Solar Roadways: Energy-Generating Roads Made Out of Glass and Solar Cells

Even just run water pipes through the pavement for hot water service! That's a LOT of energy!

This would be an engineering nightmare. Currently we barely have roads that stay flat.

This is the kind of idea I'd expect to see a 12 year old write a poster on at a science fair.

First off, where does this figure of 4 billion to implement come from? Even if we assume their blindly optimistic figure of $5000 for 144 square feet of solar road is correct (my assement is that they're dreaming), then to cover the 25000 square miles (equivalent to 696960000000 square feet) would cost 24 TRILLION dollars. Or, to put that figure in perspective, roughly twice the USA's annual GDP.

Second - how can they possibly claim that solar roads are the only solution they can think of? Are they retarded? It's a solar panel people, it doesn't matter where you put it.

Third - I would be hard pressed to think of a worse place to put solar panels than on the road. Maybe if you put them in your front yard and then planted your lawn on top of them that would be worse? In using solar panels in combination with pavement you're combining something inherently fragile (regardless of the solar cell substrate), including the power conversion equipment, the storage elements, the controllers, etc etc; with something that trucks drive over again and again and again. Sure, you could probably shield them, but why on earth would you when instead you could just put them on the roofs of houses when they just get rained on. If you really really REALLY wanted to use the land area already occupied by roads, at least put them on a tower ABOVE the road.

Honestly, if you went into this with good intentions rather than as a complete con then well done for trying to make a difference, but you really need to go back to the drawing board. Sorry.

If you really need a nail in the coffin of the idea, go and work out the net CO2 emissions that would result from tearing up every bit of tarmac in america and replacing it with solar road, and then work out how long it would take to negate those emissions by offsetting fossil fuel generation.

It seems like that pie is awfully high in the sky.

Agree this is real high pie in the sky. Like, impossible pie in the sky!

Heck, with the traffic around LA (where the poster was), the roadway will be in the shade ;) [ie. covered entirely in cars!]

I can't think of many things that take more abuse than roads. Making them solar cell strips just seems pretty...silly. There's much better, lower hanging fruit than our roadways (things that are better gain, for less pain).

Woah... This gave me a really radical idea! Now I know this is gonna sound crazy, but, now hear me out... what if instead of putting solar cells in roads... oh, it's just so insane I'm just going to say it! What if we put them ON EVERY ROOF!

I KNOW! I KNOW! Crazy, right?

We could get government or corporate subsidies to help pay for the equipment and installations. We could tie them all into the electric grid and the extra power from the houses could power the street lights! You could have the residents pay cheaper rates for electricity if they wanted to just pay like 10¢/kwh, or they could pay off the equipment and own it all themselves!

I must be high on some greenhouse gases with this sort of stuff running through my head!

Pie in the sky? Many good ideas start out this way, with many doubters. To solve todays issues we need to think out of the box. Let's see what people think in a few years..

I would not call this too sci-fi. There is already proposal for solar powered road studs to provide road related services. The call boxes are solar powered.

If they could at least make a self maintaining solar powered road, that ouwld be sueful in and of itself. (lexdysics of teh world untie!)

All road lights/signs and what not should be solar and/or wind powered.

Perhaps an advanced nanotech road collects what sun it needs to repair itself and warn of critical engineering problems sinkholes stressed bridges etc. Maybe it can get the material it needs to grow/repair from CO2!

Here in south west France a large number of new homes have underfloor heating supplied by a grid of pipes laid about a metre under their lawns - why not extend this to flexible water pipes under the road? A black surface is an ideal solar collector - how many times have you seen tarmac melt in the summer? A much easier way to harvest the sun's energy and installation is easy - roads are being dug up and repaired all the time.

It does sound like the transmission losses would be significant based on the distance between generation and consumption locations. and because you'd want to wait for the most efficient technology before spending all that money on 10% efficient panels. check this out as an idea:

http://www.solarnetwork.net

it could roll out over time, while efficiency increases in the research labs. plus individuals and small businesses with a small amount of capital could actually start building it, without the friction from dealing with governments and power utility companies. that is, as long as you had an internet connection and a roof...

...ok, finally caught my breath, i was laughing so hard after reading this.

Honestly, have you seen any section of freeway that wasn't messed up, gauged, or otherwise
pock-marked (potholes) because of heavy use, and that is
less than the $5k per 12x12 section!

Sam C, you had it right! What about roof-tops? That is a crazy idea!

No offense to the author, but a report on eco-recycling of belly button lint to make sweaters would have been a better use of time and made more sense!

On top of all the considerations from the commenters above, I have a couple of questions. Surely to stay at max effiecency these glass solar roads would need to be kept very clean, as in a vast fleet of very effective road cleaners, going back and forth over all those 1000s of miles of roadway, spraying water etc.

But more importantly, how safe would it be to drive on a glass road? How controllable would a vehicle be on a surface with such low traction, would this not be like trying to drive on ice? Similarly, what about stopping distance? Then add an overcast, rainy day, trying to drive on a layer of water sitting on glass? The proposal mentions that this is an issue that is as yet unsolved ... just doesn't seem plausible, or at least a large stumbling block.

This dude dared to dream and the publicity generated from this would probably draw some mainstream attention to it.

I have a similar concept which echoes the poster who mentioned water pipes... read about it here: Emenoh : Solar Power on the Road

The idea is simply to convert solar and friction heat into energy through the use of smallish pipes under the freeways leading to sterling engines in the median area. Freeways get really hot. Hot enough to boil water for much of the day. This would be much simpler to embed in the roads... just add in a grid of pipes AND much more durable.

If you want to do something with the roads find a way to use the heat generated by the blacktop, like stirling engines or something.

Umm.. yeah, how about after it gets scratched, or better yet gets covered it rubber marks from tires (or snow), it's efficiency drops to zero? This truly is the most retarded idea I've ever heard. I so agree we should be focusing on cheap solar panel roof tiles to make use of that area, reduce every home's energy use by perhaps 80%?

Sam Crutsinger says:
oh, it's just so insane I'm just going to say it! What if we put them ON EVERY ROOF!

For an even crazier idea, combine your crazy idea with putting a solar panelled roof over every road!

On top of generating electricity, think of the emissions we would save every winter from the reduced number of snow plows...

We would also reduce the amount of salt and sand spread on roads too!

I wrote about this idea about 3 years ago on Halfbakery.com (solar roads). I think you need to go thin film on the asphalt rather than glass though. The ultimate would be additives to asphalt that could allow solid-surface solar - and my calculations were that you would only need about 1% efficiency to supply the whole US with enough power.

I think the biggest problem would be losing power anytime there is a problem with the road. Great idea in theory, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be. Then again I'm not a Civil Engineer....they did figure out wireless electricity.

Mark and Derrick - yes, many good ideas are written off as a bad idea when they first appear; and yes, it's important to think outside the box and dream a little.

However, that's not a valid defense for demonstratably bad ideas.

This isn't a situation like the wright brothers or the apollo program of "daring to dream and trying to push beyond the limits of what is thought possible", stepping boldly into a new realm etc. That is the domain of (for example) the people working on cold fusion or quantum teleportation etc.

This idea is easily described in terms of existing well understood science, and is demonstratably bad for a whole wealth of reasons such as those outlined above. This makes it a bad idea. What they're aiming to acheive is far more simply acheived by other means without any associated disadvantages.

If anyone can name one GOOD thing about putting solar panels in the road then I'll reconsider. Just one - but it has to be something that's offered by a road and not by any of the numerous existing methods.

Anyone?

This idea is born from someone going "hey, we only need such and such a surface area of solar panels to power the country, and that's about the same as the area of roads! BOOYA! Perfect match!". You can do the same with a billion different things. There's probably enough bald guys head surface area on the planet that if we put solar panels on them all we could displace a couple of coal power plants, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea!

As halfbaked as this idea seems I'm thinking there must be a way to draw power from the road, one that can "go around" the known problems, be potholes, rubber marks and general wear-tear.
Granted the roads heat be it from the sun or friction, maybe there's a way to extract that heat and turn it into electricity. Efficiency is an issue, but the distribution and storage is there.

I had a tudor style house, and the angle of the roof made the installation of all the solar panels I wanted a question mark. One idea I entertained for about two seconds was to run solar panels down the middle of the driveway, with concrete on either side where the tires would actually run, like those driveways you sometimes see with grass down the center of them. As a practical matter, of course, I couldn't see how to prevent an accidental crushing/scratching, etc.,. of the solar panels, and decided it'd be 1,000,000,000,000 times easier just to build an awning to add surface space for the pv panels.

So... um... yeah.

It is a nice thought and creative thinking is useful for solving problems but it will involve technology that is probably so far in the future that it would be better to look at technologies and materials that are available or within range of current development. Designing roads that are cheap to install, slow to wear out and easy and cheap to repair would save a lot of money and energy and show results in the near term - providing that governments decide to show the courage to stop treating road work as a means of using tax dollars to provide short term jobs in exchange for votes. Preferably something less energy intensive than todays methods.

As concentration dishes and other solar technologies (having less surface area but being more efficient than 10%) become cheaper one might place them along the highways which are tree-free anyway, either at the sides of roads or along dividers. Maybe they could have directional heat lamps with storage batteries to warm the road just when snow starts to fall to save money on snow removal. It would not keep the roads snow free but it might mean fewer passes by the plow are needed.

Well if you actually go to the website these guys have (link is in the story) you will be able to see that they have a solution for every hurdle except weight and cost. Plus they do make a good argument behind reducing tertiary costs of other infrastructure such as the power grid, cable, phone, internet, and even mentions being able to use cell phone, radio, and television signals.

Though they don't answer cost and weight limitations which I think are the two biggest hurdles to this idea. Not to mention the engineering behind making it flat enough to drive on without rattling your teeth out of your head. Nor do they address the fact that roads curve, They have a few diagrams that show perfectly straight roads but what happens when that road turns?

The cost of implementing this will probably be no less expensive than the governments current agenda. Going to the moon is great, going to the moon to strip mine it for helium-3 is absurd. Save Earth! Destroy other places!

I've liked this idea since thinking of it myself some years ago (just not thinking of it first, or second or...)!

Solar powered road studs already exist and have a reasonable life expectancy proving to my mind that materials able to encase solar cells in such a high wear situation are available. Some roads and areas of roads would be more and less suitable - shaded areas would be given a miss as would very high wear areas like approaches to intersections, steep inclines, especially the area the tires usually track on. The centre area of lanes as well as verges and traffic islands would have significantly less wear. Still I think materials exist that could cope even in high wear situations. Concrete roads would be more suitable than compacted earth types. If the solar surface can be torn up and re-laid at low enough cost (automated machinery), why not? It could lead to better road construction, as initial outlay is recovered in electricity sales - adding solar cells might be only a relatively small cost increase over the multibillion dollar construction budgets for major roads.
It's where major users of energy operate (more of them directly electric in the future as oil prices soar and we see better batteries for EV's), roads follow and cross the electricity grid, and it's not slowing the traffic.

Still, it's probably true that it's always going to be cheaper to put solar awnings over highways than pave them with solar cells! A shame, as the idea does seem appropriate and even an elegant energy solution.

As for solar thermal energy from roads, they already exist and work quite well in the Netherlands and in Scotland (and probably elsewhere), providing commercial and domestic heating and cooling and keeping roads ice-free over winter. Better thermal to electricity conversion could make them electricity producers.

I think it's a great idea. Practical? I think it's feasible, but not economical. It may never be as cost effective as putting solar awnings over highways. Still the idea has a lot of appeal - we are likely to see more EV's in the future as oil costs soar and technology gets mainstreamed.

The existence of solar powered blinking road studs tells me that the materials to encase solar cells in such a high wear situation already exist. It's given that it won't be situated where there is constant shade and probable that the most wear intensive parts of roads would be given a miss, although I think the materials could cope with even more extreme road wear. The capability to tear it up and re-lay the surface quickly is no more difficult than the road making machinery already in existence. Concrete roads would be better suited than those built on compacted earth and adding solar paving may not add that much to the overall cost of major road construction ( over $A1million per kilometre here in Australia - which has a lot of roads sunbaking every day). It would be a means of recovering some of that cost. It might be an incentive to build roads better. The grid follows and crosses our roads and there tend to be more of them where most consumption takes place. It does seem an elegant energy solution.

As for solar thermal road systems, they exist in the Netherlands and Scotland, providing heating and cooling for commercial and domestic buildings as well as keeping roads ice free over winter, but have relied on suitable isolated aquifers for their heat bank. Not so easy if you have to build thermal banks capable of year long storage.

Sorry about the commenting twice - thought the first one got lost in cyberspace and started again.

Hi everyone,

I’m Scott Brusaw, co-inventor and project director of the Solar Roadways project. I’m sorry that I missed the opportunity to address the concerns raised here when these comments were originally posted. Someone just told me about this article.

I appreciate all of the discussion, pro and con. When I explain the concept to people, a few of them (usually scientists and other engineers) grasp the concept immediately and I enjoy watching their eyes light up, but mostly I see confused faces at first or hear comments like “pie in the sky” until I’ve talked long enough to present the whole vision. When people take the time to understand the entire project, I’ve found that perhaps 98% love the idea. If you just take a few parts of the idea in isolation, it might not seem to make sense. The article presented here at TreeHugger gives only a smattering of the information on my website, www.solarroadways.com. I appreciated the comment from Doug, who pointed out that if you actually read the website, most of the criticisms given here are addressed. I hope the other comment writers will explore the website as well, to learn what the project actually entails.

Nick, you challenged anyone to come up with just one good reason for putting solar panels on roads. If you will go to our website, you will find dozens. And your assumption regarding how I came up with this idea is incorrect. Solar Roadways is an intricate system for revamping our entire transportation infrastructure, not a random idea to slap some solar cells on the roadways.

There are some things not yet covered on the website, so I’ll try to give your some detail here.

Let’s cover some cost figures:

Saul Wall, your comments about the problems with current road construction certainly come into play when it comes to the numbers of how this can financially be feasible.

Let me start off by making a correction: the target cost for a 12’ by12’ Solar Road panel is $10K, not $5K. We picked this target price to be competitive with current (actually 2006) costs of asphalt roads. The most realistic number we could place on the cost per square foot of asphalt road (in the US) was $16.00 (this does not include maintenance or snow removal). We met with the director of the Idaho Transportation Department and presented this number to him after finding it on the Internet. After thinking it through for a mile of roadway, came to the conclusion that it was “in the ball park”. If correct, then a 12’ by 12’ section of asphalt road costs (12x12x16) $2304 to build. Unfortunately, the average US road is only designed to last seven years before it must be ripped up and repaved. We’re designing our Solar Road Panels to last over 20 years, so in fairness, you’d have to triple the cost of the asphalt roads (3 x $2304 = $6912) for a real comparison. So we’re at $6912 for (what I like to call) “dumb asphalt” roads – they just sit there and absorb heat and return nothing but potholes and heartache. Keep in mind that eliminating the need for coal-fired power plants and (God-forbid) nuclear power plants, we can roll all of the money that would be spent on future power plants into the Solar Roadways. Consider too, that the Solar Road Panels will be generating and distributing power (along with cable TV, telephone, high-speed internet access, etc.) to homes and businesses everywhere. It is difficult to calculate the cost savings over today’s conventional delivery methods, but I think it’s fair to say that this brings the costs of asphalt and Solar Road Panels into the same ballpark.

The Idaho Transportation Department was excited about the idea of building roads out of new materials, primarily because asphalt is petroleum based, and the cost of asphalt is projected to skyrocket over the next five years. That $16 per square foot will begin to sound attractive. The experts, along with OPEC, estimate that the world will run out of oil in 50 years. Since OPEC is known to lie about their oil reserves (they’re only allowed to sell a certain percentage of their reserves each year and their reserve numbers haven’t changed in ten years), my guess is that we’ve got about 20 years of oil left. What will we make our roads out of then?

Some posters protest that the Solar Roadways will cost too much. The money is going to be spent anyway- repaving and maintaining our current roads, parking lots, and driveways. Why not get something out of it (clean, renewable energy among other things) and solve the climate crisis in the process?

Chris mentioned building solar panels over the highways. That would simply double the cost of current road construction and not solve the problem of, “what are we going to replace the asphalt with?”

Non-existing technology:

Some mention has been made of the “not-yet-existing” technology. In truth, the only non-existing part of the Solar Road Panel is the top surface: the glass that you actually drive upon. Being an engineer, I knew early on that the surface would have to withstand the static and dynamic forces of a fully loaded semi-truck locking up its brakes at 80mph – no easy task. I prepared a list of specifications for this glass surface, including (but not limited to) the following: it must be fire-proof, transparent in one direction, provide traction at least equivalent to current asphalt roads, be able to withstand sand, salt, magnesium chloride, and every other material known to be used for snow/ice removal, be anti-glare, etc. I sent these specifications to the three top materials science research laboratories in the US: Penn State University Research Institute, MIT, and the University of Dayton Research Institute respectively.

This past February, I visited the University of Dayton Research Institute. They assured me that the material for the top surface of our Solar Roadway Panel could be created – it would just take time and money.

In April, Penn State invited me to attend the 1st International Workshop on Scientific Challenges of New Functionalities in Glass in Arlington, Virginia. I presented our Solar Roadways project to the group, and made some interesting contacts. I was invited to travel to Penn State’s Research Institute to present our project to their faculty. Walt Mills, from Penn State, wrote a nice article about the entire trip. You can see the article at: http://www.mri.psu.edu/focus/v05/highways.asp
I learned a great deal about glass during this trip. I had no idea how many properties and uses glass had. For instance, self-cleaning glass exists, which may solve the problem about keeping it clear of road grime.

Obviously, curved sections must be made available. Much like our old childhood racing tracks, the Solar Road Panels could be produced in any size and shape.

Other concerns:

I’ve heard other complaints: how much CO2 will be produced by manufacturing Solar Road Panels? That’s like complaining that Al Gore uses jet fuel to enlighten the world about Global Warming. Here’s my best answer: yes – the first manufacturing facility will probably use coal-fired electricity to produce the first run of Solar Road Panels. If this is true, then the first panels will contribute to the CO2 emissions that cause Global Warming. However, the first Solar Road Panels that roll off the assembly line will go directly out to the parking lot, where they will be installed and connected to form the very first Solar Roadways parking lot. Soon after, the manufacturing facility (and all that follow it) will take itself “off-grid” and provide its own power.

What happens during gridlock or when parking lots are full? What about sections of the road that never see sunshine? The short answer is that it doesn’t matter: every Solar Road Panel is an energy storage unit. You would even install them in tunnels that never see the light of day. They won’t collect energy, but they’ll store energy collected by the other Solar Road Panels. Since we’ll be producing three times the amount of electricity actually used (by the US), only one-third of the Solar Road Panels ever need to be exposed to sunlight.

I appreciate the “elegant energy solution” remark by Ken Fabos and the encouragement from Mark about thinking, “outside the box”. I believe that is exactly what will be required to solve the Global Warming problem - and it needs to happen quickly. Initial calculations show that this project alone would eliminate approximately half of the Global Warming problem. The other half could be eliminated by solving the biggest problem with all-electric cars: the need for places to plug in to allow for long trips. This would mean the end of our dependence on foreign oil, and the current concern that we are running out of oil. Coal mining would no longer be needed.

In response to Nick Butcher’s comment that “It’s a solar panel people, it doesn’t matter where you put it”. Actually it does. The largest obstacle to solar power today is the logistical nightmare of getting the power into the power grid. The Solar Roadways solve that problem by BECOMING the power grid with the capacity to send power wherever it’s needed.

Sam-Hec is thinking along the lines of the project with his mention of solar powered call boxes. That is one of the features of the solar roadways. Add to that cell stops where hybrid and fully electric cars (which will likely become the norm) will plug in to recharge, stoplights powered with the energy from the road, embedded LEDs lighting the road lines for safer night driving, snow and ice free roads for safer winter driving, the millions of animals lives that will be saved by keeping them off of the roads, the beautiful scenery you will be enjoying thanks to the new lack of utility poles and power stations, no more “dead zones” for cell phones, and the handy warnings this smart road will give you when there is a problem ahead and you just might want to take a detour. The panels will be available for purchase for driveways and walkways if you’d like to power your house while keeping them free of snow and ice and I guess, if you still want to, you could put one on your roof….

I’d welcome more questions and comments.
Thanks,
Scott Brusaw
www.solarroadways.com

Okay, let me just begin by saying that the majority of the comments I've read sound like they were written by extremely ignorant people. I would like to know for starters what kind of an education most of you have, because quite frankly many of you have the vocabulary of eighth graders. No offense but have the "pessimists" out there even visited the website and read Scott's proposals (or the solutions to problems that many of you quite ignorantly mentioned)? Or visited one of his seminars? Don't make idiotic accusations until you have done your homework.
I am not the most brilliant person in the world, and I do not claim to be. However, I am educated. I have done my homework. I am a Chemistry major and I have spoken to many solar energy enthusiasts (brilliant scientists and engineers) and this idea is quite feasible. This is a tremendous idea but the energy crisis that we face is a tremendous problem. Serious Problems need serious solutions. It will be expensive, but the creators are being quite literal and realistic about the financial issues of their project; that is why they need investors.
As a closing for you guys I would like to say, if you are an educated person start using that portion of your mind. If you are not then get off your computer chair and apply to college, then your comments will be worth devoting time to. So instead of being yet another- complaining, lazy, ignorant and pathetic American who can only find problems with other peoples ideas; how about contributing to society and seeing if you can create a better solution... if you find yourself at a loss then at least fall in line and support this idea. I know this is a crazy idea but so was artificial light once upon a time...

I met Scott on the YERT road trip when we visited Idaho, and am pleased to say that he's a smart, levelheaded guy who is thinking through a very complex but potentially powerful solution to a great variety of problems. We liked his idea so much that we made a video about it. You can see him explain his ideas firsthand here: http://blip.tv/file/597185 .

Best,
Mark

You may be better off marketing to the private sector first. For example parking lots in shopping centers, roofs and walls etc. within the same new developments. If the solar product is viable and produces a real ecomonic saving for the business that would occupy these centers then this technology would become standard practice for all new development. Pressure of competition.

The other day I heard that APS, the electric utility company in Arizona, is opening their first Solar Power generating facility. My heart sank. I've watched computers and software develope at a incredible rate over the last 40 years, yet I've always wondered why solar panels are just as big, clumsy, ugly and inefficient as ever. Now I know. The technology has been consistently bought up by the large utility companies, and never made it to the public. Now we, the public, will have the opportunity to continue to be slaves to the utility companies and pay forever for this advanced technology.

I applaud this person for trying to develop new solar technology. Please don't sell out. Make your discoveries available to the general public.

I say go for it and will it help my Harley to ride smoother on road's like this !! ô¿ô