EEVblog #632 - Solar Roadways Are BULLSHIT!

[jippie]

Solar Freaking Grandmas![/url]

Interesting fact to learn the reason why they train grandma's and not men.

[mtdoc]

Solar Freaking Grandmas

 Well Done!

Barefoot College

Freaking awesome! 

[electrolux]

I'm with you Dave but here is what they say about traction:


What are you going to do about traction? What's going to happen to the surface of the Solar Roadways when it rains>

Everyone naturally pictures sliding out of control on a smooth piece of wet glass! Actually, one of our many technical specs is that it be textured to the point that it provides at least the traction that current asphalt roads offer - even in the rain. We hesitate to even call it glass, as it is far from a traditional window pane, but glass is what it is, so glass is what we must call it.

We sent samples of textured glass to a university civil engineering lab for traction testing. We started off being able to stop a car going 40 mph on a wet surface in the required distance. We designed a more and more aggressive surface pattern until we got a call form the lab one day: we'd torn the boot off of the British Pendulum Testing apparatus! We backed off a little and ended up with a texture that can stop a vehicle going 80 mph in the required distance.

What I ask is where is the video?

[electrolux]

You've gotta see this part of their website:

http://www.solarroadways.com/faq.shtml#index

[SeanB]

Great traction, but now it is a matt surface that reflects 80% of incident light........

[gildasd]

Great traction, but now it is a matt surface that reflects 80% of incident light........

And concentrates the rest...

[mikerj]

I'm with you Dave but here is what they say about traction:

....

We designed a more and more aggressive surface pattern until we got a call form the lab one day: we'd torn the boot off of the British Pendulum Testing apparatus! We backed off a little and ended up with a texture that can stop a vehicle going 80 mph in the required distance.

Any surface pattern is going to get ground away in no time at all, so it's pointless measuring the grip on a brand new piece of glass.  When they still have that level of grip after 10 years of 30 ton trucks rolling over it then I might be impressed.

BTW, inhalation of glass dust would make the health issues of tetra-ethyl lead and asbestos brake linings look insignificant.

[EEVblog]

What I ask is where is the video?

They don't have a video of a car stopping on the surface after 5 years and almost $1M of investment.

[vk6zgo]

Great traction, but now it is a matt surface that reflects 80% of incident light........

And concentrates the rest...

You can concentrate it till you're blue in the face---it's still only 20%!
 (Actually,it is 20% of what would get through an plain piece of glass,which is already less than 100%)

[gildasd]

Great traction, but now it is a matt surface that reflects 80% of incident light........

And concentrates the rest...

You can concentrate it till you're blue in the face---it's still only 20%!
 (Actually,it is 20% of what would get through an plain piece of glass,which is already less than 100%)

I meant to imply it reduces the solar efficiency even more, having uneven light over a cell is not good.

[ziggyfish]

It sounds like a typical left idea. Its all about seeming to do something for the environment, but actually doing nothing for the environment.

The issues, I have seen already apart from the issues raised in the video, is where are you going to get the material for the cells? The raw materials are fairly rare, and the cost of actually finding them will sky rocket due to the amount of demand this project's scale will introduce into the market. We can't dig to far into the ground, because the Left will then complain that we are destroying nature.

A E18 panel is going to cost $42,062 (including installation) for a 1.5x0.7m panel. You only going to get $33,000 out of a km of road, which means you need 1.2 years of perfect output to recover the cost of just one panel.

So yeah, this is just like every leftists idea. Sounds like the pink batts, BER and NBN all over again. Thank god we have had a change of government in Australia, I shutter to think how we could have survived the next 3 years with the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government.

[Bored@Work]

It sounds like a typical left idea. Its all about seeming to do something for the environment, but actually doing nothing for the environment.

While the idea is stupid, why do you feel the need to spread your stupid "it is all communism" propaganda? One and a half month after the last comment. Do you scan old threads to spew your bullshit, or are you such a slow reader and writer that it took you 1.5 month to come up with this bullshit?

[ziggyfish]

It sounds like a typical left idea. Its all about seeming to do something for the environment, but actually doing nothing for the environment.

While the idea is stupid, why do you feel the need to spread your stupid "it is all communism" propaganda? One and a half month after the last comment. Do you scan old threads to spew your bullshit, or are you such a slow reader and writer that it took you 1.5 month to come up with this bullshit?

Well firstly I never said it was communism, secondly I have only been watching this blog for the last month, and am still watching videos. And thirdly you sound like a typical left yourself. You can never argue the facts and you only attack the person.

Not a single word disproving what I said, not a single argument about how this idea isn't leftist. And BTW you probably wouldn't be so bored at work if you actually did some work, or has your union told you otherwise?

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Ziggyfish pls keep to the topic.

[Monkeh]

It sounds like a typical left idea. Its all about seeming to do something for the environment, but actually doing nothing for the environment.

While the idea is stupid, why do you feel the need to spread your stupid "it is all communism" propaganda? One and a half month after the last comment. Do you scan old threads to spew your bullshit, or are you such a slow reader and writer that it took you 1.5 month to come up with this bullshit?

Well firstly I never said it was communism, secondly I have only been watching this blog for the last month, and am still watching videos. And thirdly you sound like a typical left yourself. You can never argue the facts and you only attack the person.

Not a single word disproving what I said, not a single argument about how this idea isn't leftist. And BTW you probably wouldn't be so bored at work if you actually did some work, or has your union told you otherwise?

Piss off with your pointless, poisonous political views and discuss the topic.

[JoeO]

It sounds like a typical left idea. Its all about seeming to do something for the environment, but actually doing nothing for the environment.

While the idea is stupid, why do you feel the need to spread your stupid "it is all communism" propaganda? One and a half month after the last comment. Do you scan old threads to spew your bullshit, or are you such a slow reader and writer that it took you 1.5 month to come up with this bullshit?

Well firstly I never said it was communism, secondly I have only been watching this blog for the last month, and am still watching videos. And thirdly you sound like a typical left yourself. You can never argue the facts and you only attack the person.

Not a single word disproving what I said, not a single argument about how this idea isn't leftist. And BTW you probably wouldn't be so bored at work if you actually did some work, or has your union told you otherwise?

Piss off with your pointless, poisonous political views and discuss the topic.

That is right, don't find the cause for the stupidity, just follow along.  Others will do the thinking for you!

[ziggyfish]

Piss off with your pointless, poisonous political views and discuss the topic.

The idea is good in principal. I myself have had similar thoughts about drains the and rain water. For example, why don't we take the rain water from the drains in cities and put it back into our dams. And yes there are a lot of problems with this.

The issue with solar power is that it works great at small scale deployments. But unfortunately we don't have the technology to make solar power a viable energy source at the scales we need. We haven't been able to produce solar cells at a cheap enough price, or at a small enough footprint to make solar power viable. Any Solar power generation at a large scale is rather pointless until we have the technology.

What looks promising is http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140819200219.htm . I imagine the day we no longer have massive energy companies and we generate our own electricity in our homes. The way we generate power today is so inefficient and so costly. We loose a lot just in the infrastructure alone. Today, power is generated based on a possible peak demand, eg. if we all stopped using electricity for an hour, we would burn the same amount of fossil fuels as if everyone was using electricity for that hour. Really the best solution, is to create a decentralised system where we produce the exact amount of energy we use. This would also resolve the scalability issue that solar power and we are not transporting electricity over vast distances. And BTW this is the exact reason why I don't believe in a carbon tax based solution to solve global warming.

But unfortunitly that idea doesn't fit well with today's politics. You have the left wanting to centralise everything (i.e the government owns everything and you own nothing) and you have the conservatives wanting to decentralise everything (i.e private business owns everything and the government owns nothing). In the lefts view of the world, there is no way for the government to control the amount of power used. And in the conservatives view of the world, businesses want people to use their product. So yeah this whole solar and green energy debate is all about politics, and nothing about policy.

[Monkeh]

That is right, don't find the cause for the stupidity, just follow along.  Others will do the thinking for you!

Because shoving everyone into one of two or three mostly meaningless political groups and then proceeding to insult them is thinking.

[AlfBaz]

Today, power is generated based on a possible peak demand, eg. if we all stopped using electricity for an hour, we would burn the same amount of fossil fuels as if everyone was using electricity for that hour.

[ziggyfish]

Today, power is generated based on a possible peak demand, eg. if we all stopped using electricity for an hour, we would burn the same amount of fossil fuels as if everyone was using electricity for that hour.

Do you really think there is someone monitoring your every move and trying to predict when you will turn on a TV, or lights and then start generating the power? Are you really that stupid? It takes time to generate power.

I have a friend who is on the board of a major power supplier and he tells me that power is generated based on possible peak demand regardless of how much power is actually used. He also notes that the recent rises in power prices haven't come from the carbon tax, but rather the implementation of RETT (Renewable Energy by 2020).

And again this is really the left just trying to seem like their doing something for the environment, but in reality doing absolutely nothing.

[Monkeh]

And again this is really the left just trying to seem like their doing something for the environment, but in reality doing absolutely nothing.

Broken record..

[JoeO]

That is right, don't find the cause for the stupidity, just follow along.  Others will do the thinking for you!

Because shoving everyone into one of two or three mostly meaningless political groups and then proceeding to insult them is thinking.

Since when did telling the truth become insulting?

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Are you really that stupid? It takes time to generate power.

That's not what my physics teacher told me.

he tells me that power is generated based on possible peak demand regardless of how much power is actually used

Grid energy storage must have come a long way since I last looked. 

[AlfBaz]

Are you really that stupid? It takes time to generate power.

That's not what my physics teacher told me.

Your physics teacher is probably a lefty

he tells me that power is generated based on possible peak demand regardless of how much power is actually used

Grid energy storage must have come a long way since I last looked. 

Don't confuse him, there's a good chance he hasn't taken his meds yet

[AlfBaz]

I have a friend who is on the board of a major power supplier and he tells me ...

You really need to vet you technical sources a little better