Read the Latest and Breaking IT and Technology News, Reviews, Analysis & Opinion for Australian IT managers and professionals. A Really Bad Idea « Roy Spencer, Ph. DThis Solar Roadways project started showing up in my Facebook news feed, and seems to be getting a lot of popular support. Except, I’m guessing, from actual engineers. The idea that we can convert our roadway surfaces to electrical generation solar collectors has numerous practical problems. You can’t point the roadway to track the sun, to improve energy generation efficiency (which is only about 1. PV generation expensive on a large scale). Save on EarthLink's award-winning Internet services for your home: dial-up, DSL, high-speed cable & more. Plus, web hosting & software. Why embed solar panels in such a harsh environment where they are constantly being run over and flexed by millions of tons of vehicles? There are many more practical locations to use (such as roofs, that face southward). How do you keep the solar collectors clean (as millions of tires scrub over them, and engines drip oil on them) so that sunlight can get collected by the embedded PV surfaces? Who is going to actually PAY for such an obscenely expensive enterprise (other than government, which means you, the taxpayer)? Furthermore, the above photo really has me suspicious. So, unless someone can correct me, something here smells fishy. Last I looked, it was approaching $1. Million(!) Not bad for a mom- and- pop operation. Obviously, I work in the wrong field. See my follow- up post: Why are solar freakin’ roadways so freakin’ popular? Solar Roadways Project: A Really Bad Idea May 27th, 2014 by Roy W.
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