EEVblog #632 - Solar Roadways Are BULLSHIT!

[Stonent]

How about solar freakin' roofracks? At least they'll be facing the sun more than the roads will.

[LabSpokane]

Dave, et. al.,

The Solar Roadways clan actually live just up the road from me.  I saw this happy horse manure back 2010 when they were pitching this scheme to the local IEEE group.  It's one of the reasons I've seen fit to not renew membership in IEEE.  They really lost credibility with me on this one.

If you think the glass tiles are ridiculous, you should have seen the first revision. 

The real pisseroo about all this is that the $2M these guys have received could have been well-spent on renewables (about 1/2 MWe of *practical* solar could have been installed), or alternate transportation projects such as more bike paths - many of which need to be linked together here to form a non-motorized transportation network locally. 

I thought this whole thing had died until I saw the dozens of press stories recently.  I'm not an Idaho resident (which was where the pet congress-critter lives), but I might try writing a few people to see if common sense can prevail, and at least no more taxpayer funds are wasted on this. 

[Bored@Work]

and wife is therapist or something? Maybe she is more like a brain engineer?  Using peoples own brains against them, this equivalent of bully hitting your face with your own hand.

That is an angle which is maybe worth exploring a bit more. She is supposed to be a licensed clinical professional counselor. It would be interesting to see which manipulative techniques from her job they are using in their funding campaign.

It would also be interesting to check if her credentials are real, i.e. if she really has that license, and which university or professional organization was involved. Actually, the same for him. Where on earth did he get his engineering degree from?

[EEVblog]

Does he keep the $2M when nothing comes of this?

Yes, they keep every cent.
Legally they are "donations" so they aren't legally obligated to do anything with the money.

[VK3DRB]

There is an old saying: A fool and his money are soon parted. The world is full of fools.

I learnt years ago never invest in something you know nothing about. The investors in these road tiles will lose their money. A masters degree or a PhD does disqualify you from being a fundamental idiot.

There is a story about a roofing tiler who invented a revolutionary engine - the split cycle engine. Sir Jack Brabham even endorsed it. To cut a long story short, it went nowhere and investors lost virtually everything. The roofing tiler walked off with many millions of dollars in his pocket.

Peter Brock made a fool of himself with his "Energy Polarizer"containing crystals and magnets in an epoxy resin that, it was claimed, improved the performance and handling of vehicles through "aligning the molecules". A load of .

The religious Y2K spruikers gave the computing industry a bad name. Conmen who had few abilities other than spreading fear over Y2K and making money out of it.

Dave's video reminds us that if it is too good to be true, it probably is. And do your homework always.




 

[EEVblog]

BUT....All the technical details aside....I think Dave did a great job at the math.  BUT - to the consumer, he/she will put that aside and just call you a "Hater"

Totally.
They are immediately deleting any reference to this video or any other negative or questioning comments on their Indiegogo and Facebook pages.
Any who questions anything is just a hater, or a shill for big oil or some other group, and trying to stop them from realising their incredible invention that will change the wold 
Doesn't matter hard nicely you come at them with facts and real data, that stuff doesn't matter, their product works:

Our technology works. Now it's time to gear up for manufacturing.

We asked for $1 million to hire an initial team of engineers to help us make a few needed tweaks in our product and streamline our process so that we could go from prototype to production.

[EEVblog]

It would also be interesting to check if her credentials are real, i.e. if she really has that license, and which university or professional organization was involved. Actually, the same for him. Where on earth did he get his engineering degree from?

www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=101697298
University of Dayton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Dayton
Explains the gold cross hanging around his neck in the photos.
From his Facebook profile:

Non-denominational Bible-believing servant of the Lord Jesus Christ

Well, that all explains the delusion part and lack of ability to accept and reason facts and evidence.

[EEVblog]

The Solar Roadways clan actually live just up the road from me.  I saw this happy horse manure back 2010 when they were pitching this scheme to the local IEEE group.  It's one of the reasons I've seen fit to not renew membership in IEEE.  They really lost credibility with me on this one.

So what was the reaction from the IEEE members pitched at?

[jancumps]

If you compare their return on investment with concrete or tarmac, they win




Deleting of counter arguments on their pages worries me more than anything else.

[EEVblog]

Dave made a few mistakes here. It's still bullshit, but not quite as bad as he said.
The heating would be grid powered. Presumably it would only be used in areas where it was really important.

Of course the heating would be grid powered (it's covered by snow!). If I implied otherwise then that was not my intent.
The whole point is that the solar power generated over the (good part of the) year doesn't stand a chance of offsetting the ridiculous amount of energy required to melt the snow during the winter months.
So if it can't do that, then this whole solar roadways idea as a whole is a complete fail (again) right there. Just put the heaters under existing roads if you want to pursue that silly idea.
Heating the roads is probably one of the stupidest idea of this entire campaign, and that's saying something, because this campaign has so many doozies to choose from.

The LEDs could easily be angled like cats eyes already are. Presumably fixed road markings would be painted on, and standard cat's eyes used. The LEDs would be for special cases.

But they aren't proposing that.
Remember, this project is complete and working, and they are using the money to take it straight into production!

[gildasd]

I've seen solar powered cat eyes in Paris. It took about 5 years and 3 generations before that things could stand up to daily abuse.
And that's a fat metal stud, not a pane of glass.
http://warragullighting.com.au/solar-road-stud---led-cats-eye.html - But that's the elcrapo version - Paris has stainless stee variation (last time I checked - 3 years ago).
The 1.1 or 2.0 generation was the "surface mount" stuck with a blob of resin. Brilliant, and worked really well.
It took about a month for some enterprising dickhead to find a way to cut them off with a hot wire... Duh.
So now the city must do hole under them to slot them in with the glue.

Disclaimer:
I used to work for Meyvaert in Belgium, a major glass and super tough museum display manufacturer. So I can't say anything about glass itself in case I blurt out something I'm still under NDA about.
http://www.meyvaert.be/corporate/en
All I can say, is that knowing what I know, I would NEVER do what they are doing the way they are doing it. There are FAR better/simpler/cheaper ways. I just don't know which ones are in the public domain....

[SeanB]

The embedded ones are in use here, and so far have done over 5 years with heavy use and lots of abuse. They are mostly surviving, and as they are buried flush with the roadway and are held by both epoxy and a set of security screws they seem to be theft proof. They are not even being stolen for the scrap metal content.

[Bored@Work]

Heating the roads is probably one of the stupidest idea of this entire campaign, and that's saying something, because this campaign has so many doozies to choose from.

Road heating is actually done - under special conditions,  in very few areas.

For example, the have an abundance of geothermal energy in Iceland --> road heating.

http://www.nea.is/geothermal/direct-utilization/snow-melting/

Hey, even heating a beach, no problem if you have the energy:
http://coolcooliceland.blogspot.de/2007/12/geothermal-iceland-heating-up-of-roads.html

It becomes stupid if you don't have that energy

[G7PSK]

I dont see how these glass tiles would stand up to real traffic use, The tractor show on them could have 20 tons and not broken a tile as Tyre pressure is relatively low but the impact loading of a 40 ton truck wheel bouncing up and down is something else and there will also be other impact loads such as that shovel show in the photo dropping, they will just break up in use no need to worry about electrical loses etc they will never get past highways surface testing. 

[gildasd]

And what about studs and chains? Are studded winter tires legal in the US?

[KedasProbe]

Haven't watch the whole video (yet)
Just some remark about adding percentages.
-10% -10% -20% = -40%  of 150W/m²
Would better be:
0.9 * 0.9 * 0.8 = 0.648 or about 35% loss instead of 40%
(sequentiality losing X% will never get you to 100% loss, if X is smaller than 100% for each step)

Obviously since it are best guesses anyway it doesn't really matter much.
You could add them if they were all referenced to the 150W/m² (and not input versus output of each loss), but I don't think it was meant that way.

[EEVblog]

Road heating is actually done - under special conditions,  in very few areas.
For example, the have an abundance of geothermal energy in Iceland --> road heating.

Sure, even the craziest of ideas can be not so crazy under niche circumstances.
Good numbers there for feasibility calcs.

[EEVblog]

You could add them if they were all referenced to the 150W/m² (and not input versus output of each loss), but I don't think it was meant that way.

Yes, it was meant that way, because these are ballpark estimates  for a complex technical stackup of losses.
So just adding them for a ballpark result is fine.

[Psi]

Being dark in color the road surface gets damn hot in midday sun.
It's not uncommon to be able to cook an egg on the road.
We're talking serious, burn your skin, heat in summer.

Solar panel efficiency would greatly suffer from that and lifespan would be greatly reduced as well.

[Artlav]

I missed that part about heating the roads.
Have they thought that the sun is heating the roads already, at something close to 100% efficiency?
If that is not enough to melt the snow, how would 18% of that be enough?
Isn't that bloody obvious to anyone?

Well, at least it's not Radioactive Freaking Roadways, like they proposed in the 50s - mixing some radium into the pavement to keep it continuously hot.

[Psi]

Well, at least it's not Radioactive Freaking Roadways, like they proposed in the 50s - mixing some radium into the pavement to keep it continuously hot.

heh, using radioactive glow-in-the-dark paint in the roads to generate lane markings at night would probably work quite well from a technical standpoint.

[Stonent]

Well, that all explains the delusion part and lack of ability to accept and reason facts and evidence.

I thought that was the enviro-wackos in general as evidenced by all the predictions that keep failing to come true.

[hans]

I dont see how these glass tiles would stand up to real traffic use, The tractor show on them could have 20 tons and not broken a tile as Tyre pressure is relatively low but the impact loading of a 40 ton truck wheel bouncing up and down is something else and there will also be other impact loads such as that shovel show in the photo dropping, they will just break up in use no need to worry about electrical loses etc they will never get past highways surface testing.

Tractors work in muddy terrains an average luxury car will drown in. Even tractors drown. In that case, you see those caterpillar tractors with even less pressure/m^2 on the ground.
No wonder they picked a tractor; it's actually a better bet to demonstrate than a car. But it looks so bulky , then those tiles must be super strong!

I would be impressed if they would allow a performance car do some burnouts on their solar road, or drive a 50 ton lorry over it. If it stands that, it's up for the job.

Also, how would glass, rain & freezing temperatures be for cyclists? Wouldn't that get even worse even quicker than normal tarmac? No rain can be absorbed by the road itself, so even with the lightest of rain clouds means you're cycling on ice.

[gildasd]

Falling over on that from bike would be similar to sliding on your butt on the worlds biggest meat grinder.

[LabSpokane]

The Solar Roadways clan actually live just up the road from me.  I saw this happy horse manure back 2010 when they were pitching this scheme to the local IEEE group.  It's one of the reasons I've seen fit to not renew membership in IEEE.  They really lost credibility with me on this one.

So what was the reaction from the IEEE members pitched at?

I wish I knew. It looked so implausible that I didn't even bother to go. This area is really fertile ground for these "faith-based" enterprises.  Solar Roadways is but one of them.

To me, it really shows the need for 100-level chemistry and physics.  When I was in college, one of my profs went on the local news to explain why a local inventor's plan of putting car crash barriers on the front of train locomotives would not prevent RR crossing deaths. 

We've got bad science-based business by the bushel up here.