What about getting more payback faster with solar panels in most optimum way on the side of the road.
Then it is not about roads; it is about solar panels, and by the way we could put them alongside roads.
It will NEVER be cheaper than asphalt.
Roads aren't just the cost of asphalt, otherwise we would pave the world for two bob. Similarly, houses aren't just the cost of bricks.
Think about the process to install vs the solar roadways panels.
I have no idea. What I do know is that when I make something on the bench it is orders of magnitude more expensive than I can buy it shipped from China, and they probably make it look a whole lot better too. If this were to make it to 'production' I have no doubt the processes involved would be quite different to what we're thinking about now. Maybe they might even pre-fabricate sections and just drop 'em
en bloc into a freshly dug hole, a bit like making a Scalectrix track, maybe
the concrete foundation is still subject to all the same problems
Yes, that also occurred to me. Except... if they can heat the roads then they won't have the freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw damage that creates potholes in our current roads, so that's potentially taking a lot of problems away. Would it be cheaper to heat or repair? (metaphorical quesiton: I know your answer already).
However, I don't see how they can use heating to keep the roads unfrozen all the time. They would be churning through a
lot of energy to do that.
They will never generate enough power over their lifetime to offset their own cost
Wrong sum. They would need to generate enough to cover the
difference between a current road (plus its maintenance over some timescale) and the new road (plus maintenance of the same timescale). If the PV road costs the same to install and maintain (for the sake of argument) then even 1W of PV power for 5 mins once a year is profit.
But the cost of that duct is very high, and could be done today
Why isn't it? One reason may be that a length of duct in isolation is pretty useless, so there's no point in putting any down because it won't lead to anything, so there's no reason to... classic chicken and egg thing. OTOH, PV roads are new and it's likely that ducting will be just part of what it is, so it's the egg being putting in place. Once that's there a chicken will be along soon... It could almost be worth doing on that basis alone: use the PV road idea as the carrier for the real want, which is the ductiing.
But I am just bandying ideas around, and pointing out the same logical flaws in counter- arguments that we complain about in their originals. The massive PCB costs, for instance, are not something to get hung up on. In a production unit, why wouldn't the LEDs be embedded in the glass and then wired up on the normal way? No PCB costs to talk of. It is a stupid argument to hang your hat on for the purpose of showing how stupid they are. There are a lot of things wrong with this project, but the overwhelmingly
thoughtless diatribes against it actually makes it look reasonable!