From my standpoint, I see the field of engineering as having to consider many things, including economics and practicality.
Well, primarily we should be looking at whether it is feasible. For instance, are the cables fat enough to carry the juice, can it actually get any juice, etc. Would a battery that fits in a nose clip be able to power a micro-turbine for 8 hours. That kind of thing.
The economics is more tricky since pretty much any new product is far more expensive than the same thing a few years down the line. At this point you would be wanting some thing that is just good enough to sell so you can afford to make better ones, but that's a business decision. The engineering part is how to achieve that.
If you look at the airogel video and think how much that costs, and the massive hassle it is to make it, that would fail at the first post on this forum. But NASA thinks it's worth the price for what they want to do with it, and that's their decision, not ours. All we can do is say that we wouldn't pay whatever it costs to buy, but accept that someone else might.
You might also have noticed that there was a lot of noise about the absolute cost of solaring (hey, a new trademark!) a road, but much of that would have been the cost of a non-solar road anyway so the real costs were wrong. That's what comes of web engineers doing economics
Ultimately, so what? If the economics are wrong then it will die a commercial death. Doesn't mean the idea itself it a scam or pants - there are many things that have died only to be resurrected years later and become a success.
So, when I see a debunking here I expect to see something like "The panels won't take the weight of a truck unless they are too thick to pass sunlight." Fine, but what if the application is a road that won't have a truck that big - there are many roads with weight limits. Right now, if you suggest that you get the nasty label applied and the mob tries to eviscerate you verbally, and I think that's a pretty poor show. We should be able to discuss off-piste things like that with being fearful that we'll be turned into forum lepers.