Solar FREAKIN' Roadways

[evensgrey]

I do think the "Replace all our power" claim is a pie-in-the-sky thing. But if it at least can power itself, it would still be cool for a number of reasons.

Many impossible things would be cool if they were possible.

A lot of his more reasonable complaints involved driving on freeways at high speeds; but to start out at least, they're talking about using it for parking lots. It probably would create more power than it's using during the day, so businesses which are open during the day and close at night (and hence they use most of their power during the day) will probably see benefits from this.

It won't generate much power, and the power it would generate wouldn't even be enough to operate the allegedly useful features of the pavement itself.

From there it would more likely go to housing developments, and later on, city streets. I expect it to be a LONG time before it gets used on highways, so much time for these problems to be addressed.

Something that will turn slick in short order won't get you very far as a paving material.

It would be of little consequence if they started using non-recycled glass. Most recycling is bullshit anyway.

It ignores the fact that glass is no good as a road paving material anyway.  That's why nobody has ever used it anywhere.

I was wondering about the sunlight thing. But right now, that's speculation. We already have LED traffic lights you can easily see when it's sunny.

No, we already have LED traffic lights that you can see, from the fairly narrow angle you care about a traffic light's state, when it's in THE SHADE.  Traffic lights are only of interest when you're on the road that they control, which means they can be designed to send out a narrow beam of light, and they also have a cowling that keeps them from even being in direct sunlight.  These would have to be omnidirectional, and couldn't be shaded.

Speculation is claiming that the LEDs could be made bright enough to be visible, when the video demonstrated that even quite bright LEDs are impossible to see in full sunlight.

But OTOH, you're only lighting up a small portion of the roadway. Most of it is still black.

You're pointing the lights straight up, thus wasting most of the light AND you have to make them bright enough to be visible in full sunlight on an OFF WHITE surface, not a black one.  They do show their tiles in the video.

If you have a timecode I'll check part of that video. But remember, they wouldn't have to warm up freezing tiles to melt the snow; all they would have to do is maintain a temperature greater than 32 degrees, which is MUCH easier.

If you look at 17:05 in Tf00t's video, he show the bit from the original video where their COMPLETELY OPAQUE heating element pad is shown.  This is the middle of his detailed description of the huge amount of energy it takes to melt snow and ice.  And, of course, it isn't any easier to keep something warm than to warm it up (unless you need to take it through a phase change, which always absorbs a lot of heat). Since these tiles are, by definition, exposed to the air (which in some parts of the Lower 48 can be easily at -40 C) they will loose vast amounts of heat to the air.  As shown in the video, the heat of fusion (the technical term for melting) of ice is enough to raise the temperature of the same mass of liquid water by about 70 C.
[/quote]

We've discussed that, but that sounds like an engineering problem to me.

Actually, it's a physics problem.  The proposed material is physically unsuited to the proposed application.  There's no way around that without changing the material.

This is a legitimate concern. But then, so do street lights, and if this can replace street lights it might be a net benefit.

No, lights that shine UPWARDS are not ever going to be able to produce less light pollution than lights that shine DOWNWARDS.  Better street lights only shine downwards, and produce quite a lot less light pollution (as does using things like low-pressure sodium vapor lamps, which produce light that is easily filtered out of instruments that light pollution interferes with).  Incidentally, since the purpose of street lights is to illuminate the STREET, adding things like reflectors above the lamp that redirects light downwards not only reduces the light polution, it makes the light more effective for it's intended purpose.

But as I said, as adoption grows people might well innovate new materials. This isn't a problem anyone's had an economic incentive to solve before.

The purpose of the grants they got was to promote research into new paving materials.  Incidentally, there are whole research labs focused solely on making better roadways (mostly in terms of reducing maintenance in harsh climates, Ottawa has one all of it's own).  There are lots of people working on improved paving materials, and nobody seems to think plastics are a good choice.  We have some pretty tough plastics, but they don't do this sort of thing with them anywhere.

And again, all of these problems seem to operate under the assumption that we'll be instantly replacing all of our roads with these things. It'll go in stages; parking lots first, maybe driveways, then housing developments, etc. Whatever point it becomes unfeasible to do is the point where it'll stop--and is also the point where people will have an economic incentive to improve the technology.

First we need a form of this that doesn't completely fail to work like this stuff does.  Installing this stuff won't happen on private property, because the insurance carriers will take one look at it and dump the client for installing a vehicular slideway.

Look, I've walked on CONCRETE that was overpolished, and it was slicker than glass. Fortunately, I've very good at walking on slick surfaces and didn't fall. (This was in front of the King Street entrance of the horribly ugly City Hall they built in Kitchener, Ontario back in the 90's.)  The week after it was opened to the public, they had a crew in sand blasting the shiny, slippery finish off it to prevent people falling.

[MrBogosity]

Many impossible things would be cool if they were possible.

That's not actually a response to the point.

It won't generate much power, and the power it would generate wouldn't even be enough to operate the allegedly useful features of the pavement itself.

Personally, I'm willing to wait to see the numbers on this. The naysayers are talking about the losses in sending this power over miles of cable; that wouldn't be necessary for a business's parking lot.

Something that will turn slick in short order won't get you very far as a paving material.

So, just ignore everything I just pointed out. Fine.

It ignores the fact that glass is no good as a road paving material anyway.  That's why nobody has ever used it anywhere.

No, it's because no one's had a motive to find out! Why would they choose it over asphalt? There's been no need to make a roadway out of clear material before!

Look how long it took asphalt to be developed and widely used. I can take you to places where the roads are STILL concrete, and are a mess of cracks and hastily-patched potholes.

These would have to be omnidirectional, and couldn't be shaded.

I don't see what that's the case. Wouldn't it only need to be visible to oncoming traffic?

Speculation is claiming that the LEDs could be made bright enough to be visible,

There are LEDs that bright. They have LED-lit phones and TV screens that you can see in full sunlight. Many businesses use LED signs that are basically low-resolution monitors that you can see in full daylight. That's actually important for my business: viewfinders and field monitors need to be that bright when doing outdoor shooting in the daytime.

You're pointing the lights straight up

Doesn't mean they HAVE to.

The purpose of the grants they got was to promote research into new paving materials.  Incidentally, there are whole research labs focused solely on making better roadways (mostly in terms of reducing maintenance in harsh climates, Ottawa has one all of it's own).  There are lots of people working on improved paving materials, and nobody seems to think plastics are a good choice.

Because they aren't trying to incorporate solar panels.

[Travis Retriever]

If it can be made viable, awesome.  I still prefer nuclear power myself, but hey, take what you can get.

[evensgrey]

[no actual response to anything]

You not bothering to watch the video should have clued me in that you don't actually care about the facts that show that this just doesn't work.  You ignoring so much of my post entirely proves it.  You're done.

[MrBogosity]

You not bothering to watch the video should have clued me in that you don't actually care about the facts that show that this just doesn't work.  You ignoring so much of my post entirely proves it.  You're done.

Wow. Just wow.

[evensgrey]

Wow. Just wow.

Yes, I was surprised that you didn't care about PHYSICAL REALITY.

Like I said in one of the numerous parts you completely ignored, when you have a version of this that isn't a complete failure before it gets installed, you can try again.

[MrBogosity]

Yes, I was surprised that you didn't care about PHYSICAL REALITY.

You mean, like the fact that there ALREADY ARE LEDs bright enough to be seen in daylight, on the market TODAY? (Just ONE example.)

[evensgrey]

You mean, like the fact that there ALREADY ARE LEDs bright enough to be seen in daylight, on the market TODAY? (Just ONE example.)

No, there are not.  ALL the examples you gave are used EXCLUSIVELY in the shade, and most of them include their own shades.  Try looking at an LED in direct sunlight (and NOT an LCD with an LED backlight, either).

[MrBogosity]

No, there are not.

I'VE WORKED WITH THEM MYSELF!!! And they WORK GREAT!!!

ALL the examples you gave are used EXCLUSIVELY in the shade,

Nope.

and most of them include their own shades.

Nope.

Try looking at an LED in direct sunlight (and NOT an LCD with an LED backlight, either).

Wait, why does that not count all of a sudden?

There are also LED turn signals for cars, NOT IN THE SHADE, NOT INCLUDING THEIR OWN SHADE, visible IN FULL DAYLIGHT.

They also have 15,000-lumen LED studio lights. Do those not count, either?

What about LED headlight bulbs? Those are REQUIRED BY LAW to be visible in the day!

Geez...

[Altimadark]

Goodness, I didn't think this topic would turn into a heated debate...

Just putting in my two cents, hopefully they won't catch on fire and make things worse.

I think Tfoot brings up a good point (which he highlights at the end of the video): For solar roadways to work, one needs a transparent material which can suitably replace asphalt over a decade or longer. Does the recycled glass material shown in the SFR video do this, and if not, where would one go from there?

[evensgrey]

I'VE WORKED WITH THEM MYSELF!!! And they WORK GREAT!!!

Nope.

Nope.

Wait, why does that not count all of a sudden?

There are also LED turn signals for cars, NOT IN THE SHADE, NOT INCLUDING THEIR OWN SHADE, visible IN FULL DAYLIGHT.

They also have 15,000-lumen LED studio lights. Do those not count, either?

What about LED headlight bulbs? Those are REQUIRED BY LAW to be visible in the day!

Geez...

Makes and models, or they don't exist.  (I need this to show you why they aren't what you're pretending.  I expect I won't get any.)

How LARGE are those studio lights of yours, and how much power do they consume?  How many square meters of these tiles does that correspond to?  How much after the surface is scratched into being opaque and the sunlight angle of maybe 30 degrees is accounted for?

Full ID information on the car lamps you claim exist, or they don't.  (These don't really help your position much anyway, since the tiles need to have omnidirectional lights or you won't be able to see them from all directions, which pavement markings need to be, especially if these are going to be used in parking lots.  Headlamps are pretty directional, and signal lamps are a lot more directional than you think. Being visible when you're looking directly into the source is rather a lot different than looking through a thick layer of glass with a frosted surface like these tiles will quickly acquire.)  It is nice that you've gotten to devices without external shades, but the lamps are still not actually exposed to the sunlight themselves.  Headlights are recessed, and so are the light sources in signal lamps.

Since you don't seem to know the difference between an LCD and an LED, an LED produces light while an LCD only dims it.  Many devices now incorporate LEDs as a light source to illuminate an LCD panel from behind.  These are generally lighter, thinner, more durable, and have lower power consumption than the CCFL technology that was previously about the only thing that was workable for backlighting an LCD panel.  They don't count because they still produce a visible image without the backlight working, it's just dim, and they can be designed to work equally well with the light from the front or the back.  There are no TVs that produce their images with LEDs, they are exclusively used for producing light to be modulated by an LCD layer in front.  Even if it would work (which it wouldn't, LCDs are quite pressure sensitive, which isn't something you want in a road) incorporating LCDs into the tiles would start by cutting the light transmittance in half (since LCDs use polarization effects to work and only work properly if they incorporate a polarizing layer).

[MrBogosity]

Makes and models, or they don't exist.  (I need this to show you why they aren't what you're pretending.  I expect I won't get any.)

ANY search will show these. Here's one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RPS-Studio-LED-Studio-Light-100watt-5200K-10-000-Lumen-/251502835084?_trksid=p2054897.l4275

100W gives you 10,000 lumens. And yes, this is a single LED, not an array. And keep in mind: this is NOT just about seeing the LED (which is all you'd need to do with these road tiles); this is about filling in shadows in broad daylight! 10,000 lumens is almost BLINDING to look at!

How LARGE are those studio lights of yours, and how much power do they consume?  How many square meters of these tiles does that correspond to?  How much after the surface is scratched into being opaque and the sunlight angle of maybe 30 degrees is accounted for?

IRRELEVANT. YOU claimed they DON'T EXIST. They DO.

Full ID information on the car lamps you claim exist, or they don't.

Wow. Just wow. Are you REALLY that far behind? They've had them for over A DECADE!

You're like a creationist claiming there are no transitional fossils!

Anyway, I only needed to show ONE to debunk your assertion, and I just did that.

Since you don't seem to know the difference between an LCD and an LED,

Wow. Just wow. Forget who you're talking to?

an LED produces light while an LCD only dims it.

Right, which means if you have an LED field monitor backlit by LED that's visible in daylight, the LEDs have to be EVEN FUCKING BRIGHTER than necessary to just see the light from it! Didn't think through that, did you?

They don't count because they still produce a visible image without the backlight working, it's just dim,

Wow, NOW who knows nothing about how LCDs work?

Backlit LCDs, as you said, reduce light. So in order to show something red, they actually have to produce blue and green pigments to block out all (most) of the non-red light! You wouldn't just see it dim; you'd see a VERY dim photo negative! If anything, this means that whatever reflected light you get from them will CANCEL OUT part of the color the LED is shining through!

There are no TVs that produce their images with LEDs,

I never said there were. You're just LYING now because you're desperate. Really, I expected a LOT better from you! You've seen yourself how people behave when someone hits their dogma--look at yourself and see that same behavior right now!

Remember the rule of thumb: look at your argumentation and ask if you'd accept that from a creationist. You KNOW you wouldn't!

[evensgrey]

ANY search will show these. Here's one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RPS-Studio-LED-Studio-Light-100watt-5200K-10-000-Lumen-/251502835084?_trksid=p2054897.l4275

100W gives you 10,000 lumens. And yes, this is a single LED, not an array. And keep in mind: this is NOT just about seeing the LED (which is all you'd need to do with these road tiles); this is about filling in shadows in broad daylight! 10,000 lumens is almost BLINDING to look at!

IRRELEVANT. YOU claimed they DON'T EXIST. They DO.

Wow. Just wow. Are you REALLY that far behind? They've had them for over A DECADE!

You're like a creationist claiming there are no transitional fossils!

Anyway, I only needed to show ONE to debunk your assertion, and I just did that.

Wow. Just wow. Forget who you're talking to?

Right, which means if you have an LED field monitor backlit by LED that's visible in daylight, the LEDs have to be EVEN FUCKING BRIGHTER than necessary to just see the light from it! Didn't think through that, did you?

Wow, NOW who knows nothing about how LCDs work?

Backlit LCDs, as you said, reduce light. So in order to show something red, they actually have to produce blue and green pigments to block out all (most) of the non-red light! You wouldn't just see it dim; you'd see a VERY dim photo negative! If anything, this means that whatever reflected light you get from them will CANCEL OUT part of the color the LED is shining through!

I never said there were. You're just LYING now because you're desperate. Really, I expected a LOT better from you! You've seen yourself how people behave when someone hits their dogma--look at yourself and see that same behavior right now!

Remember the rule of thumb: look at your argumentation and ask if you'd accept that from a creationist. You KNOW you wouldn't!

Indeed I wouldn't and I'm not accepting it form you.

So, each of those lights (which you have now admitted are what you were talking about, as you provided information about them instead of the LED TV displays you were actually asked about, thus leading me to the conclusion that neither they nor the LED car lamps you claimed to exist and were also asked about actually do) is equivalent to the power available per square meter of glass roadway under the worst conditions before degradation of the road itself is taken into account (taking into account the winter sun angle of 30 degrees above the horizon available in a large part of the US, the actual solar constant of 1360 watts/m^2, and the 15% efficiency quoted by the inventor).

Now, to make any sort of image at all, you need to divide that 10000 lumens into at least 7 segments, and they can't be very directional and have to be rather larger than the normal size of LEDs (the largest I've run into so far have been maybe a couple of centimeters across, and these need to be tens of centimeters, or you have to divide the light between far more LEDs to make up any characters).  How far do you think you can see them?  Keep in mind that this is effectively through a WHITE surface, not the black surface you normally find in exterior LED displays. If you want to use LCDs like all the displays you've talked about use, cut the brightness by 75%, as the polarization layer will cut the light coming in by half, and absorb at least half the outgoing light as well.  While an LCD display will operate without a polarization layer, you lose contrast and cannot produce black.  Not that this road can produce black, since it's WHITE.

And that's the available power near noon, what are you going to do at night when the thing has to draw power from outside to operate at all?  We're back to the problems and cost of adding power lines to ALL roads you convert to this.

(Incidentally, I decided to hunt up more details on this light you gave a link to.  RPS Studios, strangely, doesn't seem to retail this product themselves, from what their website shows.  The search there for "RS-5610" turns up nothing, as does "CooLED", and searching for LED doesn't turn up any light sources at all.  DuckDuckGo, on a search for RPS Studio, brings this device up as the second image hit, from Amazon.com, from a seller that also has their own web site, where they don't seem to carry this particular product either.  However, the Amazon site at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BW4C7LI/ref=s9_simh_gw_p421_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1KJB7JA87P5BRJTYNCSZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846 has several pictures of the device, but appears to be a different revision to the one you linked.  The third one shows it without an additional diffuser or reflector, so you can see part of what should be the actual light source, which certainly does LOOK like a tight-packed LED array. It looks very much like the third image on eBay, but the resolution is a bit higher so some detail on the yellow area is visible. Not only can I not find any data sheets indicating this isn't an array, nobody making similar products seems to think that's important in a light and doesn't indicate using an array or not.)

Here's why the LEDs cannot be directional: The glass WILL be effectively frosted.  The sediment anywhere on any continental land surface is going to contain quartz grains.  Quartz has a Mohs Hardness of about 7, while glass has a Mohs Hardness of about 5.5, meaning that when the dirt that will, inevitably, be on the road is ground into the surface by traffic it will scratch it.  In some places, the sediment will contain corundum, with a Mohs Hardness of 9.  You need to get a clear material with a Mohs Hardness of at least 8, that doesn't have cleavage, or the idea is a complete non-starter because the surface will simply wear smooth in short order.  (Asphalt doesn't have this problem because it's a composite material.  Wear away a bit, and the bit underneath is just as rough.  Glass will smooth out.)

Tf00t isn't the first to call bullshit on this, either.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/01/19/smart.roads/index.html

This article actually digs up some numbers on what the inventor's claim the cost would be, and those numbers look like bullshit just on the basis of the cost of the GLASS.

It also asks a set of questions everyone here has previously missed:  How does this surface perform when there's a crash on it?  Annealed glass is going to react rather badly to being crashed into, as always happens in a crash.  Two cars hit each other, but at least one also must impact the road as well.  Asphalt copes with this quite well, but glass won't.  Then there's the matter of what happens when there's a crash with a vehicle fire?  What happens when there's a tanker truck fire?  (Yes, it happens, and the results can be quite severe.  I know a place where an entire tanker load of gasoline went up, and the fire destroyed the concrete overpass it occurred under.)  The common type of glass, used in ordinary windows, bottles, and so forth (and implied to be what they're using, since that's what you usually get in recycled glass) has bad thermal properties, with a fairly high thermal expansion index (making it quite prone to cracking or breaking loose from its' supports when heated sharply) and goes soft at a fairly low temperature of less than 600 C. In practical terms, that means any tiles affected by contact with a gasoline fire (which can easily reach 900 C) will have to be replaced (due to losing their annealed state) as well as any that have cracked or popped loose, before that portion of the road is usable again.

Glass is just no good for this job no matter what.  It won't help trying to use it for parking lots, because you still have all the same problems, it just won't be as lethal due to the lower speeds.

The fact these are tiles is a huge problem as well.  We stopped doing roads like this when rubber tires removed the need to protect the binding material from iron tires for a simple reason:  As Tf00t pointed out, the differential loading of different parts of a tile (or a cobblestone, although their relatively small size reduces the scale of the problem, as does the way they're embedded in the road surface) as wheels roll over them will try to work the tiles loose.  It looks like they're trying to BOLT the tiles down, which any engineer will tell you is a bad idea.  To keep high-stress bonds together, you need to use an adhesive, otherwise you just create focal points for the stress to all work at and break apart the connection.  (Things like brake pads, for instance, are glued together with special adhesives for precisely this reason.)  Asphalt itself functions as an adhesive, the tarry component binding together the aggregate and sticking quite effectively to the substrate, and one that can even self-heal a bit in very hot weather.  But now you've got the tiles all glued down to the roadbed, so how do you get them UP again quickly when you need to replace them?  (And you HAVE to replace them, there's absolutely no way to repair a damaged glass block in place.)

Now, this idea you have that if we do this in spite of the fact it's a dangerously bad idea, the materials to solve the failures will be invented.

You're contemplating a glass-like material, of cost comparable to window glass, that's much harder, has a much higher melting temperature, is far more impact resistant, and has a lower coefficient of thermal expansion.  You don't need a glass road to spur development of such a material, all the conventional glass it would displace (and there's a LOT of it) would be sufficient motivation for the invention of such a material.  And it doesn't exist.  It definitely won't be any sort of glass as we understand the term, because a glass with a higher melting temperature is pretty much physically constrained to cost more to make because you have to get it hotter to make it (and then you run into not just the problems of a hotter heat source, but also containing it, which means a more expensive furnace, and it being hotter makes it harder to contain the melt safely when you take it out of the furnace to form it, and you may need to use more expensive materials for everything that can take the higher temperature, and the higher melting point makes the whole annealing process more expensive for all the same reason because the annealing point will also go up, and the complications multiply).  It doesn't look plausible to do this with anything that isn't a glass, since polycrystalline materials are normally opaque and mono-crystalline materials with cleavage are unsuitable for stress from unconstrained directions.  While there might be plastics on the market with the right properties right now, plastics are going to cost more than glass or they would have already displaced glass, and all the clear plastics I've ever seen or heard of have a lower Mohs Hardness than glass and so are even easier to scratch.

The structure of this road is going to be substantially more fragile than conventional roads because of all the embedded channels for all the wiring and other technological bits in them.  The inventors also appear to recognize that they need to seal the tile joints to keep moisture from reaching the electronics, but don't appear to have any means of doing that so far.  Getting a material able to do this isn't a trivial task.  It wouldn't be difficult if this was NOT a roadway, but you've got a LOT of mechanical requirements to fulfill to make a road paving material that doesn't do anything else.  Adding in all the complications of making it both a solar panel (also a difficult engineering challenge to get to perform really well) AND an active display (which is another, entirely separate and also quite challenging engineering problem, particularly since it needs to be visible in daylight and with a white background) and I think you've got something that is either going to cost way to much or just not do all the jobs.

Notice also that the available power numbers I gave are actually too high, since they assumed the tiles have complete solar cell coverage, which would preclude having any room for display elements.  If you end up constraining the display elements to things like the lane boundaries, you've just defeated the purpose of having an active display built in to your road surface.  (The artist's conceptions the inventors display also indicate that the road has some kind of active sensors in it, since they show it illuminating where a deer is walking on it.  This is a weird idea to include, since glass is really hard to read that kind of pressure through.  Sure, you can do it, but that's another, again different, engineering challenge. And what happens to those sensors when a semi rolls over the sensors?  The more I consider the whole presentation, the more dubious it looks.)

[MrBogosity]

Indeed I wouldn't and I'm not accepting it form you.

Wow. Just wow. I make a point about YOUR argumentation and you turn around and try to make it seem like we're talking about MINE. Pulling out every woo trick in the book, I see.

is equivalent to the power available per square meter of glass blah blah blah

I remind you: this is STUDIO LIGHTING to FILL IN DAYLIGHT SHADOWS. It is way, way, WAY beyond what it would need simply to be visible!

I also remind you: you claimed these LEDS DID NOT EXIST. NOT that they were prohibitive as far as power consumption, but that they DID NOT EXIST. And when I told you that they did, you ridiculed me.

Time to admit you were wrong.

Time to admit you're wrong about LED screens, too.

Now, to make any sort of image at all, you need to divide that 10000 lumens into at least 7 segments, and blah blah blah

No, you just use more, smaller LEDs. And again, 10,000 lumens is WAY overkill for this application.

I will NOT respond to any more points until you ADMIT YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT THIS.

[evensgrey]

Wow. Just wow. I make a point about YOUR argumentation and you turn around and try to make it seem like we're talking about MINE. Pulling out every woo trick in the book, I see.

I remind you: this is STUDIO LIGHTING to FILL IN DAYLIGHT SHADOWS. It is way, way, WAY beyond what it would need simply to be visible!

I also remind you: you claimed these LEDS DID NOT EXIST. NOT that they were prohibitive as far as power consumption, but that they DID NOT EXIST. And when I told you that they did, you ridiculed me.

Time to admit you were wrong.

Time to admit you're wrong about LED screens, too.

No, you just use more, smaller LEDs. And again, 10,000 lumens is WAY overkill for this application.

I will NOT respond to any more points until you ADMIT YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT THIS.

Yes, I was rather expecting that you wouldn't respond to the fact that glass is a completely unsuitable material to make roads out of and the fact that there's no reason to believe that there's going to be a suitable material that resembles glass that could be used to make roads out of in favor of blathering on about LED TV displays that you falsely claim exist.  There are none that are as you describe.  Get over yourself.  Going full-woo doesn't help you.

An LED-driven flood light is NOT an LED TV display.  An LED flood light is also NOT going to be visible when used to shine upwards through frosted glass over any useful distance on a road.  10 000 lumens shining in all directions doesn't produce any nice bright image on the surface being emitted from.  And that's ignoring the question of how much power you could ACTUALLY get out of a solar cell array under a glass road in any real place, and how much it would take to replace that at night or when the road is covered with snow.  How much electricity do you want to waste on this idiocy?  Do you really think 10 regular household lamps would illuminate a meter-square sign to a degree visible over a worthwhile distance, even if you could get that much power out of the solar cells under a layer of frosted glass?

The reality is you've retreated to questions of LEDs only because there's no sanity to defending the idea of glass roads.