4 ms·

I will play devil's advocate a little. Since you will always have to pave roads anyway, it makes some sense for them to have a dual purpose, no? Laying roads

I will play devil's advocate a little. Since you will always have to pave roads anyway, it makes some sense for them to have a dual purpose, no? Laying roads is exceptionally expensive anyway - requiring the roads to be high quality enough that they work as solar roads has the dual benefit that these can be more effectively maintained as a pair.

rebootthesystem 12y ago
Even if all costs where exactly the same as those of a conventional road (probably not the case by a huge multiplier) maintenance costs would be massive. A conventional road can be full of dirt, scratches, dings, holes, cracks, bubble gum, etc. and still be perfectly good. Just looking outside my home right now I see that our street is probably covered about 25% in shade from the trees and homes on both sides. The next issue is that in most developed countries you would have to first destroy a road before installing solar modules. I can't even guess at the cost of doing that, even if you recycle the materials. Remember that all of these activities have an environmental cost in burning petroleum. The trucks and equipment doing all the work and moving the materials and waste are burning fossil fuels. Even a hamburger has a petroleum cost factor due to transportation and manufacturing steps. Is it a good idea for less developed countries where there might be no road? No, it's a horrible idea. The last thing those countries need are high-tech roads with 3x the installation cost and 1000x the maintenance cost.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  destroy a road Roads are repaved all the time, so you wouldn't necessarily have to do any extra road destroying. It is frequently the case that the deck is stripped and reused though.
adventured 12y ago
No, the exact opposite. If you make roads dual purpose structurally, you get the worst of both worlds. You end up with a road that is a terrible road. You end up with solar panels that are terrible as solar panels. The core design needs of a road are so drastically anti that of a solar panel, there is no hope of combining them in an effective way in the next few decades until we have drastic breakthroughs in materials or transportation (ie we stop driving multi-thousand pound vehicles with tires on top of our roads; even then it'd be better to just run the panels to the side of the future road and elevate them).
- learnstats2 12y ago
  I doubt it. Roads are terrible roads already. Asphalt is a cheap way of paving a road that needs to be repaired and replaced very frequently. If there is any deliberate design of roads, it's only that they degrade fairly gracefully and repair is built into the cost. But this frequently leads to corrupt practices such as kickbacks (at the least, this is a common public perception) or extended periods of poor quality roads. Surely a better solution is to design the roads more carefully to avoid such a level of degradation. Since this matches the design required for solar panels, this could be a great driver for change.

rebootthesystem 12y ago

Even if all costs where exactly the same as those of a conventional road (probably not the case by a huge multiplier) maintenance costs would be massive. A conventional road can be full of dirt, scratches, dings, holes, cracks, bubble gum, etc. and still be perfectly good. Just looking outside my home right now I see that our street is probably covered about 25% in shade from the trees and homes on both sides. The next issue is that in most developed countries you would have to first destroy a road before installing solar modules. I can't even guess at the cost of doing that, even if you recycle the materials. Remember that all of these activities have an environmental cost in burning petroleum. The trucks and equipment doing all the work and moving the materials and waste are burning fossil fuels. Even a hamburger has a petroleum cost factor due to transportation and manufacturing steps. Is it a good idea for less developed countries where there might be no road? No, it's a horrible idea. The last thing those countries need are high-tech roads with 3x the installation cost and 1000x the maintenance cost.

maxerickson 12y ago
destroy a road Roads are repaved all the time, so you wouldn't necessarily have to do any extra road destroying. It is frequently the case that the deck is stripped and reused though.

adventured 12y ago

No, the exact opposite. If you make roads dual purpose structurally, you get the worst of both worlds. You end up with a road that is a terrible road. You end up with solar panels that are terrible as solar panels. The core design needs of a road are so drastically anti that of a solar panel, there is no hope of combining them in an effective way in the next few decades until we have drastic breakthroughs in materials or transportation (ie we stop driving multi-thousand pound vehicles with tires on top of our roads; even then it'd be better to just run the panels to the side of the future road and elevate them).

learnstats2 12y ago
I doubt it. Roads are terrible roads already. Asphalt is a cheap way of paving a road that needs to be repaired and replaced very frequently. If there is any deliberate design of roads, it's only that they degrade fairly gracefully and repair is built into the cost. But this frequently leads to corrupt practices such as kickbacks (at the least, this is a common public perception) or extended periods of poor quality roads. Surely a better solution is to design the roads more carefully to avoid such a level of degradation. Since this matches the design required for solar panels, this could be a great driver for change.