Solar FREAKIN' Roadways

[evensgrey]

If you look at the panels for the proposed roads, they are textured, they also appear to be green. Also, there's no reason the technology wouldn't continue to evolve, esp. with public investment (not talking about the gov't kind ). For all we know, by the time this comes about for a real world test (other wise known as beta testing) the panels will be made out of a semi-transparent silicate composite.

I think you're seeing the color of the solder mask on the circuit boards underneath the glass tiles.  The most commonly used color of that is green.  There are a few pictures of the glass tiles without electronics under them on the site, and they appear colorless.

Do you really think they can get a semi-transparent silicate composite material into production in time for their planned beta testing NEXT SPRING?

(Sandpoint, Idaho is wanting to put these in a number of places, including the AMTRAK station, and they claim they'll be able to start manufacturing by the end of this year.)

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-solar-roadways-plans-to-create-smart-roads-to-produce-clean-energy-and-save-lives-and-money/

If they don't collapse suspiciously before then, and the city of Sandpoint doesn't gain some sanity, and I'm able to swing a few improvements in my life, I might be taking a train through Sandpoint next summer, in time to see the mess these will be.

[dallen68]

I think you're seeing the color of the solder mask on the circuit boards underneath the glass tiles.  The most commonly used color of that is green.  There are a few pictures of the glass tiles without electronics under them on the site, and they appear colorless.

Do you really think they can get a semi-transparent silicate composite material into production in time for their planned beta testing NEXT SPRING?

(Sandpoint, Idaho is wanting to put these in a number of places, including the AMTRAK station, and they claim they'll be able to start manufacturing by the end of this year.)

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-solar-roadways-plans-to-create-smart-roads-to-produce-clean-energy-and-save-lives-and-money/

If they don't collapse suspiciously before then, and the city of Sandpoint doesn't gain some sanity, and I'm able to swing a few improvements in my life, I might be taking a train through Sandpoint next summer, in time to see the mess these will be.

My understanding is the Sandpoint project(s) are for things like parking lots, playgrounds, and sidewalks, which is a bit different than a road.

[evensgrey]

No, LIAR, a SINGLE LED, as the picture made clear. This was pointed out to you at the time. You STILL can't stop yourself from lying, can you?

BULLSHIT. NOT AT ALL. You only came up with that bullshit after I showed you how incredibly ignorant you are.

An LED-backlit LCD screen that is visible in daylight MUST get its brightness from the LEDs. And AGAIN, the ONLY thing the LCDs are going to do is DIM THE LED LIGHT!

No, LIAR, I showed an LED studio light because YOU SAID THERE WERE NO LEDs BRIGHT ENOUGH TO BE SEEN IN DAYLIGHT.

EVERYTHING you have said here is a LIE. We're done.

Aparently not...

Here's just one example of what you claim doesn't exist: http://www.smallhd.com/products/dp7-pro/dp7-pro-hb.html

And again, the studio light: http://www.prostudiousa.com/10000-Lumen-LED-Studio-Light-P5407.aspx

As the product description says, that's a single 100-watt LED. And even if they weren't, even if it were an array, it STILL wouldn't help you because the SFWs use arrays and in order for an array to be bright enough the individual LEDs would have to be bright enough, too.

If you're STILL going to lie about the existence of these things and how they show you to be wrong, then you have nothing more to contribute to this conversation.

I'm not the one lying about that display, Shane.  YOU are.  YOU claimed it was an LED display, when everyone can clearly see it is an LCD display.  Not that you bothered to mention it before, despite it being what you were asked about, and then being reminded that it was what you were being asked about.

You are using classic Creationist tactics:  Fixate on some minor side issue (in this case, the inexplicable incompetence of an electrical engineer to correctly design an electrical device and use the correct parts so it would at least not obviously not do what he claims) and hope to distract from the major issues (that WINDOW GLASS IS NOT A SUITABLE MATERIAL FOR PAVING ROADS and that THESE GLASS ROADS CONSUME FAR MORE ELECTRICITY THAN THEY PRODUCE).

Now, to eliminate this canard of yours, I will admit that there exist LED FLOOD LIGHTS that can be seen to be lit while under daylight.  You have already admitted to not owning any LED displays that are visible in daylight.  (No, an LCD with an LED light source cannot count.  It obviously isn't an LED-created image, it's an LCD-created image.  The light source isn't even RELEVANT, and an intelligent engineer could design it to use the sunlight itself as the light source, eliminating the need for high-consumption lighting.  How would you REMOVE the sunlight anyway?  There's no black layer inside an LCD system, it wouldn't work correctly if there was because the backlight wouldn't have anything to diffuse it.  If you cleverly use two layers of polarizing material to cut out all the light except what gets twisted by clever LCDs that can change the polarization plane of different colors separately, you would have a nearly perfectly black screen under all conditions and not need a very, very bright backlight to begin with.  Sort of like how outdoor LED billboards actually work.  And how those LED traffic signals you don't seem to have ever examined in any detail work, too, especially with the sun shades you demanded they don't have.)

The fact that the LEDs in question CANNOT BE POWERED BY THE GLASS ROAD TO GENERATE PAVEMENT MARKINGS BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ENOUGH POWER AVAILABLE is rather a serious problem for you.  The fact that they plan to heat the glass road surface, thus consuming far more power than the glass roads could generate even if it was being stored, is a complete demolition of their claims that this will somehow reduce CO2 emissions.

Are you going to continue to ignore ALL the ways this has ALREADY been shown to not work?

The fact that all their claimed benefits are either completely wrong or cost more than the problems they are claimed to correct cost demonstrates that this isn't going to work.

The only real question about this is how much of the project driver is stupidity and how much is malicious.

[evensgrey]

My understanding is the Sandpoint project(s) are for things like parking lots, playgrounds, and sidewalks, which is a bit different than a road.

And the airport, although they don't indicate which bits of the airport they want to repave with glass.

It doesn't really matter, though.  Someone with the wrong kind of debris lodged in their shoes will shatter tiles.  There's no way their glass paving tiles will last 20 years. 

Even if they could get the cost down to a thousand dollars a square meter, it would never make sense to pave sidewalks, driveways, and most parking lots with it.  I was able to find cost estimators for parking lot and sidewalk paving, and their tiles are way to costly for those applications.  We're literally talking a driveway that would cost more than the house.  (Not a sidewalk more costly than a house, fortunately, but sometime next month they're going to have to finally release their genuine pricing estimates and this will finally end when it becomes clear that it cannot pay for itself, even if it didn't use more electricity than it produces.)

[dallen68]

And the airport, although they don't indicate which bits of the airport they want to repave with glass.

It doesn't really matter, though.  Someone with the wrong kind of debris lodged in their shoes will shatter tiles.  There's no way their glass paving tiles will last 20 years. 

Even if they could get the cost down to a thousand dollars a square meter, it would never make sense to pave sidewalks, driveways, and most parking lots with it.  I was able to find cost estimators for parking lot and sidewalk paving, and their tiles are way to costly for those applications.  We're literally talking a driveway that would cost more than the house.  (Not a sidewalk more costly than a house, fortunately, but sometime next month they're going to have to finally release their genuine pricing estimates and this will finally end when it becomes clear that it cannot pay for itself, even if it didn't use more electricity than it produces.)

Well, I was thinking about it and even if they did find a suitable material, and all that, it would actually see limited use in the real world. For example, a lot that you want for multi-functions/ use as needed basis. Like, it wouldn't be very practical if all that section of road ever has is uni/bi directional traffic but if sometimes you have an event, like a block party, or other entertainment, maybe. Or Maybe if you want to use the parking lot as a basketball court or something like that it would be useful. But unlike TFoot's (and assumably the developer's speculations), even in my best guesses, it would be a marginal percentage. Everything else (i.e. everywhere the road/parking lot/playground/whatever has one purpose only) would probably continue to be painted blacktop.

As far as the power thing, I would imagine that unless the sections were being used for an event, they'd be OFF most of the time.

[dallen68]

As for the costs:

If the technology got enough traction, the price would eventually come down to something more reasonable. It might be a hundred years - or a week after the premier - but eventually. Hey, there was a time when digital calculators cost about the same as a car, so...

[MrBogosity]

I'm not the one lying about that display, Shane.  YOU are.  YOU claimed it was an LED display, when everyone can clearly see it is an LCD display.

No, LIAR, this was NEVER the case.

You have already admitted to not owning any LED displays that are visible in daylight.  (No, an LCD with an LED light source cannot count.  It obviously isn't an LED-created image, it's an LCD-created image.

Why? Because you don't WANT it to? Who the FUCK cares about the image when we're talking about the BRIGHTNESS OF THE LEDs? And I've already explained how the LEDs actually need to be EVEN BRIGHTER because the LCDs attenuate the light.

You were WRONG. Admit it or STFU.

The light source isn't even RELEVANT,

The light source is the ONLY thing that's relevant when you're talking about how bright it is!

and an intelligent engineer could design it to use the sunlight itself as the light source

No, they couldn't, and I already explained why. At best you'd see a dim photo-negative.

How would you REMOVE the sunlight anyway?  There's no black layer inside an LCD system

Wow. Just wow. I already explained this. Your capacity for delusion here is astounding. When you see a red pixel on an LCD display, it's because the LCD has created a cyan pigment (or one blue and one green pigment) to block the blue and green light, letting only the red through. This has FUCK ALL to do with sunlight, and again, means that--despite you insisting on maintaining your delusion--that it CANNOT WORK WITH REFLECTED LIGHT!!!

The fact that the LEDs in question CANNOT BE POWERED BY THE GLASS ROAD TO GENERATE PAVEMENT MARKINGS BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ENOUGH POWER AVAILABLE

Hasn't been shown yet. You clearly know fuck all about LEDs and how they work, and your calculations are based on bullshit like assuming that all the LEDs on the panel would be lit all the time, when it's only some of them on some panels, and most wouldn't be lit at all.

The fact that they plan to heat the glass road surface, thus consuming far more power than the glass roads could generate even if it was being stored, is a complete demolition of their claims that this will somehow reduce CO2 emissions.

They're already heating roads carbon-free to keep them free of snow. Again, you're ignoring technology that ALREADY EXISTS!

[MrBogosity]

Someone with the wrong kind of debris lodged in their shoes will shatter tiles.

WHAT??? Someone with debris in his shoe will shatter TEMPERED GLASS??? Yeah, you've gone WAY off the deep end here...

[MrBogosity]

As for the costs:

If the technology got enough traction, the price would eventually come down to something more reasonable. It might be a hundred years - or a week after the premier - but eventually. Hey, there was a time when digital calculators cost about the same as a car, so...

The efficiencies would increase as well. In fact, the efficiencies are GOING to increase whether we have SFWs or not. Again, the naysayers are pretending like there will never be any more technology than what exists today.

[evensgrey]

As for the costs:

If the technology got enough traction, the price would eventually come down to something more reasonable. It might be a hundred years - or a week after the premier - but eventually. Hey, there was a time when digital calculators cost about the same as a car, so...

The first relay-based electromechanical calculator priced out at much more than ten times the price of a car (in about 1938) and Bell Labs decided not to pursue the technology for precisely that reason.

These things aren't likely to get very much cheaper, since everything identifiable that's used in them already is in mass production.  The unidentifiable parts (like the still-missing gasketing material between the tiles, and the optically clear glue needed to hold the solar cells to the glass tiles and the circuit boards to the solar cells, and the circuit boards themselves since normal circuit board materials aren't nearly strong enough to take the load, and nobody seems to have any idea what will happen when you apply the loads involved to the solar cells, which are generally brittle and prone to cleavage within crystals if they are the usual silicon solar cells).

While you might get away with walking on these (although the price is far higher than concrete sidewalks), any sort of significant vehicle traffic looks to be certain to shear them at the solar cell layer, once they switch over to 100% solar cell coverage. This also makes them unusable to most sidewalks, which require places for passenger vehicles to cross them.  (They don't seem to have actually LOOKED at the geometry of any actual sidewalks when proposing making sidewalks out of them.  Sidewalks have a remarkable amount of curvature in their surfaces where the intersect driveways and for whellchair ramps.  And there's really no doing without wheelchar ramps and driveways.  Two or three inches is a huge barrier for someone in a wheelchair, and it's extremely bad for both tires, rims, and suspension for a car to be hitting those as well.)

Oddly enough, it turns out that making the solar cells load bearing DOES enable their plans for pressure sensors, since the resistance of a silicon crystal changes as you apply force to it.  If you monitored the resistance of the solar cells precisely enough, you could use them to detect changes in tile loading.  Doesn't look promising, though.  Traffic loads are not likely to be sustainable.  They put usable solar cells behind protective glass panels to keep them from being damaged by things hitting them.  They might have a tempered glass PLATE that will survive the force of a semi, but they aren't going to have solar cells that will hold together for any length of time once you start driving on the tiles.

Always keep in mind what they actually say, not what they would like you to hear.  What they actually say is that tempered glass is used in making bullet proof glass panels, not that they're using bullet proof glass in their tiles.  (Bullet proof glass wouldn't help much, since tiles would still shatter, the just wouldn't then come apart immediately.)  They also say that they have passed impact and load tests, but the also state that they have not made anything like the proposed production models of their tiles, so what can they really have had tested?  Sure, the glass component may have done implausibly well on its' own, but this isn't just a problem of the glass (although the speed it will wear out is a huge problem).  The electronics need to be just as durable as the rest, and they don't appear to have even considered that.

[evensgrey]

WHAT??? Someone with debris in his shoe will shatter TEMPERED GLASS??? Yeah, you've gone WAY off the deep end here...

Yes, right down to reality.  Had you bothered to watch Tf00t's videos, he included a DEMONSTRATION of how little force is required for the right kind of material to shatter tempered glass.  Now, going back to the part that you ignored because it wasn't the first sentence, what happens when a vehicle tire oicks up a chunk of broken ceramic and smashes it into a few HUNDRED tiles with far more force?

The efficiencies would increase as well. In fact, the efficiencies are GOING to increase whether we have SFWs or not. Again, the naysayers are pretending like there will never be any more technology than what exists today.

You can get, at most, about 2.5 times the efficiency of the solar cells compared to what they claim.  You can get, currently, three times the total light out of LED than your flood light gets, which would bring it's ability to light up a single square meter to slightly less than the dimmest full sunlight is (but you'd need a moderately large array of these LEDs to do it, since they work at much less than an amp and your flood light would be probably working at something like 8 to 9 amps total to get the power over the low-voltage power system portable devices use).  Good thing numerous LEDs in an array can be easily packed into a single plastic module, isn't it?  They do tend to get quite warm when used as high-intensity light, especially when they don't convert even a third of the power into light.

The notion that the prototype heats itself to melt snow without using power drawn from the grid (and hence mostly fossil fuel sources) is stupid.  Blacktop absorbs better than 80% of the light falling on it and doesn't stay warm enough in winter to melt the snow that falls on it.  On really warm, bright days, you get some warming and some melting, but not enough to reliably clear the roads, and if they ACTUALLY eliminated all other generating sources (which they claim it will do) then there couldn't be any 'virtual storage' in the grid to draw back from, nor the huge amount of extra electricity Tf00t already demonstrated would be required just to melt the snow and ice if the system suffered no other inefficiencies.  ($5 billion worth of electricity each year, for a perfectly efficient system that JUST melted the snow and ice.  Easily twice that and more for raising the snow and ice from ambient to freezing first, and for convective losses to the air, and to reheat the road itself before it could be warm enough to melt the snow and ice since they propose to only operate the heaters when some unknown sensors report there is snow and ice.)  This specific boondogle was investigated and abandoned 60 years ago because of the huge power requirements.

Literally the ONLY reason they can pretend their DC-only system makes sense is because long-distance power transmission often does use DC, particularly if it's underground.  The fatal problem with DC systems is that there's no way to change the voltage easily, so you end up using really thick wires if you want to carry lots of power, since wire cross section scales directly with current load. Wire isn't exactly cheap, copper or aluminum.  High-current cables are a whole sub-specialty in themselves.  DC has to be used for long-run underground cables because AC has capacitive effects in insulated wires that become prohibitive after only tens of miles.  At very high power levels, AC has a number of unpleasant loss effects that DC doesn't, and the AC-DC interface systems have the added benefit of not passing the kind of spikes that can knock whole regions of the  grid out. (In 2003, Quebec stayed up because the power grid there only couples to outside grids by DC lines.)

Now, the reason it matters that the device you claimed was an LED device that produced an image visible in daylight is actually an LCD device is because an LCD and an LED are two completely different technologies.  LED devices are normally black surfaces with the LEDs on, in, or in front of them.  Color LCDs normally have a backlight (any light source will work, provided it doesn't shed too much heat into the LCD panel itself, which is usually thermally sensitive) that is spread out by a WHITE diffuser plate at the back of the system, which scatters the light such that some comes through the LCD panel to be filtered.  Now, unlike you, I've actually taken one of these apart and I've actually seen the absence of a black layer and the presence of a white one.  The LCD, being an optically passive device, is the same color as the light that passes through it.  It doesn't have pigments in it, it's not a chromatophore.  You don't get a negative image if you front-light it (and I've seen this too, the way you tell an LCD display with a failed backlight from one with a failed LCD controller is to look at the screen in the brightest available light when it should show an image and see if it's just very dim, which indicates a failed backlight, or entirely blank, indicating a failed controller).  The idea that color LCDs cannot be designed for front-illumination at all or even that the ability to operate bimodally (with front sunlight or internal backlight) for a low price is rendered stupid by the existence of the One Laptop Per Child notebook prototypes, which had precisely that kind of screen.  I also find your claim that the first form of LCD (front-lit only monochrome) doesn't exist to be quite amusing.  I'm sure everyone who's been using them for the last few decades will be amazed.

I have yet to figure out what source you have for the LED backlight claimed on the LCD display you cited, as the web site doesn't mention what the backlight is for their LCD displays.  (They also have genuine LED displays, but these are all about 1/6 as bright as the LCD you cited, being sold for their high contrast ratio and superior color rendering, rather than brightness.)  The image brightness listed is 1500 nits, which is a third to a quarter the brightness of a typical fully sunlit scene at 5000 nits, and less than a sixth the brightness of the closest thing to full sunlight on a white surface I could find a reference for, a white illuminated cloud at about 10000 nits.  Don't pretend like this display overpowers the sunllight or anything, because that just isn't so.  (Wait until they convert to epaper, which will eliminate the distinction of 'sunlight viewability' entirely, since they don't have backlights.)  If they're using something as inefficient as a traditional LCD, then you might actually have a backlight that could generate a field brightness of 10000 niits (traditional LCDs waste about 85% of the backlight), but that's just back to your floodlight again, not something you could generate an image with.  If it uses the type of LCD used in the OLPC systems, it would have a much dimmer backlight for not throwing away most of the light in passive filters.

You've never even PRETENDED to address the fatal problem of the viewing angle, either.  You need to be able to see the markings at less than 2 degrees from horizontal viewing angle.  You've got no references for anything with less than a 10 degree angle from horizontal.   LEDs are BAD at shining directly to the sides.  If you go look at how they're built, you'll see why:  The normal design for an LED intentionally points all the light possible upwards.  There's NEVER been a good reason to make the light shine out sideways before, and this application isn't one that does since it isn't a good reason for anything.

[MrBogosity]

These things aren't likely to get very much cheaper, since everything identifiable that's used in them already is in mass production.

Not for this purpose. You know enough about economics to know how important that is.

Always keep in mind what they actually say, not what they would like you to hear.

Sorry, but no, I don't put much stock in what they say. A lot of innovations end up being implemented or even designed quite differently than the inventor originally envisioned. If SFWs are to work, then yes, it does look as if it'll have to be significantly different than what they originally planned--but what invention HASN'T worked that way?

One thing I've been kicking around in my mind is something I saw on Dara Ó Briain's Science Club. I just looked around for the video and couldn't find it online, but they had the audience come in over a panel that was hooked to a device that converted the pressure of their feet into electricity. Even though it was a fairly small audience (looked like about 100 people), IIRC they actually generated enough electricity to charge an iPhone. That could be incorporated into panels and potentially solve some of these issues.

[Travis Retriever]

Not for this purpose. You know enough about economics to know how important that is.

Sorry, but no, I don't put much stock in what they say. A lot of innovations end up being implemented or even designed quite differently than the inventor originally envisioned. If SFWs are to work, then yes, it does look as if it'll have to be significantly different than what they originally planned--but what invention HASN'T worked that way?

One thing I've been kicking around in my mind is something I saw on Dara Ó Briain's Science Club. I just looked around for the video and couldn't find it online, but they had the audience come in over a panel that was hooked to a device that converted the pressure of their feet into electricity. Even though it was a fairly small audience (looked like about 100 people), IIRC they actually generated enough electricity to charge an iPhone. That could be incorporated into panels and potentially solve some of these issues.

Reminds me of the pressure plates we already have for triggering traffic lights.

[MrBogosity]

Reminds me of the pressure plates we already have for triggering traffic lights.

Except these actually generate electricity.

[Travis Retriever]

Except these actually generate electricity.

True.  You know what I mean.   btw, this discussion has gotten a bit off topic.  Maybe consider moving these posts to the topic on solar roadways? ^^;