4 ms·

Fortunately we didn't give up on flight after the early airplanes. Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! We don't

by blunte 7y ago

Fortunately we didn't give up on flight after the early airplanes. Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! We don't know exactly what they will lead to, but they often add to progress.

magicalhippo 7y ago
> Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! No they are not. Solar roads do not make sense, not for a looooong time anyway. So far, all of the currently failed solar road projects have failed in utterly predictable ways[1][2][3], and I'm certain nothing novel has been learned. There are so many better places to put solar panels than beneath roads. If anything they should put water pipes to utilize the heat. But solar panels, that's like trying to optimize a function for another 0.03% speed while there's still order of magnitudes of trivial improvements laying on the table elsewhere. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo
- blunte 7y ago
  Sure, I tend to agree with you. But as I posted to another reply, it's conceivable that this silly experiment will lead to improvement in material science or some other construction/manufacturing practice related to solar panels. And hey, we can't be too hard on them for perhaps jumping on a bandwagon. Solar roads seems more plausible than food delivery service on "the blockchain".
  - magicalhippo 7y ago
    The only thing that they could have contributed with is making flexible solar panels. But they didn't. Instead they just put down regular panels. Assume they actually made flexible panels. They'd still have the issue of the abysmal efficiency due to the inevitable grinding of the surface and dirt filling up the cracks. You'd need frequent washing of the roads to keep them clean. Was that included in the energy projections?
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > they should put water pipes to utilize the heat Missed by most people is that roads flex under the weight. (Stand next to the train tracks when a train goes by, you'll be startled at how much the ground moves.) Flexing of the roads it the primary cause of road maintenance - cracking and crumbling. Silicon chips in the roadbed, wires, pipes, etc, are all very vulnerable to cracking under bending loads. Putting water pipes in the roads mean you'll get innumerable leaks in short order.
  - deepnotderp 7y ago
    Thinned silicon is actually pretty flexible FWIW
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      None of the solar cells I played with were flexible at all.
  - blunte 7y ago
    I know there have been some applications of piezoelectric floors put in places people walk (to generate small amounts of electricity). I wonder if this could have some practical value in roads. The energy would be small, but perhaps it would be enough to keep some distant electronic systems fed.
    - mkl 7y ago
      A solar panel is probably a better option. That's how some illuminated signs and environmental sensors are powered around here.
    - thombat 7y ago
      The problem with piezoelectric flooring is that the power generated is "stolen" from the person crossing it. Take too much power, e.g. by having a perceptible deformation of the surface, and the person will have the feeling of walking on soft sand or snow and may avoid walking on it. Take too little and the exercise becomes pointless: even with a very generous set of assumptions the PaveGen system produced 1/5000th of a person's power need. [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/26/pavegen_the_company_that_cant_make_energy_out_of_crowds_tries_to_make_money_out_of_them/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/26/pavegen_the_company...
filleokus 7y ago
I agree that we as a society generally need to afford ourselves to be brave and fail sometimes. But... this seems like such a bad idea even in theory. Road surfaces have pretty specific and harsh needs, which currently can be mostly solved with really cheap solutions (concrete/asphalt). Photovoltaic cells on the other hand are comparably very expensive and fragile. Surely, land can't be that expensive in most places that it makes sense to use the road surface, compared to say roofs.
- blunte 7y ago
  I can't speak much about other countries, but the US blows unfathomable amounts of money on incredibly narrow-sighted projects (particularly military). But yet, some of what is learned from those projects benefits science and technology. I think what we might gain from this solar road experiment will be related to material science in the area of solar panels. Just look at mobile phones; surely the transition from old plastic in front of LCDs to "gorilla" glass has benefited other use cases. I'm just guessing here, but I bet there is something to learn which can be applied elsewhere. I think flying cars are absolutely moronic and completely impractical. But who knows... maybe the brainpower spent trying to make them work will result in better traffic management or people transportation elsewhere.
WalterBright 7y ago
> Fortunately we didn't give up on flight after the early airplanes. Airplanes are not amenable to hackers designing them. Getting one to fly required a directed engineering effort, with a series of prototypes each targeted at solving a specific problem. I think it was the first such project that did so. The Wrights are often dismissed as "bicycle mechanics", but if you take a closer look they were very competent engineers. (The difference between an engineer and a mechanic is math. The Wrights did not try random things, they used math to arrive at solutions.)
- blunte 7y ago
  I would disagree. History is full of airplanes that were built or modified (sometimes improved) by hackers. There's an immensely successful experimental aircraft industry, and I'm not just talking about people who are (successfully) building human-scale vtol drones.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > History is full of airplanes that were built or modified (sometimes improved) by hackers. The FAA won't let you fly it until an engineer goes over your design. For very good reason. An unbalanced airplane isn't going to fly, and one that isn't strong enough will fold up on you. There's a thin line between strong enough to hold together and light enough to get off the ground - and you cannot find that without math. There were many hacker airplanes before the Wrights. They were all too heavy, too underpowered, too unstable, and too weak to fly. The Wrights, with math, solved those problems.
froindt 7y ago
My issue with it is the scaling. They had a test installation in sidewalk which proved to be woefully inadequate. Yet the pushed on, largely unchanged. They took two things which have significantly different requirements and tried mashing them into one. Solar panels need to be oriented towards the sun to maximize energy, and need to get as much sun going through the glass to the panel as possible. You basically end up multiplying many variables together to get the end efficiency, and we're actively degrading 3 by a significant degree by adjusting the glass/plastic to withstand the weight of cars and semis, scratching the surface over time with the dust and sand, and mounting them flat. Roads need to be cheap to install, need to be long lasting, and need to assist vehicles in stopping quickly. I'd love to know the difference in stopping distance and coefficient of friction between this and traditional roads.
godelski 7y ago
> Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! We don't know exactly what they will lead to, but they often add to progress. Except we all knew this would happen. It was all in the predictions. This was a scam. People did the math on these things. We knew it wouldn't hold up to tractors and heavy vehicles. We knew there wasn't a good solution to keep things clean. The problem is that this wasn't sound from even basic engineering. I wouldn't call it a scam if they were honest about this. If they said "yes we need to do more testing" and "this test will help us figure those things it". But they didn't even do the background research. They called everyone that did may sayers. There's a reason only the IFLS type crowd liked them and not actual engineers. I'm all in favor of doing hard tasks. Using government money to take risks in science and engineering. That's something we need to strive for. But things like this make it harder to get support for that because this was a joke from the beginning. Experts knew it was a scam from the get go.
- blunte 7y ago
  I suspect a lot of firsts (or early projects) were promoted in scammy, or at least very unrealistic, ways. I don't agree with overpromotion, but frankly a lot of what SV does is based on that as well. If your pitch deck doesn't promise to change the world, you won't get as much attention. This project was probably a poor use of funds (compared to other options), but the effort may have advanced our knowledge just a bit.
  - godelski 7y ago
    That's not what I'm trying to say. You do have to be risky. But you don't have to lie. That's the difference between a scam and someone taking a risk (or being naive).
jdietrich 7y ago
The solar industry knew that it wouldn't work. Anyone with a high school understanding of physics could figure out that it wouldn't work. The early trials failed spectacularly and nobody learned anything new. Subsequent trials also failed spectacularly and nobody learned anything new. People are still funding trials with exactly the same flaws as previous failed trials, presumably due to some sort of magical thinking. Science should at the very least be informed guesswork - if you don't start with a reasonable hypothesis and don't update your hypothesis in light of the evidence, it's just alchemy.
- blunte 7y ago
  To be fair, the Dutch solar bike path was reportedly more successful than expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolaRoad#Results_of_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolaRoad#Results_of_trial https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/dutch-solar-road-proves-successful-moves-on-to-heavy-traffic-road-trial-2018-10-19/rep_id:4136 https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/dutch-solar-road-p... So the idea isn't too crazy, it seems. Maybe it is unsuitable for heavy vehicles, or in areas where particulate is more likely to collect and affect the light gathering; but to some degree it can be successful.

by blunte 7y ago

magicalhippo 7y ago

> Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! No they are not. Solar roads do not make sense, not for a looooong time anyway. So far, all of the currently failed solar road projects have failed in utterly predictable ways[1][2][3], and I'm certain nothing novel has been learned. There are so many better places to put solar panels than beneath roads. If anything they should put water pipes to utilize the heat. But solar panels, that's like trying to optimize a function for another 0.03% speed while there's still order of magnitudes of trivial improvements laying on the table elsewhere. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo

blunte 7y ago
Sure, I tend to agree with you. But as I posted to another reply, it's conceivable that this silly experiment will lead to improvement in material science or some other construction/manufacturing practice related to solar panels. And hey, we can't be too hard on them for perhaps jumping on a bandwagon. Solar roads seems more plausible than food delivery service on "the blockchain".
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  The only thing that they could have contributed with is making flexible solar panels. But they didn't. Instead they just put down regular panels. Assume they actually made flexible panels. They'd still have the issue of the abysmal efficiency due to the inevitable grinding of the surface and dirt filling up the cracks. You'd need frequent washing of the roads to keep them clean. Was that included in the energy projections?
WalterBright 7y ago
> they should put water pipes to utilize the heat Missed by most people is that roads flex under the weight. (Stand next to the train tracks when a train goes by, you'll be startled at how much the ground moves.) Flexing of the roads it the primary cause of road maintenance - cracking and crumbling. Silicon chips in the roadbed, wires, pipes, etc, are all very vulnerable to cracking under bending loads. Putting water pipes in the roads mean you'll get innumerable leaks in short order.
- deepnotderp 7y ago
  Thinned silicon is actually pretty flexible FWIW
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    None of the solar cells I played with were flexible at all.
- blunte 7y ago
  I know there have been some applications of piezoelectric floors put in places people walk (to generate small amounts of electricity). I wonder if this could have some practical value in roads. The energy would be small, but perhaps it would be enough to keep some distant electronic systems fed.
  - mkl 7y ago
    A solar panel is probably a better option. That's how some illuminated signs and environmental sensors are powered around here.
  - thombat 7y ago
    The problem with piezoelectric flooring is that the power generated is "stolen" from the person crossing it. Take too much power, e.g. by having a perceptible deformation of the surface, and the person will have the feeling of walking on soft sand or snow and may avoid walking on it. Take too little and the exercise becomes pointless: even with a very generous set of assumptions the PaveGen system produced 1/5000th of a person's power need. [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/26/pavegen_the_company_that_cant_make_energy_out_of_crowds_tries_to_make_money_out_of_them/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/26/pavegen_the_company...

filleokus 7y ago

I agree that we as a society generally need to afford ourselves to be brave and fail sometimes. But... this seems like such a bad idea even in theory. Road surfaces have pretty specific and harsh needs, which currently can be mostly solved with really cheap solutions (concrete/asphalt). Photovoltaic cells on the other hand are comparably very expensive and fragile. Surely, land can't be that expensive in most places that it makes sense to use the road surface, compared to say roofs.

blunte 7y ago
I can't speak much about other countries, but the US blows unfathomable amounts of money on incredibly narrow-sighted projects (particularly military). But yet, some of what is learned from those projects benefits science and technology. I think what we might gain from this solar road experiment will be related to material science in the area of solar panels. Just look at mobile phones; surely the transition from old plastic in front of LCDs to "gorilla" glass has benefited other use cases. I'm just guessing here, but I bet there is something to learn which can be applied elsewhere. I think flying cars are absolutely moronic and completely impractical. But who knows... maybe the brainpower spent trying to make them work will result in better traffic management or people transportation elsewhere.

WalterBright 7y ago

> Fortunately we didn't give up on flight after the early airplanes. Airplanes are not amenable to hackers designing them. Getting one to fly required a directed engineering effort, with a series of prototypes each targeted at solving a specific problem. I think it was the first such project that did so. The Wrights are often dismissed as "bicycle mechanics", but if you take a closer look they were very competent engineers. (The difference between an engineer and a mechanic is math. The Wrights did not try random things, they used math to arrive at solutions.)

blunte 7y ago
I would disagree. History is full of airplanes that were built or modified (sometimes improved) by hackers. There's an immensely successful experimental aircraft industry, and I'm not just talking about people who are (successfully) building human-scale vtol drones.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > History is full of airplanes that were built or modified (sometimes improved) by hackers. The FAA won't let you fly it until an engineer goes over your design. For very good reason. An unbalanced airplane isn't going to fly, and one that isn't strong enough will fold up on you. There's a thin line between strong enough to hold together and light enough to get off the ground - and you cannot find that without math. There were many hacker airplanes before the Wrights. They were all too heavy, too underpowered, too unstable, and too weak to fly. The Wrights, with math, solved those problems.

froindt 7y ago

My issue with it is the scaling. They had a test installation in sidewalk which proved to be woefully inadequate. Yet the pushed on, largely unchanged. They took two things which have significantly different requirements and tried mashing them into one. Solar panels need to be oriented towards the sun to maximize energy, and need to get as much sun going through the glass to the panel as possible. You basically end up multiplying many variables together to get the end efficiency, and we're actively degrading 3 by a significant degree by adjusting the glass/plastic to withstand the weight of cars and semis, scratching the surface over time with the dust and sand, and mounting them flat. Roads need to be cheap to install, need to be long lasting, and need to assist vehicles in stopping quickly. I'd love to know the difference in stopping distance and coefficient of friction between this and traditional roads.

godelski 7y ago

> Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! We don't know exactly what they will lead to, but they often add to progress. Except we all knew this would happen. It was all in the predictions. This was a scam. People did the math on these things. We knew it wouldn't hold up to tractors and heavy vehicles. We knew there wasn't a good solution to keep things clean. The problem is that this wasn't sound from even basic engineering. I wouldn't call it a scam if they were honest about this. If they said "yes we need to do more testing" and "this test will help us figure those things it". But they didn't even do the background research. They called everyone that did may sayers. There's a reason only the IFLS type crowd liked them and not actual engineers. I'm all in favor of doing hard tasks. Using government money to take risks in science and engineering. That's something we need to strive for. But things like this make it harder to get support for that because this was a joke from the beginning. Experts knew it was a scam from the get go.

blunte 7y ago
I suspect a lot of firsts (or early projects) were promoted in scammy, or at least very unrealistic, ways. I don't agree with overpromotion, but frankly a lot of what SV does is based on that as well. If your pitch deck doesn't promise to change the world, you won't get as much attention. This project was probably a poor use of funds (compared to other options), but the effort may have advanced our knowledge just a bit.
- godelski 7y ago
  That's not what I'm trying to say. You do have to be risky. But you don't have to lie. That's the difference between a scam and someone taking a risk (or being naive).

jdietrich 7y ago

The solar industry knew that it wouldn't work. Anyone with a high school understanding of physics could figure out that it wouldn't work. The early trials failed spectacularly and nobody learned anything new. Subsequent trials also failed spectacularly and nobody learned anything new. People are still funding trials with exactly the same flaws as previous failed trials, presumably due to some sort of magical thinking. Science should at the very least be informed guesswork - if you don't start with a reasonable hypothesis and don't update your hypothesis in light of the evidence, it's just alchemy.

blunte 7y ago
To be fair, the Dutch solar bike path was reportedly more successful than expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolaRoad#Results_of_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolaRoad#Results_of_trial https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/dutch-solar-road-proves-successful-moves-on-to-heavy-traffic-road-trial-2018-10-19/rep_id:4136 https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/dutch-solar-road-p... So the idea isn't too crazy, it seems. Maybe it is unsuitable for heavy vehicles, or in areas where particulate is more likely to collect and affect the light gathering; but to some degree it can be successful.