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There's no shortage of open area to put solar panels. If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median, that would be a huge step forward, and stil
by Grakel 6y ago
There's no shortage of open area to put solar panels. If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median, that would be a huge step forward, and still take up practically zero useable space. Even 1% of the federally owned land in the sun belt would generate an enormous amount of power.
- rch 6y agoThis approach would benefit community solar and remote microgrid projects, as well as geographically constrained places like the UK where the study was done.
- vmception 6y agoJust waiting for it to be economical in the nearer term and all of this stuff will magically start appearing. Everyone goes through the motions of thinking about solar solutions to energy, and then they realize how little power they provide and how many they need en masse and then scrap the idea. Once the math adds up for a quicker ROI, the plans will stop getting shelved and will be presented as novel by different people.
- chrisco255 6y agoI think we're already there for regular PV. It's getting to the point where a home system will almost pay for itself in less than 10 years.
- vmception 6y agoI'm thinking 3 months would be ideal
- pjc50 6y agoVery few things have a return that quickly. In an era of 25 year mortgages, a 10 year payback is very reasonable.
- vmception 6y agoLet's make these one of the few things that have a return that quickly.
- Armisael16 6y agoThat’s unlikely to ever happen; if it’s that cheap to produce electricity the utilities will have long since switched over and cut rates.
- hellotomyrars 6y agoIdeal, I guess. Though I don't see how that could ever be possible.
- hirundo 6y ago"if the government were to take over the Sahara Desert, there would be a shortage of sand in five year" -- Milton Friedman (exaggerating, somewhat) Better to put them on home roofs, and arrange for them to be owned by the homeowners, designed so that the occupants are (literally) empowered when the grid is mismanaged, as in California. On highway medians control is more centralized, and they would require more maintenance and cleaning, which would be more disruptive in that location.
- singron 6y agoSolar panels on home roofs aren't necessarily configured to power the house without the grid. Also you would additionally need batteries and related hardware to have a usable source of power at any time, so unless your house is set up for off-grid solar, you still need the grid to be managed well.
- mysterydip 6y agoFound this out in the house we are renting with solar panels installed by landlord. Bright sunny day, someone hits a pole nearby, power goes out. There are two kinds of solar: one that adds to the existing signal from the mains, or one that is self-contained. The second kind is more complicated and therefore expensive. I wasn't aware of the distinction before, but I definitely am now.
- yellow_lead 6y agoAren't there setups that can do both as well? i.e charge battery first and send excess to the grid?
- apcragg 6y agoSure but they are more expensive. You need a rock solid controller with beefy and redundant electronics to make sure you're never going to be connected to the grid when you shouldn't be.
- 6y ago
- ape4 6y agoVehicles often crash into things beside a highway.
- bialpio 6y agoPlanes sometimes fall on people's roofs. Let's not optimize for edge cases here?
- jeffbee 6y agoThis has to be the most ignorant comment ever posted on HN. In a typical year how many aircraft crash into structures? Zero. There are more than fifteen thousand car crashes in the USA every day.
- kube-system 6y agoThe entire reason medians exist is because they are a crash safety device. Consideration for crashes is not an edge case, it’s the entire point of a median.
- evan_ 6y agoThat will surely be taken into consideration from the start, and they will be designed in easily replaceable sections. If a car hits a section maybe it will be disabled but the rest of the cells will be fine and a crew will be dispatched to repair or replace the damaged cells.
- kube-system 6y agoSurely it is cheaper to simply place the panel somewhere else than it is to: 1. Pay for thousands of additional broken panels on a recurring basis 2. Pay people to replace thousands of broken panels 3. Shut down highways for utility work to replace thousands of broken panels 4. Design the panels to meet crash safety design considerations that the structures currently in the median were designed to 5. Add additional electrical safety standards unique to a panel array that designed to withstand car crashes. Really, this is complete silliness.
- altcognito 6y agoThey would also get dirty at a much faster rate because of all the dirt and soot generated by the vehicles going by.
- jameslk 6y agoThe solar panels on roads idea has been tried. Rotting leaves were a big source of its failure. https://www.businessinsider.com/first-solar-road-france-failure-photos-2019-8#it-was-all-smiles-and-high-hopes-in-2016-when-the-worlds-first-solar-panel-road-called-wattway-opened-france-spent-52-million-on-06-miles-of-road-and-30000-square-feet-of-solar-panels-it-was-hailed-as-the-longest-solar-road-in-the-world-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/first-solar-road-france-fail...
- ianai 6y agoDoesn’t matter. Much of the US roads aren’t anywhere near trees - ie the southwest. Huge amount of roads and solar power potential there too. Also, cleaning crews are a thing that have existed in the past and should again.
- jameslk 6y agoReplace leaves with tumbleweeds. Or whatever natural debris we have in the west. The leaves were causing damage to the solar panels. I imagine other types of debris would do the same. But I'd be happy to be wrong. Have you asked why this hasn't already been done yet? Or if it has (besides the example I provided), what was the outcome?
- iancmceachern 6y agoHave you spent much time driving in the empty areas of the west? You can go 100 miles without even seeing a tumbleweed.
- jameslk 6y agoI've been living in the west my whole life and have traveled between Colorado to California through Nevada, Utah, Arizona, etc 7 or 8 times, so yes I've seen an empty western road before. Tumbleweeds was tongue in cheek but there's plenty of dirt, trash and other flying debris that will get baked onto a glassy surface out southwest.
- eloff 6y agoYeah, land is not at a shortage. The best land for solar is also worthless for other things, so it tends to be dirt cheap. There's enough unused space in the Southeast US to power the entire world off of solar. Obviously that wouldn't work for other reasons, but underscores nicely how land isn't the issue at all.
- dehrmann 6y ago> If we put a (nearly) continuous strip in every highway median Is there a shortage of land for solar?
- newyankee 6y agoI was wondering if they can be put up on poles holding train's electric tractive wires and then fed directly to the same wire. The issue i see is dc to ac conversion and lot of variability management.
- amelius 6y agoMaintenance in the middle of the road sucks ...