Solar Highways Video

Some excellent concepts there.
Del

I like the idea a lot. It is 21st Century thinking. I wonder how well it would work in the northern or alpine climates where weather conditions can be severe. What do we do with those who use studded tires? Do snowplows have a problem? Can we heat the roadway to eliminate the need for snowplowing altogether? Is it slippery to walk on? Just musing, I am sure all the negatives can be worked out.

I believe 46% of the earth's crust is silicon, so glass makes sense that way.

the problem will be dirt/dust. Will each vehicle pay a 'cleaning tax' or carry a wiper on the rear bumper?

chris

Not a problem. We just line the sides of the road with these little guys (if it works as birth control why not cleaning the roadway). It gets rid of unwanted salt and sand and other crawling critters. Just maybe I could use them in the house...mm?

omg... hilarious!

This fellow calls himself an inventor? Dreaming up the impractical that is horribly costly is more suitable for the next James Bond movie or possibly the GO (green options) web sites.

One of the jobs I had when I was younger was working for a company that did refurbish work for East Ohio Gas, mainly fixing the roads, driveways, and sidewalks they tore up doing tie-ins or shutoffs, etc.

I remember my first road pour, I was on the finishing crew as I caught on pretty quick to that final stage of pouring doing driveways and sidewalks. I'll never forget the look on my foreman's face when he saw his beautiful road patch (2 lanes, about a 10th of a mile long) finished with a caliber that could be on any millionaire's driveway… was not the look I expected. What I saw when I looked at it was an awesome finish, what he saw was a 5-car pileup, litigation, bankruptcy, and prison time… just slightly different perspectives I'd say.

Road surfaces are designed to be very rough textured and porous to mitigate the effects of water and road grime. Imagine how dirty this glass road is going to get after a month of no rain (dirt, oil, etc) and then introduce a misting rain, or morning dew to the condition. Regardless of how well the glass is designed to mitigate other concerns (impact, reflection, etc) if it has a smooth surface, it might as well be a sheet of ice once it gets oily and wet.

And, as others have pointed out, if they are able to make the glass with adequate roughness, these pores are going to fill up with grime reducing the viability of the LED's and the effectiveness of the solar cells.

Not trying to be a nay-sayer… I think this is a really cool idea and I'm glad they got funding to further the research… just pointing out some of the challenges I see.

Also, even if these ideas don't pan out for road use… they can be incorporated into replacing sidewalks, roadway signs, billboards, heck…even skyscraper building panels. Or, maybe have them line both sides of airplane runways… probably not bright enough to use the LED aspect of the panel as runway lights, but regardless… the concept of developing durable solar panels that are impact resistant, rigid, structurally sound… yeah, more potential applications than just road surface applications.

JavaHead

All of what you said is quite right but don't worry about the naysayer part.

Airy-fairy is airy-fairy, just with good intentions which only waste time and money when as you pointed out other surfaces are more suitable.

Good point. So we just cover all the roads to keep the rain/mist off and send robotic vacuum cleaners down each road daily (or several times a day) keep the dirt, dust and grim to a minimum. (please read the previous sentence as sarcasm).

Maybe it should be coupled with this :D

I like how Mazumder is trying to take credit for developments he had nothing to do with.

The glass companies have developed he self cleaning glass and are trying to convince the panel manufacturers it is worth the additional cost.

What you gotta remember guys is that even if there are probs with this concept, these fellahs are actually doing something and just not the usual free energy HHO talkmeisters we see so many of.
Anyone who gets off his butt and builds stuff (which demonstrably works in some fashion) will always get my support.
Del

The concept is not new - been reading about this for sometime - believe it is in Israel they are building a section of roadway utilizing the concept.

An old boss of mine used to say, 'Working hard isn't enough - you have to work hard and smart'.

Seems to me these fellows are working very hard.

I'm all for progress, but this thing is so, so, so complex and multi functional that it's

doomed to fail in more ways than I can count.

And expensive???? OMG!

Who paid for this?

I gather that we paid for it via the goverment.

I agree that there are problems to be resolved but if we had of said it was to hard we would never have been to the moon. Anything we learn from the project is a step forward.