Max: fair point, excellent argument. This is exactly my point, that the video in question is NOT about that but about made up problems like the orientation of the LED, and this and that. If we don't want to do that because we rather spend the money on other things then fine.
If you give an engineer a job, he will know what will work and what won't. You will never hear a thing about stuff that works, maybe a little confirmation "yeah it's OK". Only things that don't work or aren't optimal need attention.
The job of the video is point out objections why such an idea would not work, and back ups with hard numbers to show it's not profitable.
Otherwise engineer would be a dreamjob for everyone.. to stare at things that work beautifully. Oh wait, maybe that's electronics as
a hobby?
Sync: First thing what comes to my mind is the $40 million profit from a 150k stretch of road vs the $0 profit of an asphalt road.
As said, that's income, excluding costs.
If the whole cost (production + cost + maintenance) per sq meter would drop to 330$, you would still need 10 years for pay back.
That 330$/m^2 includes the cost of:
- Solar panel
- Inverter
- Glass
- Assembly & production of tiles
- Cables
- Digging a big damn hole + frame for the panels
- Installation
- Troubleshooting by trained people; remember.. electronics will never work in the field and need trained personnel to fix things.
- Transport of fragile care (glass is still glass)
- Maintenance materials + crew if something breaks (i.e. replacement panels & more troubleshooting)
At this moment an average solar panel costs about 250 euro/m^2, or 340$/m^2 in Holland.
The whole niche "product" around it just adds unnecessary huge costs, probably tumbling over the price a tenfold (costs per panel may be in the order of 1500-2000$ each, include profit margins, and you're pretty darn close to 5k$ per tile) before the bill has reached the government; i.e. the tax payer.
I understand the heating cost problem. In the video David is not talking about the heating cost at all. I understand that it's a lot of energy to heat something.
Using electricity, which is very high "quality" form of energy, to directly convert it into heat is just ridiculous.
Also roads are not isolated, so I'm pretty sure the heat will just very rapidly vanish and be gone.
About maintenance and replacement: current existing roads also have this problem without making a penny.
But aren't a few orders of magnitude more expensive.
[qoute]David: the other seemingly unbelievable projects are not related to the roadway project but to the attitude of your video and the general scepticism. if the solar roadway dudes (SRD) don't do research or delete comments or evil, then make a video about that.[/quote]
Meet Dave. If he rants, you're going to know it.
Doesn't surprise me at all. Engineers are maybe skeptical; maybe they are realistic.
You can challenge me all you want. I accept your calculations, they show that there's quite a lot of energy left even after the LED trick, + there's a huge return on that AND it surly will trigger unprecedented improvement of the solar energy technology.
Let me explain how stupid this idea of illuminating the whole inner and outer lanes with LEDs is.
How does the energy flow, ultimately? Solar - [Electronics] - LED. So we're capturing light, and then using that to power a light source. Great idea!
What about the efficiencies then?
I reckon a good solar panel tops at 18% (used in ideal conditions).
A typical cold-white LED emits about 20% of it's rated power as human perceivable light.
Include electronics; like MPPT and a LED driver for 95% each , and you get: 0.18*0.2*0.95*0.95=3.25% efficiency.
So every 1W of light emitted (which is not much), we need about 30W of raw solar energy.
I don't understand why you all worry about how much money they got. What dies it matter rom engineering point of view?
Because it's a hype. And I think many engineers don't do many hypes.
The concept is just fundamentally flawed, but they say it's all incredible, proven and will help save the planet. That's an illusion, lie and like fraud. Given the fact that they censor all forms of criticism confirms that.
Solar energy is great, and that's probably a big part of the hype, but the idea of:
- Placing solar panels at the most idiotic place you can put them, on the road, in the shade, flat on the ground, etc.
- Having to protect them from the harsh environment of having
freaking 30+ ton trucks run over them. This adds unnecessary cost.
- Equipping with "gadgets" like LED illumination and heaters, which piss away all the energy it's producing.
- The ridiculous cost/income ratio that's off by probably not 1 but several orders of magnitude.
If you cover 1 km of solar panels, 8m wide.. you have 8000m^2 of surface area.
If you can get a field of 1km x 1km and dedicate that as a solar farm, the surface area of that is enough to cover 125km of road.
I believe America grows too much corn and soja in the middle of the states, where it's pretty sunny. Just trade that with some solar farms. Sounds like a much more durable plan.
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