Author Topic: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway  (Read 42801 times)

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Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #25 on: December 20, 2017, 05:07:13 pm »
Over, where the little things, like cars dropping bits of tyre, tearing them up in crashes and such is not an issue. Extra support structure is fine, having a roof that diverts rain and snow off the road as appropriate helps as well, because then the road needs less drains, and you do not need snow plows to keep the road clear. Having the roof means you can have the snow fall off on the side with ease.
 

Offline glarsson

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #26 on: December 20, 2017, 06:22:14 pm »
Like where? And for a minute assume you are in New York city and covering central park with solar panels is not an option.
Converting the roads of New York city to "solar roads" must be a non-starter. How much sunlight reaches the road surface in an urban canyon full of cars?
 

Offline unclebob

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #27 on: December 20, 2017, 06:25:12 pm »
Hi Dave, I think your audience already believes that solar roadways are a dumb idea. Solar system calculation are fun but maybe you could just let the morons build thier roadways an do a video about the solar system of a deep space mission spacecraft instead. I guess the numbers will be interesting.
 
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Offline hermit

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #28 on: December 20, 2017, 06:52:26 pm »
Given the range of readership you have to take into account that some may be in a position to step in and offer sanity to local governments considering such proposals.  They will need solid numbers to counter the sales staff selling their products to politicians whose only goal in life is the number of 'likes' they get in the forms of votes.  Reminders of how to rationally tease out the evidence provided is another useful product being offered here.
 

Online tszaboo

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #29 on: December 20, 2017, 07:55:19 pm »
Hi Dave, I think your audience already believes that solar roadways are a dumb idea. Solar system calculation are fun but maybe you could just let the morons build thier roadways an do a video about the solar system of a deep space mission spacecraft instead. I guess the numbers will be interesting.
It is a stupid idea, because there is an alternative, which is better.
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #30 on: December 20, 2017, 09:55:42 pm »
Hi Dave,

while you're completely right that it's more expensive and less practical than a solar farm, you're still somewhat missing the point: There're plenty of areas where you actually can't (due to free space constraints) or don't want (for ecological reasons) erect a solar farm. When the choice is between no solar energy or more expensive and less practical solar energy, the latter might be the better option.

Nope, if it's all protected national park (or something) then you don't need electricity there anyway. Ttansporting it somewhere else would cost more than it could ever generate and generate a massive amount of digging for all the underground cables, etc. which isn't allowed out there.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #31 on: December 20, 2017, 11:12:23 pm »
Hi Dave,

while you're completely right that it's more expensive and less practical than a solar farm, you're still somewhat missing the point: There're plenty of areas where you actually can't (due to free space constraints) or don't want (for ecological reasons) erect a solar farm. When the choice is between no solar energy or more expensive and less practical solar energy, the latter might be the better option.
Nope, if it's all protected national park (or something) then you don't need electricity there anyway.
But you can't use the space for solar panels either  :palm: so back to square one: find space for solar panels where there isn't room.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline aargee

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #32 on: December 21, 2017, 03:42:49 am »
I guess the same economic arguments could be made for money spent on going to Mars, not that solar roadways are an aconomical thing but hey...
You would think that lessons (both economic and engineering) are being learnt at all levels in trying to implement solar roadways.

Yes, the tone of the video is annoying, emotional and a bit disrespectful to the French people but it pays the bills - right?
Not easy, not hard, just need to be incentivised.
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #33 on: December 21, 2017, 05:33:03 am »
Nope, if it's all protected national park (or something) then you don't need electricity there anyway.
But you can't use the space for solar panels either  :palm: so back to square one: find space for solar panels where there isn't room.
Rewind three posts to the people pointing out that wherever there's demand, there's rooftops.  :palm:
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #34 on: December 21, 2017, 11:11:17 am »
Nope, if it's all protected national park (or something) then you don't need electricity there anyway.
But you can't use the space for solar panels either  :palm: so back to square one: find space for solar panels where there isn't room.
Rewind three posts to the people pointing out that wherever there's demand, there's rooftops.  :palm:
You should rewind a few posts more and then you'll read that those rooftops are way too small to fit enough solar panels to meet that demand. I'll admit it might be hard to imagine for people who aren't used to really densely populated countries.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2017, 11:13:25 am by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline f4eru

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #35 on: December 21, 2017, 06:43:39 pm »
Like where? And for a minute assume you are in New York city and covering central park with solar panels is not an option. That is the situation in most of West Europe.
Bullshit.
France : 116 people/km²
New York City : 10800 people/km²

You should rewind a few posts more and then you'll read that those rooftops are way too small to fit enough solar panels to meet that demand. I'll admit it might be hard to imagine for people who aren't used to really densely populated countries.
Nope. it works:
There are, in france 6 billion m² of roofs for 67 million people, and 600 billion kWh demand/Y.
That means 85m² of roof per people, for 8500 kWh/y, which means 105kWh/m²/y electrical. At 15% efficiency, that means 702kWh/m²/y of insolation, which is roughly 1/2 to 1/3 what France gets on roofs:
http://sycomoreen.free.fr/imgs/energie_solaire_france.GIF

Covering (the best) half of the roofs woud be much more than enough to meet that demand, but with a seasonal time shift.
So yes it's possible to extract enough energy, but it would need a year scale storage to replace completely fossil electricity including nuclear. That seasonal scale storage wil not happen before very long.
Still, it coud replace on the long run roughly half of fossils just by the simple measure of making PV mandatory on roof renovation.

source :

http://forums.futura-sciences.com/environnement-developpement-durable-ecologie/428704-surface-toiture-france.html

Some more details on electricity in France:
France has 85% of nuclear electricity, and more than half of the homes are heating with electricity, and badly insulated, for a country with a big part in a quite cold climate.
This is total nonsense, so roughly a third of electricity could be spared by a more efficient heating method, insulation, etc, requiring much less solar in the first place.

Politics want to keep the very high nuclear ratio despite the enormous risks, double cost, and unsolved long term storage. Why you ask? To be able to maintain bombs to nuke the world. Utter nonsense.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2017, 07:27:57 pm by f4eru »
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #36 on: December 21, 2017, 09:53:35 pm »
Like where? And for a minute assume you are in New York city and covering central park with solar panels is not an option. That is the situation in most of West Europe.
Bullshit.
France : 116 people/km²
New York City : 10800 people/km²
It is not limited to France. The population density of the NL is almost 4 times higher then that of France. And you should also compensate for suitable roofs since in most cases you'll only be able to use half of the roof (most roofs are pitched) or the roof may not even have the proper angle at all. All across the west part of Europe every m2 of land suitable for farming is used for farming and it is not like you can cut a piece of forrest down for a bunch of solar panels. So where do you get the rest of the solar panels installed? Also who is going to pay for the isolation of the homes?
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline prof

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #37 on: December 21, 2017, 11:21:10 pm »
You appear to be from Germany. I've seen a lot of sane solar road around Munich. Instead of covering the actual driving surface, they cover the substantial areas between the driving surface and the fence, that are at the side of any Autobahn outside the dense urban areas. When this area is an embankment they use just one side of the road, but they can get natural tilting of the panels towards the sun when the road is in the right direction. Their land costs are obviously zero. Their land utilisation is effectively zero, since the space can't be used for much else. They can maintain the system without shutting down the road. They can easily replace parts of the system which have a lower life than the panels (e.g. inverters). Their costs must be as low as any other solar farm.

Autobahns in Germany are not usually fenced. The fence you're referring to is actually something done by the solar farm operators to protect their property. The problem is that if the land is owned by the state, it is usually non-developable land and can't be used planted with solar cells. If it is not owned by the state it's actually up to the owner to get the required permits and there're tons of reasons why you might not get one, pretty much regardless of whether it's next to an Autobahn or not (though that certainly reduces the changes of getting one, since the state does not generally like buildings close to vital infrastructure). It's actually far more difficult to get permission to construct a solar farm on a green field (== commercial building) than to equip a roof with solar panels which is why some clever guys invented a clever way to exploit a loophole in the law by seeking permission to build an agricultural building (like a barn or "storage facility") that would never be actually used just to equip the roof with solar panels and sell the generated power.

The flaw with the "roof theory" is that you have to find roofs which are not already populated and as I mentioned above it's not quite easy to receive permission to do anything on the greenfield. Here often the only option is to replace existing  solar panels with more efficient ones or to get creative in the reuse of existing buildings...

Of course if there was a way to plant tons of solar farms in sunny and spacious Australia and transport the energy across  half of the planet where the conditions are not quite as favourable...
 

Offline hermit

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #38 on: December 22, 2017, 12:27:54 am »
I'm wondering how much opinion is being passed off as fact here?  Economics will eventually rule.  Dave did the math on why he doesn't believe the solar highway will become a reality anytime soon based on the economics.  All this talk about there is no room in France to do put them?  Dave compared the roadway to a nearby solar farm.  Economics will dictate whether the panels are located elsewhere and transmitted in via the grid or farms get displaced and the food gets shipped in.  Both seem to be more economically feasible than the solar roadway at this point.  Today's pipe dream may be tomorrow's reality, but tomorrow isn't today.  Yet. ;)
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #39 on: December 22, 2017, 01:20:52 am »
Where do you want to displace a farm to? For example China is buying and renting farm land to grow food for it's people allover the world:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/974837.shtml
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/china-buys-up-agricultural-land-in-central-france/
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline hermit

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #40 on: December 22, 2017, 04:25:58 am »
If they have enough land to grow food for the Chinese then they have enough land to pop up a solar farm.  You're really reaching here.  If you are that convinced the only place to put solar is on roadways, well, let me suggest you drop your life savings into it.  Prove everybody wrong by making a killing in the solar road way market.  I doubt you have as much expertise in land utilization as you seem to be claiming.  But whatever.  Dave presented numbers.  You present stuff like "those rooftops are way too small to fit enough solar panels to meet that demand."  The very next post is numbers you don't dispute, you just ignore them.  Dispute the numbers with numbers, not conjecture.
 

Online tszaboo

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #41 on: December 22, 2017, 08:53:20 am »
Like where? And for a minute assume you are in New York city and covering central park with solar panels is not an option. That is the situation in most of West Europe.
Bullshit.
France : 116 people/km²
New York City : 10800 people/km²
It is not limited to France. The population density of the NL is almost 4 times higher then that of France. And you should also compensate for suitable roofs since in most cases you'll only be able to use half of the roof (most roofs are pitched) or the roof may not even have the proper angle at all. All across the west part of Europe every m2 of land suitable for farming is used for farming and it is not like you can cut a piece of forrest down for a bunch of solar panels. So where do you get the rest of the solar panels installed? Also who is going to pay for the isolation of the homes?
You make it sound, like the situation of the NL is the situation everywhere. It is not. In fact, I got a mail this year,  that is few years (8 maybe) the town I live in will be run on 100% renewable energy. Developed urban area next to Brussels. You can install wind farm in the NL. You do that for centuries. And offshore windfarms.
The solar is just now booming there, after a few years you will notice areas where it can be installed. It is surprising, when the parking lot at the workplace gets covered by solar. At first. And all the buildings.

And asking that "who pays for insulation" is the wrong question. Insulation pays for itself. You just need to place some incentives in motion, so people do it by themselves. This can simply be a low % loans. People are not stupid, if something, like insulating the house, is financially beneficial, they do it. Usually it is, but the costs up front make it prohibiting.

For example, they spent 100 million EUR in Hungary to insulate 200k flats from the "super ugly block of flats from the soviet occupation era". Energy requirement went down by up to 50%. That is 500 EUR per flat, less than the energy cost per year.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #42 on: December 22, 2017, 11:25:39 am »
If they have enough land to grow food for the Chinese then they have enough land to pop up a solar farm.  You're really reaching here.  If you are that convinced the only place to put solar is on roadways,
If you have read the article then you should have noticed people are not happy about the Chinese buying land overseas to grow food. This also means that land suitable for farming is a scarse commodity otherwise the Chinese would have bought/rented land much closer to home. I'm not convinced that roads are the best place for solar panels. I just object to branding the idea as crazy off the bat without taking other factors into account.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #43 on: December 22, 2017, 01:56:46 pm »
Funny enough by me I went to Makro today, and as part of the renovations, they have covered the parking lot. What did they cover it with, but solar panels, which serve 3 purposes. They save Makro a shed load on the electricity bill, as they are grid tied ( I would guess, looking at the connection method and the microinverters hanging under the roof sections quickly of the completed sections), they keep cars cool by shading the otherwise open parking, and they also save wear on the parking surface from heat, so the tar will have a longer useful life as well. as a marketing thing also good.

Thus a good solar roadway, I might go there and grab some video as well if anybody is interested, and if I can actually get into the parking lot close to Christmas, might only be possible next week after the crazy season is over, and before the returns rush and back to school, where the signs and merchandise is up already.
 

Offline Twoflower

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #44 on: December 22, 2017, 04:16:59 pm »
https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/china-solar-roadways-transparent-concrete-solar-cells-charge-cars/

Would like to know what transparent concrete is. The article says it "has similar structural properties with standard asphalt." So to my knowledge Asphalt isn't stiff but to some degree flexible and soft, it even can flow. I wonder if the solar cells in that constantly moving and flexing environment are protected by other manners.
 

Offline hermit

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #45 on: December 22, 2017, 04:19:12 pm »
I just object to branding the idea as crazy off the bat without taking other factors into account.
In the late 60's I thought people promising parents of children with genetic diseases that they would find a cure was cruel.  Any educated person at the time knew you couldn't cure genetic disease.  After all, it was in their DNA.  So yeah, I do agree that claiming they will never be feasible is a little out of line.
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #46 on: December 22, 2017, 05:12:28 pm »
I just object to branding the idea as crazy off the bat without taking other factors into account.

Like what? What could possibly save this idea?

 

Offline jonovid

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #47 on: December 22, 2017, 05:19:47 pm »
 :=\   busted... dun..... dusted.... Colas Wattway...is BS... why  :horse:
« Last Edit: December 23, 2017, 05:11:46 am by jonovid »
Hobbyist with a basic knowledge of electronics
 

Offline hermit

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #48 on: December 22, 2017, 05:28:20 pm »
I just object to branding the idea as crazy off the bat without taking other factors into account.

Like what? What could possibly save this idea?
Changing technology and market forces.  Currently, and probably for the foreseeable future, this is not practical.  But as with curing genetic diseases, that was once a pipe dream.  Honestly though, I think changing building designs will happen first.  http://www.solarbuildingtech.com/High-Rise_Building_Solar_Remodeling/high_rise_building_solar_PV_remodeling_.htm
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED Colas Wattway
« Reply #49 on: December 22, 2017, 05:39:02 pm »
I just object to branding the idea as crazy off the bat without taking other factors into account.
Like what? What could possibly save this idea?
As told before: Running out of space to put solar panels. If I take my own roof as an example: it will be very hard to mount solar panels on it due to two large windows.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 


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