3 ms·

That's true, I didn't fully elaborate on all that but yeah, there's concerns there that wouldn't exist for a parking lot. However, you bring up a great point w

That's true, I didn't fully elaborate on all that but yeah, there's concerns there that wouldn't exist for a parking lot. However, you bring up a great point with the "snow shed": covering all or part of a road with solar panels like this would also have the side effect of keeping bad weather off the road. How much money would that save in show-shoveling costs, and the costs to society of having roads blocked by snow (and snowplows), and having weather-induced accidents (both rain and snow)? Now, it's probably not feasible to cover every little road in a city with these things, but at least covering major arteries, while probably somewhat expensive due to the engineering challenges you raise, would have some major benefits: keeping the main roads clear even during horrible weather, and also providing a lot of energy from the solar panels.

jaclaz 9y ago
You have an excellent point there, but the costs are unfortunately way too high to be feasible, not even remotely. And you have to consider how - in places where there is snow - you have to choose to either forfeit the (possibly little) energy the panels can produce in winter or anyway clean them from the snow anyway. The good ol' rule of the thumb is that (of course it depends on the country) the cost is 10,000,000 Euro's per km of highway (plain, mainly earthworks), 20,000,000 per km on bridges/viaducts, 30,000,000 per km in tunnels. (the "base" price may of course vary, but the relative proportions remain roughly valid) An artifical tunnel or sbow shed, besides the solar panels, would be probably 1.5 to 1.7 times the cost of the "simple" highway.