesn't make sense if you have roofs that are not yet covered or land to spare.
Also: 4- There's contradictory material requirements for road surface properties and solar panel surface properties (friction, load-bearing, transmittance, cleanliness etc.).
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Heck, there's also entire books describing how Donald Trump is the best president of all time. https://www.amazon.com/Trump-L... [amazon.com]
And by the say, that Donald Trump book has five stars and your book about how those stupid, stupid Chinese don't know high-school physics only has four stars, so checkmate.
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True, but one of them is fact easily verified with a simple google search, and the other alt-facts.
Heck there's people who come up with the best ways of studying which cities are empty (looking at light pollution compared to surface area, internet connectivity, speed of advertising, etc)
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You have to admit, you see a lot of anger towards solar energy in Slashdot comments. No matter what the story's about, if it has the words "solar energy" in it, there will be Slashdotters who are mad.
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Yeah I have noticed that as of late. Though ... Solar roadways I think is one concept which is well deserving of it.
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I'm not sure about that. You see this goes long before the Chinese were trying to be technological leaders. It kind of underpins the economics of the country, the busy work to keep employment at zero percent. The Chinese throw incredible funds at projects that seem to do nothing other than keep the wheel turning.
Funny story, on the way to work one day I saw a semi-trailer (lorry, truck, b-double, whatever they call them where you are) which had jackknifed, slid across the side of the highway and knock out 4
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solar power is unpossible
Not a single comment has ever said that.
Over two hours before you posted this, and higher up on the page, was one claiming a "physics" problem with it. So no.
When you start thinking you know so much more than the engineers that it means the engineers didn't understand "high school physics?" That should be your hint to self that you're full of shit. ;)
Chinese engineers seems to be able to build bridges and world-class hydroelectric projects, they're probably using the same physics as other engineers. And of course, "high school physics" isn't what
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You were very quick to reply without understanding a single thing I said. Let me help you.
was one claiming a "physics" problem with it.
Physics is a problem, that doesn't make it unpossible, just not viable.
When you start thinking you know so much more than the engineers that it means the engineers didn't understand "high school physics?"
Highschool physics will get you where you need to go. Incident light, reflection, shadows, damage.
That should be your hint to self that you're full of shit. ;)
Fortunately I don't need to rely on highschool physics since I am an engineer who does exactly this sort of thing. But hey even if I weren't and even if I didn't we could always see how the concept has worked before, like that multi-million dollar solar
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In reality, you get a single block in a city that has people. Not all that many either. Everything else is empty.
This is well documented.
Traffic density (Score:2)
What will happen when the road is all covered up with bumper to bumper traffic?
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Then the cars need less electricity because' they're not moving much. ....
It is impossible for cars to have batteries.
It is impossible for electricity to be transported to a particular location by cables.
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Re:Traffic density (Score:4, Funny)
"What will happen when the road is all covered up with bumper to bumper traffic?"
They'll put solar panels on top of the vehicles to power lights on the bottom?
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Then they are all stuck in a traffic jam. ...
SomehowmI have the feeling that this was not your question
Transparent Concrete? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if they tried transparent aluminum...
Seriously I don't understand the impulse to put solar panels in roadways... Durability, spilled oil, scratches from studded tires or flat tires, less than optimal angle, difficult to access for maintenance, etc. , etc.
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It is double use of land. Ever been in China? I haven't but a friend of mine has been several times. One time he took a long (some four hours) train trip from one major city (million plus inhabitants) to another. On the map you could clearly see the city boundaries. From the train, you couldn't. There were buildings/houses everywhere.
But in some countries they don't value resources.... ....
Better to build them over the road. (Score:3, Insightful)
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How much of the energy will be used just to run the lights under the panels.
Since there wouldn't be lights under them, I'm guessing none.
How much more expensive will it be to build all the supports, high enough for the highest trucks, thin enough to be translucent and still strong enough to be out in the elements.
So that sounds expensive, but doing the same thing flat on the ground, with a surface tires can grip, with trucks grinding rock, salt and ice into it, and dealing with mud, oil, and roadkill - that's seems cheaper to you?
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The main strength of a solar panel is the hardened glass on the top, and the frame around it. The backing is generally a single sheet of either thin enameled steel or opaque white plastic. Replacing the opaque sheet with a translucent one wouldn't change the strength at all.
And yes, the framework to support it would be expensive, but building a strong, translucent road surface is more so expensive, and less effective.
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There were buildings/houses everywhere.
So right next to the roadway there's a much larger set of surfaces that could support angled solar panels, that are never in the shade, and where trucks won't drive over them?
I'm all for dual-use, but some pairings just don't make much sense.
Wait, wasn't that a kickstarter a few years ago? (Score:3)
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This does give them the ability to experiment with ideas that we won't even try. I'm highly dubious about the solar roadway idea, but because China will build at least one of these wacky things, they have a better chance of making some technology work that we wouldn't even test.
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Actually, a bunch of neckbeards with one hand on the keyboard talking shit about something they don't understand isn't actually what "debunking" originally meant.
Etymology doesn't determine meaning, I know, I know.
Prepare for the usual excuses (Score:1)
I'm glad this is being done.
When it fails, the people that have looked at all the other solar-roadway failures will have yet another data point to use towards killing this stupid idea. Seriously, just put the panels next to the road. 90% of your problems solved right there!
Instead, the true believers will come back and tell us that, like communism, solar roads have just never been done right.
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Don't worry, the technology will get just good enough!
And somehow the regular solar panels won't take any advantage of the improvements despise being the same thing, except better.
If only there were space for solar arrays. (Score:2)
This kind of response is completely necessary, since the days when you could just go out into the countryside and find five or ten square miles of contiguous land which you could purchase is long gone. At this point roadways are some of the cheapest land available, and experience has shown that roadways are very easy and convenient to access for maintenance. Combining roadways with transmission lines should provide clear gains, as you always gain from synergy when combining unrelated operations into one s
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This kind of response is completely necessary, since the days when you could just go out into the countryside and find five or ten square miles of contiguous land which you could purchase is long gone.
None of the continents in which solar should be particularly effective are short on deserts. There's plenty of space for solar arrays.
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You might find that there are still land-use constraints.
You could always just test it; go to a desert in your country, and ask the local authorities if that means the land is free and you can build a solar farm anywhere you like. Then you'll know if these complaints were meaningful, or just blathering nonsense.
"But officer! Look how much space there is here! Who cares about ownership?!"
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You could always just test it; go to a desert in your country, and ask the local authorities if that means the land is free and you can build a solar farm anywhere you like. Then you'll know if these complaints were meaningful, or just blathering nonsense.
Well, you're right in a sense. That land is usually owned by a government, which might be corrupt enough to shit on your solar project like BushCo did with proposed solar projects on BLM land. Meanwhile, they were happy to grant permits to drill for oil...
SOLAR FREAKIN ROADWAYS (Score:5, Informative)
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For those that have not followed EEVBlog over the years, here is a sample of the debunking Dave has done of solar roads:
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Doxin' Dave's mistake is always to ignore the cost of installing and maintaining road surfaces. That's why guys maths never work, he never understands the value to governments that these roads offer.
The cost of the road surface itself is relatively small, compared to the cost of installing it, maintaining it, dealing with dust and noise it creates.
He also makes the mistake of comparing it to putting solar beside the road or on nearby roofing. If only road maintenance budgets worked like that.
Governments can
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that's exactly why I stopped watching eevblog, it had nothing to do with electronics, all he was doing was bitching about solar roadways and opening mail for like 3 years in a god damned row
[x] Electrical
[x] Engineering
[x] Video
[x] Blog
Seems to tick all the boxes to me.
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Blathering about how you don't understand a use case, so therefore it is a bad idea, has nothing to do with engineering. I watch a lot of his engineering-related videos because they're in the results of my topical searches, but if I just watch a few of his videos in a sequence, a lot of it is just non-engineering-related bitching, and usually he doesn't do himself any favors with his weak analysis.
Like most engineers, he thinks lots of things are wrong or impossible or terrible ideas, especially things he's
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He's not someone you should listen to, unless you think misogyny is a good idea.
That's an ad hominem fallacy. Also, the "#ElevatorGate" has shown that misoidiocy is a much better idea. He's not guilty of it, though.
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I don't know if Thunderf00t is a misogynist but his blatant intellectually dishonesty is reason enough to ignore him.
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Please explain and give some examples. People claim it but I've never seen it...
Thunderf00t the Cherrypicker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
WTF is TRANSPARENT CONCRETE?!!! (Score:2)
How come I've never heard of this (and I read slashdot regularly! :)
Seriously, if this isn't an April fool's joke (it isn't April 1 according to the Chinese calendar is it?) how come this TRANSPARENT concrete isn't a much more widely known building material? I mean, something with the load bearing strength of concrete with even just translucency and not good transparency would revolutionize architecture wouldn't it?
I once read (pre-internet days) that "Architecture is Man's conquest of light" or something
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My guess is that they are changing the mix and sacrificing durability for increased light transmission. But then the real problem is now that you have hard to replace concrete with the drastically shorter lifespan of asphalt and no real guarantee that it will keep working once worn and dingy.
I would say no, that is not the real problem at all. The entire problem being solved is probably just a lack of data regarding the actual durability properties of a mix that has sufficient transmission of light. The data produced will be useful not just for the roadway projects, but for all engineering utilizing photovoltaics embedded in devices that have an existing (unrelated) primary purpose. The roadway allows for real-world outdoor testing with fairly heavy, consistent loading, at low cost. People blat
Why not a solar roof over the road? (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely do not understand why anyone would consider embedding solar panels underneath clear concrete[1] for a road.
I'm not an engineer but wouldn't the weight and/or vibrations from cars and trucks, over time, possibly mess up the electrical connections or the panels themselves? If so, how do you fix them... dig everything up, throw away everything, install brand-new panels?
If you figure it makes sense to combine solar power with roadways, why not invest in a really tall roof, and let the cars drive under the solar panels? The roof would keep rain and snow off the roads. If there's a wiring problem, workers could get to the wires and just fix them, or swap a faulty panel out. The roof angle could be chosen to help collect sunlight; under-the-road panels you don't have any choice of angle, the panels must be flat. And all the panels would get sunlight all the time, rather than being shaded as vehicles drive over the panel.
In my state there is a section of an Interstate highway that has a tall roof on it; I think it has something to do with winter snow. (The highway department does avalanche control there from time to time in winter.) So I know this sort of roof is at least possible.
Building a roof tall enough for all possible highway traffic sounds annoying and expensive to me, and yet it still sounds like a better idea than burying solar panels and driving on them.
[1] I didn't even know clear concrete is a thing. Google doesn't return much about it but I did find a 2004 BoingBoing article [boingboing.net] that has two dead links about it.
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I absolutely do not understand why anyone would consider embedding solar panels underneath clear concrete[1] for a road.
I'm not an engineer but wouldn't the weight and/or vibrations from cars and trucks, over time, possibly mess up the electrical connections or the panels themselves?
I don't know but It sure is nice that somebody is ready to build something like this and find out. This is not the first project like this, there is 1km stretch of solar road in Tourouvre-au-Perche that powers the village's entire grid of street lights. Meanwhile Trump is working hard to take America back to good'ole patriotic coal, oil and gas (cue patriotic music and warm fuzzy patriotic feelings). Renewable energy companies in N-Europe, Germany and China are celebrating Trump as a bonus period of 4-8 ye
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The Colas Wattway generates electricity at about 9 times the cost for half the power of a nearby solar farm - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The problem is that is the biggest installation available, and it still sucks - when you can have a solar farm installed for way less money ($1.57/watt for the solar farm - the solar roadway costs $6/watt for the pa
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Thank you for your concerns.
Why don't you not at least simply read the summary?
Should I link it again?
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I read the summary and the story link that was in English (and I looked at the one in Chinese). If you believe that the answers to my questions were already provided, please show me what I missed. I didn't see anything about why the panels should be in the road.
I didn't mention the wireless charging part, but you could do that by itself without burying the panels. And I saw nothing about how to repair, or about long-term wiring issues due to weight and/or vibrations.
Also I will be truly impressed if they
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Te summary clearly states that weight is no problem, hence you have no repairs bellow the surface ... just read it again, or read the article.
No idea why you are asking pointless questions for a one mile long research experiment.
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Te summary clearly states that weight is no problem
It does? Here's a quote from the article:
Why does it say that the road would be limited to only having medium-sized vehicles on it, if weight is no problem?
hence you have no repairs bellow the surface
The summary says no such thing. Maybe you think the summary implies it, but I disagree. Roads take a lot of abuse and frequently need repairs. Roads with electronics buried
tiny fucking wires with little bitty (Score:1)
Seriously? (Score:1)
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Remember the elevated bus ?
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/1... [cnn.com]
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The point is that some things that people call stupid are just stupid. The solar roadway is one of them. And just because someone in China is pursuing it, doesn't mean it can't be stupid.
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people sit around complacent and never trying things
I didn't say that. But if you're going to try things, it's better to try things with higher chance of success, like solar panels that don't have cars driving on them. Let's try putting them on a roof instead.
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How many highways have roofs nearby?
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Remember holographic storage, jet packs, flying cars, fusion power?
World Peace?
Me neither.
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We almost certainly are #1 at this, if you just find the right measurement to take.
Perhaps the more stupid people who believe everything they don't understand will fail that you have increases the rate of invention, because of a smaller number of people trying to prove them wrong? To get the effect though, you have to let the stupid people have complete freedom of speech, especially freedom to insult the rich and successful.
It would explain the contradiction between the US having so many stupid people, and
US science: politically (and religiously) based? (Score:2)
Remember how NASA couldn't get a peer review for their paper explaining how a reactionless space drive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster) worked due to US scientists claiming it was impossible, while at the same time, China announced production of a spacecraft that incorporating the new drive (https://www.popsci.com/emdrive-engine-space-travel-china-success).
Next up: US scientists dispute round-earth hypothesis as well as denying latest evidence that earth is not the center of the u
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Science is asking "why," innovation is asking "how," and stupidity is sitting around with your thumb up your ass making excuses for not even bothering to try.
You sound like a guy who's stuck on "if i can't do it, no one can." I haven't seen any of these "sound scientific reasons" yet, just speculation and some bullshit. Here in 'Merkica all we seem to h
Impractical, but awesome for go-karts (Score:2)
Others have already pointed out the impractical nature of this investment, but the idea could see niche applications. For example in remote warehouse type arrangements for autonomous vehicles moving around a shared space or travelling show go-karts that never need to stop.
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My wife bought her sister a fancy watch that has a translucent white plate behind the dial. It looks white and pearly, very nice, like a normal decorative watch, but actually it hides a PV cell that charges the watch. You never wind it, you never plug it in, it doesn't have to be worn and moved around, but as long as it receives at least normal indoor light for a few hours a week, it will stay charged. It just runs "forever" without maintenance.
This is actually going to be tech that is in most products in t
Stick the panels on embankments instead (Score:2)
Ditto for railway lines. Panels under a road is a silly idea, but there's more than enough wasted space at the edge of most major roads, which are often on embankments or in cuttings. Let the panels at least approximately face the sun, don't cover them with traffic, tyre dust, and other assorted grit, then it might make physical sense, or even commercial sense.
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As a red blooded American, I support the hidden hand of the marketplace to pick the best technology.
Except for ideas that the marketplace is not allowed to test because of those endless idiot lawsuits filed by the Luddite lobby. We will be able to make progress again when we figure out a way of keeping them out of our court system.
Translucent concrete (Score:4, Interesting)
The article says the new highway will have transparent concrete over the solar panels. Google didn't find much for me on "transparent concrete", but "translucent concrete" finds stuff.
http://illumin.usc.edu/245/translucent-concrete-an-emerging-material/ [usc.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translucent_concrete [wikipedia.org]
P.S. I found the above by first searching for "transparent concrete" and Google found a BoingBoing article [boingboing.net] with only a little info. But after reading the introductory sentence I searched for "translucent concrete Aron Losonczi" and found lots of stuff.
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Take that, Transparent Aluminum!
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At the time it was 'invented' it was still spelled Aluminium :)
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OMG. They're taking a nominal 750 Watts/m^2 of solar energy hitting the Earth, sending it through concrete which is 2% transmissive, collecting it with solar panels which are 16% efficient, embedded in a flat surface which will yield only a 14% capacity factor? That knocks the ener
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It is not really relevant how long it takes to charge an EV.
Relevant is: how much energy does an EV comsume while traceling that distance, and how many EVs are going over this particular part of the road in a day.
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Relevant is: how much energy does an EV comsume while [traveling]
I will now attempt some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Corrections cheerfully accepted if I screw anything up.
Desired: a highway that can use solar power to drive all its traffic. We assume all traffic is electric cars of comparable efficiency to a Tesla Model S. (Note: the article specifically said that the road was to have no heavy trucks on it.)
Rule of thumb: one kilowatt-hour is good for about three miles of driving [greentransportation.info]. (It's actually
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It is not necessary to break even.
The EVs have a battery.
So if you are close to break even with such a system, you extend the range of an EV greatly.
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"I did the numbers and didn't uncover a good reason" does not tell you anything about the people who designed it, or which professional associations they're a member of.
Actually it implies that you are not an engineer, not that they are not engineers.
And if we're starting with the knowledge that the device was in fact designed by engineers, then it just gets worse for you. ;)
Solar FREAKIN roadways! (Score:2)
How will they address the problem of staining? (Score:1)
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I've read that all cars will be clean in the future.
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Even if we assume an all-electric future, cars will still drip lubricant and slough off rubber dust, much of which will stick to the solar panels and have to be cleaned with whatever special techniques they have to devise. Electric cars will be on the average lighter than IC cars, but the weight will still require ruggedized, super-expensive panels.
If we want to harvest energy from roads, concentrate on the solar heating of those matte black surfaces. Is there some some cheap thermocouple material that we c
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You are now the tenth or twentieth saying this. ... the guy responible fined, if found.
Why do you think a solar power road is more oil, slough, rubber dust or other dirt covered than an ordinary road?
If there is oil on the road it gets blocked and cleaned
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They'll build scrubbing and polishing pads into the tires. ... and make new, high quality soil to use on their artificial islands in the South China Sea from the material the tires pick up off the road.
Will it work? (Score:3)
I can come up with a lot of reasons it probably won't work very well.
But that isn't how this technology stuff works. Petrochemical internal combustion engines didn't rise form the sea, perfectly formed like Venus. An incredible difference between a huge hit and miss engine and say, my 4 cylinder Jeep Engine. Power, weight,maintenance all in favor of my not particularly notable engine otherwise. The old engine has torque and steampunk cool.
Any Slashdotters think we should have stopped improving IC engines at the Hit and Miss stage?
There are certain aspects of getting electrical power from those long ribbons of highway that make attempts to extract that potential pretty interesting.
Will this work? Probably not. But its certain that it won't work if it isn't built. It is their money.
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Yeah, cars formed through Natural Selection. Shitty cars like the Edsel died. Putting panels on the ground is stupid. Putting panels underground is a whole new level of stupidity.
South Korea has a "solar highway", but they put raised panels over a bikeway in the middle. Bicyclists can ride in the shade and the panels have unobstructed light at the best angle.
Is your post supposed to make any sense?
China is the last place to build anything solar. (Score:2)
Have you ever been to China?
The sun is a dull orange disc at best on most days, barely visible through the pollution.
I'm not exaggerating.
Residents of Jinan like paintings with blue skys in the same way that Australians like pictures of a snow-covered Christmas.
I remeber (Score:2)
when the US did great thing like that. Now we can't even fix areas destroy by natural disaster, have more and more people going hungry and homeless.
But, hey, at least we keep cutting taxes!
You can trend US's greatness in innovation, infrastructure, creation right to taxes. Higher taxes, the better we have done.