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“Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack “the

“Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack “the road was only producing half of the expected energy” - great, so just 2 km of a solar road could power the streetlights of an entire city the size of Tourouvre, 3700 people. We shouldn’t raise the white flag so quickly. I think we need a second iteration at least before we call it a failure.

jcranmer 7y ago
> “Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so.
- trilila 7y ago
  Touche, a good point, but a first attempt is not usually reliable. I think we should learn more about what could be done different? Should instead all bike lanes be made of solar “panels” because the wights is all yet they would cover a large surface if they were to cover the whole city? How does a traveled road get covered in leaves?
- DC-3 7y ago
  > Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so. Your county council evidently uses better contractors than mine!
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    It's about the thickness laid down. The thicker, the longer it lasts, because thicker beds bend less than thinner ones, and so resist cracking better.
- dghughes 7y ago
  > Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so. More like 18 months in my region of the world.
GhostVII 7y ago
Cracks don't cause a regular road to fail entirely, while if a solar panel cracks in half, it will most likely stop working. Also I don't see how solar roads make any sense when there is so much unused roof space and parking lots. Putting panels over a parking lot is much easier since you don't have to build them to withstand many-tonne automobiles, they will always be in full sunlight instead of being covered by dirt and vehicles, and they can be angled towards the sun. Even in theory, I think solar roads are a failure.
- trilila 7y ago
  i stand corrected. But why not use them for bike lanes or parking lots indeed?
- blunte 7y ago
  I suspect the idea was partly that we already have to build infrastructure for roads; why not make the roads also a source of power? In practice it will take many iterations to reach a point where it makes sense. Or it simply may never make sense. The recent articles about some California farmlands being converted to solar fields does make sense. They were running out of water, but they had a lot of land to use for something. Even if solar roads can work, there's still the problem of relatively inefficient tranfer of power over long distances. It makes little sense to spend a lot of money to make a solar road that's far away from energy consumers since a lot of the energy produced by the road will be lost in transit.
- trilila 7y ago
  So after my erroneous comment, i have learned that roofs, parking lots and bike lanes are better candidates. I just dint want to give up on converting asphalt to energy generators.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Think the person you responded to meant for the solar panels to be above the parking lot, not the parking lot surface. IIRC, Google has quite a far solar panels in their parking lots, where they not only generate electricity but also provide shade for the cars parked there. I've also seen a couple of rather massive solar panels in central Atlanta near CNN. I was told they were installed by Ted Turner because he has a penthouse nearby. No idea how much power they generate but it does provide some nice shade.
dralley 7y ago
It's a fundamentally stupid idea. Passing solar light requires transparency. Transparent materials (glass, plastics) wear quickly and make terrible road surfaces. Texturing the surface to make it a better road reduces transparency and increases wear even more. How about solar (covered) parking lots, solar roofs, etc. It makes far, far, far, far more sense.
paranoidrobot 7y ago
Road surfaces need the ability to flex while withstanding huge loads. Materials such as asphalt have this ability. Glass, in layers thick enough to support the loads necessary do not. Bitumen can also be patched and repaired relatively quickly and easily, and can use relatively simple machinery to repair/replace large sections at once. Solar panels require a lot more surface preparation, precision joining and when they break (because they will - accidents happen), leave dangerous road surfaces that cannot be easily patched/repaired. Solar Roadways won't work with our current state of technology where we need fixed rigid panels. Something that is either a replacement for bitumen, or can be mixed into it and is able to self-assemble a current pathway might be a viable option. But we're a long ways off doing anything like that.

jcranmer 7y ago

> “Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear.” as opposed to regular roads which never crack Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so.

trilila 7y ago
Touche, a good point, but a first attempt is not usually reliable. I think we should learn more about what could be done different? Should instead all bike lanes be made of solar “panels” because the wights is all yet they would cover a large surface if they were to cover the whole city? How does a traveled road get covered in leaves?
DC-3 7y ago
> Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so. Your county council evidently uses better contractors than mine!
- WalterBright 7y ago
  It's about the thickness laid down. The thicker, the longer it lasts, because thicker beds bend less than thinner ones, and so resist cracking better.
dghughes 7y ago
> Regular roads don't fall apart in 18 months, they take 18 years (or longer) to do so. More like 18 months in my region of the world.

GhostVII 7y ago

Cracks don't cause a regular road to fail entirely, while if a solar panel cracks in half, it will most likely stop working. Also I don't see how solar roads make any sense when there is so much unused roof space and parking lots. Putting panels over a parking lot is much easier since you don't have to build them to withstand many-tonne automobiles, they will always be in full sunlight instead of being covered by dirt and vehicles, and they can be angled towards the sun. Even in theory, I think solar roads are a failure.

trilila 7y ago
i stand corrected. But why not use them for bike lanes or parking lots indeed?
blunte 7y ago
I suspect the idea was partly that we already have to build infrastructure for roads; why not make the roads also a source of power? In practice it will take many iterations to reach a point where it makes sense. Or it simply may never make sense. The recent articles about some California farmlands being converted to solar fields does make sense. They were running out of water, but they had a lot of land to use for something. Even if solar roads can work, there's still the problem of relatively inefficient tranfer of power over long distances. It makes little sense to spend a lot of money to make a solar road that's far away from energy consumers since a lot of the energy produced by the road will be lost in transit.
trilila 7y ago
So after my erroneous comment, i have learned that roofs, parking lots and bike lanes are better candidates. I just dint want to give up on converting asphalt to energy generators.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Think the person you responded to meant for the solar panels to be above the parking lot, not the parking lot surface. IIRC, Google has quite a far solar panels in their parking lots, where they not only generate electricity but also provide shade for the cars parked there. I've also seen a couple of rather massive solar panels in central Atlanta near CNN. I was told they were installed by Ted Turner because he has a penthouse nearby. No idea how much power they generate but it does provide some nice shade.

dralley 7y ago

It's a fundamentally stupid idea. Passing solar light requires transparency. Transparent materials (glass, plastics) wear quickly and make terrible road surfaces. Texturing the surface to make it a better road reduces transparency and increases wear even more. How about solar (covered) parking lots, solar roofs, etc. It makes far, far, far, far more sense.

paranoidrobot 7y ago

Road surfaces need the ability to flex while withstanding huge loads. Materials such as asphalt have this ability. Glass, in layers thick enough to support the loads necessary do not. Bitumen can also be patched and repaired relatively quickly and easily, and can use relatively simple machinery to repair/replace large sections at once. Solar panels require a lot more surface preparation, precision joining and when they break (because they will - accidents happen), leave dangerous road surfaces that cannot be easily patched/repaired. Solar Roadways won't work with our current state of technology where we need fixed rigid panels. Something that is either a replacement for bitumen, or can be mixed into it and is able to self-assemble a current pathway might be a viable option. But we're a long ways off doing anything like that.