Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. And you know what, several
Speaker 1: years ago, there was this concept that had been a
Speaker 1: few years old at that point, but it it's sort
Speaker 1: of went viral, and it was this whole solar roadway idea.
Speaker 1: The idea of creating roads that are actually made up
Speaker 1: of solar panels so that your roads could be collecting energy,
Speaker 1: uh through the sun and you know, generating electricity and
Speaker 1: also serving as roads. An interesting idea that seemed to
Speaker 1: have a lot of potential issues with it, and so
Speaker 1: at the time, we decided on tech Stuff to cover
Speaker 1: that topic. So this episode originally published on June six,
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen. It is called Solar Freaking Roadways
Speaker 1: because that's kind of how it was being marketed at
Speaker 1: the time. And well, let's just listen in. There's been
Speaker 1: at least, if nothing else, a spirited debate both sides
Speaker 1: of the debate Internet. Yeah, I know, both sides have
Speaker 1: said debate, both the the proponents and the critics of
Speaker 1: said solar roadways have been um at times passionate on
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah, that's kind of my gentle tiptoeing around
Speaker 1: the edgeway of saying that there's been some fairly reactionary
Speaker 1: responses on both sides. So we're gonna cut through all
Speaker 1: that and tell you what's going on, hopefully, and I
Speaker 1: you know, both of us are human people who also
Speaker 1: have opinions about things, but we're going to try very
Speaker 1: hard to be as objective as possible, and at the
Speaker 1: end we will spew our opinions all over the podcast,
Speaker 1: so fair warning. But at any rate, let's start off
Speaker 1: with just some fun facts, fun facts about highways. Fun
Speaker 1: facts about highways in the United States, to be specific. So,
Speaker 1: the U. S Highway system has four million miles of roads,
Speaker 1: which is about six million, four hundred thousand kilometers. Not
Speaker 1: many people know this, but Lauren capable of doing miles
Speaker 1: to kilometer conversions in her head on the fly. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So that's according to the National Atlas of the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: the interstate highway system accounts for only one percent of
Speaker 1: all highway mileage, but carries twenty of total vehicle miles
Speaker 1: of travel, which to me says, take the surface streets.
Speaker 1: That's what I usually do. Yeah, at any rate. The highways,
Speaker 1: although they are a great way of moving lots of
Speaker 1: cars through very quickly. Uh that that's not you know,
Speaker 1: more of the roads in our our country are surface streets.
Speaker 1: They're not like these big interstates certainly, but but um,
Speaker 1: but highways are are pretty They cover a wide surface
Speaker 1: area none the less. The average the average width of
Speaker 1: a highway lane is eleven feet, which is three point
Speaker 1: three five Wow. It works on feet demeters too, It's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Okay. Uh So that means that if you
Speaker 1: were to add up all the surface area that these
Speaker 1: roads are covering in the United States, you would end
Speaker 1: up somewhere around seventeen thousand, nine hundred twenty nine square
Speaker 1: miles in the United States, which is forty six thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty six square kilometers. Crap. You can
Speaker 1: do area too if you add another paved surfaces, so
Speaker 1: we're talking about things like parking lots, sidewalks, bike lanes,
Speaker 1: this kind of thing. It ends up being around twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand square miles of area or thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: square kilometers, right, So that's a lot of space a bunch,
Speaker 1: and it's not an insignificant amount. It's doing an important job,
Speaker 1: you know, because some people will say that's space, that's
Speaker 1: not doing anything. No, it is, in fact doing something wasted.
Speaker 1: It's certainly providing a service. Yes, it provides us a
Speaker 1: route to get from one point to another point, specifically
Speaker 1: in the vehicles that we all depend upon, without very
Speaker 1: much ruining our our vehicles or our shoes or right.
Speaker 1: It's it's made up of stuff. That is, it's got
Speaker 1: traction to it. It's meant to be uh as efficient
Speaker 1: a system as we can really do with with a
Speaker 1: lot of passive systems. Like it's a very passive system, yes,
Speaker 1: and but it's relatively inexpensive and pretty functional. But what
Speaker 1: would happen if we could make this stuff do double duty?
Speaker 1: What if instead of just being a way, you know,
Speaker 1: the the platform upon which our vehicles travel, it could
Speaker 1: also help generate energy and offset our need for generating
Speaker 1: power in other ways. What if we could perhaps turn
Speaker 1: the entire road system of the United States into a
Speaker 1: giant solar farm. In other words, we replaced the roads
Speaker 1: with solar panels, were still driving on them, but now
Speaker 1: not only are we all that flat space is being
Speaker 1: put to further use, or even hilly space, well relatively
Speaker 1: flat space. Yeah, so that's where the idea of solar
Speaker 1: roadways kicked in. Uh. And then to get specific, you
Speaker 1: have a husband and wife team, Scott and Julie Brussa,
Speaker 1: who are the the people behind solar roadways, right, Scott
Speaker 1: is by trade an electrical engineer and Julie as a counselor.
Speaker 1: And apparently was Julie's idea to put solar panels on roads,
Speaker 1: that was her. She just said. You know, she and
Speaker 1: her husband were having a discussion about climate change, about
Speaker 1: human human contributions to climate change, about pollution, about the
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of that pollution comes from our
Speaker 1: dependence upon fossil fuels, and she said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I realized that solar panel farms like these are not
Speaker 1: the most efficient ways of getting energy. We've talked about
Speaker 1: that on this show before. That even if you're talking
Speaker 1: like state of the art, top of the line laboratory conditions,
Speaker 1: at most you're hitting under ideal conditions. Reality, it's closer
Speaker 1: to under good conditions and probably less than that for
Speaker 1: your average performance. So you're losing a lot of the
Speaker 1: energy that's hitting those panels, and you're not necessarily generating
Speaker 1: a lot of electricity from the energy you're bringing in.
Speaker 1: But what if we had a lot of them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if we were able to instead of clearing out
Speaker 1: land in order to make a solar farm, what if
Speaker 1: we were able to utilize that space, these wide open
Speaker 1: spaces that we already have, you know, using robust panels
Speaker 1: that can withstand the traffic. Right, and so Scott in
Speaker 1: his various videos, there are several videos that Scott Brussaw
Speaker 1: is in where he talks about this idea, said that
Speaker 1: he initially kind of laughed at the idea, and then
Speaker 1: he thought, well, how would I, as an engineer, how
Speaker 1: would I go about trying to make a practical way
Speaker 1: of implementing her solution? And that was the way solar
Speaker 1: roadways were born. This was not no this you may
Speaker 1: have only just heard about this, but they've been working
Speaker 1: on this since the mid two thousand's, so I believe
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Yeah, So they started brainstorming these
Speaker 1: different ways they came up with this, uh, this solar
Speaker 1: panel roadway approach. But it does mean that they had
Speaker 1: to think of other stuff besides and they also went
Speaker 1: beyond just solar panels right oh right, you know they're
Speaker 1: they're not just there to collect energy. They would also
Speaker 1: have you know, microprocessors in them and l ed s
Speaker 1: which would allow you to uh, you know, like like
Speaker 1: change the lanes and on a highway based on traffic patterns,
Speaker 1: or move parking spots around in a parking lot. Right
Speaker 1: Like So, for example, the street that is near my
Speaker 1: neighborhood is a three lane road and it has two
Speaker 1: reversible or has a reversible lane in the center. Reversible
Speaker 1: lanes mean that some parts of a day, traffic is
Speaker 1: allowed to go in one direction, and in another part
Speaker 1: of the day traffic is allowed to go in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction. And they just end up designating that with
Speaker 1: there's a sign that hangs above the road that either
Speaker 1: it gives you an arrow saying yes you can drive
Speaker 1: in this lane, sagred X that says please don't do that.
Speaker 1: By the way, I cannot tell you how many times
Speaker 1: have encountered people who absolutely have no idea how reversible
Speaker 1: lanes work. They treat it like it's a turning lane.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit terrifying. It is absolutely terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: driving in the center lane on that road is something
Speaker 1: of a crap shoot at any rate. Using this approach,
Speaker 1: you could actually have the information on the road itself.
Speaker 1: Those led lights could spell out which lanes were permissible
Speaker 1: to use during what parts of the day, so you
Speaker 1: could change it on the fly, responding to dynamic condition.
Speaker 1: So if traffic is suddenly very heavy coming from one
Speaker 1: direction versus the other, you could change the lanes in
Speaker 1: a safe way. Or like you said, you could do
Speaker 1: things like in a parking lot, designate different types of spaces.
Speaker 1: Perhaps if you were expecting to have a big motorcycle convention,
Speaker 1: like some parts of the country do, then you could
Speaker 1: end up having a bunch of motorcycle parking spots as
Speaker 1: opposed to full sized car spots that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because it means you could change things
Speaker 1: based upon whatever conditions were at the time. That's not
Speaker 1: the only thing these could do though. Oh yeah. They
Speaker 1: also proposed to incorporate heating elements so that you could
Speaker 1: melt any kind of any kind of ice or snow
Speaker 1: on the roadway, thus being able to prevent terrible, terrible
Speaker 1: driving conditions, right, and you wouldn't have to use a
Speaker 1: plow or actually you can't use a plow on one
Speaker 1: of these roads, because it did you'd end up scraping
Speaker 1: the glass glass covering. Yeah. Um. But but also um
Speaker 1: providing providing an infrastructure for carrying that collected energy collected
Speaker 1: energy and big technical quotation marks UM to to get
Speaker 1: it to places that need it. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: there would be a kind of a corridor that would
Speaker 1: run alongside the road which would help deal with the
Speaker 1: runoff from that aforementioned snow and ice. Yes, yes, you
Speaker 1: would have two parts of that corridor. One part would
Speaker 1: be a storm drain which would even include perhaps a
Speaker 1: filtration system and pumps to move water to where it
Speaker 1: might actually be used. So you could in theory treat
Speaker 1: the water on site on the road essentially as as
Speaker 1: it's running off, you can treat it so it ends
Speaker 1: up being useful, and then pump it someplace like an
Speaker 1: aquifer or for agricultural purposes, or to another water treatment
Speaker 1: facility if the water is particularly and I think that's
Speaker 1: the technical term. And then you could have the cable corridor,
Speaker 1: which would allow you to put power cables so that
Speaker 1: it could uh transmit the collected energy to some other system.
Speaker 1: All of this. By the way, it sounds like we're
Speaker 1: being vague, it's because right now the team is really
Speaker 1: focusing on the solar panel part and and all of
Speaker 1: this is is kind of interesting. Other ideas that they're
Speaker 1: drawing into it. UM also reaching further out into the future,
Speaker 1: incorporating a lot more of of smart elements to the
Speaker 1: roadways of you know, doing things like if, um, if
Speaker 1: a kid is crossing the street, having the street interact
Speaker 1: with your car to tell you there's a kid up there,
Speaker 1: don't hit that kid, right, And maybe even the part
Speaker 1: of the street the kid is on lights up so
Speaker 1: you can see that and that to see it visibly, right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have to have some sort of pressure sensors
Speaker 1: in there that that would somehow be able to differentiate
Speaker 1: when a kid is on there versus say someone on
Speaker 1: a bike or car or you know. But we're getting
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves, right right. But you know, all kinds
Speaker 1: of interesting stuff like that is stuff that they talk
Speaker 1: about in their promotional material. Yeah, and they obviously, in
Speaker 1: order to get support because it was an Indigo go campaign,
Speaker 1: which means it's crowdfunded, you know, they were asking people
Speaker 1: to to contribute money to this project so that they
Speaker 1: could test the feasibility of it. Keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: is to test the feasibility, not saying that this is
Speaker 1: going to to launch them into implementing this on a
Speaker 1: wide scale. We'll get into more about that in a second,
Speaker 1: but um, it also uh was a way of saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we can improve our infrastructure in multiple ways. If there
Speaker 1: is a damage a damaged panel, someone could pop out there,
Speaker 1: knock a panel out, put a new panel in, and
Speaker 1: they're done. It's none of this put a big sheet
Speaker 1: of metal over a pothole business that happens in Atlanta
Speaker 1: all the time. Or that we'd be able to take
Speaker 1: all the power cables and telephone cables and take them
Speaker 1: off of suspended lines and bury them within this roadway, yeah,
Speaker 1: in that cable corridor, which means that when you have
Speaker 1: really bad weather, you don't have to worry about those
Speaker 1: power lines being snapped by ice or something and then
Speaker 1: becoming a hazard to anyone who happens be walking by. Now,
Speaker 1: in order to go from this sort of brainstorming proposal
Speaker 1: idea to reality, they they noticed that there were some
Speaker 1: pretty significant challenges. Sure, Um, you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: you photovolt takes are very delicate, so you're going to
Speaker 1: need a really strong surface in order to protect them
Speaker 1: from you know, trucks exactly. Yeah, you have to have
Speaker 1: something that was going to keep them from breaking under
Speaker 1: the the consistent pressure they would be under from vehicles
Speaker 1: running over them. But the early if you're talking about
Speaker 1: like a highway where you've got hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: vehicles in any given month, and some of those being
Speaker 1: incredibly heavy, like trucks pulling huge amounts of cargo, you've
Speaker 1: got to have something that's gonna withstand that kind of
Speaker 1: that kind of wear and tear, right in order to
Speaker 1: accomplish this, and also you know, have it be transparent
Speaker 1: so that it can also collect sunlight. Yea, As it
Speaker 1: turns out, if you made it really super strong but
Speaker 1: it was opaque, the solar panel part has has problems,
Speaker 1: right um, tempered glass they figured is the best way
Speaker 1: to do this. The problem one of the problems with
Speaker 1: tempered glass is that you can't really paint on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's why they came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: using the l e eds to demonstrate light. That meant
Speaker 1: that they were going to have to pick some pretty
Speaker 1: bright L E. D s. We'll talk about that when
Speaker 1: we get to the criticisms part. Sure, Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: then also they wanted to make sure that the light
Speaker 1: was going to pass cleanly through that glass. The glass
Speaker 1: needs to be clear. It can't be you know, if
Speaker 1: if you have a colored glass, that that's telling you
Speaker 1: immediately that there are certain ways that are never going
Speaker 1: to get there. Yeah, they're not going to go through
Speaker 1: necessarily reflecting. So you want that to be clear glass,
Speaker 1: and it needs to be arranged in a way that
Speaker 1: the physical arrangement of any kind of coding on top
Speaker 1: of photo takes is going to have very much to
Speaker 1: do with the way that light refracts and and reflects
Speaker 1: down through it. Yeah, So it's that ends up affecting
Speaker 1: the efficiency of that particular solar panel. They said that
Speaker 1: these solar panels would be around fifteen percent efficient, although
Speaker 1: as far as I know, no independent testing has been
Speaker 1: done of the solar panels, not that I'm aware of,
Speaker 1: although I do currently only have a very small test patch.
Speaker 1: That's uh yeah, speaking of I mean, you know, the
Speaker 1: road systems, like Jonathan talked about at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, are big you've got a lot of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so one of the big challenges that they really
Speaker 1: haven't addressed yet. Uh. You know, they're looking at it
Speaker 1: from the positive perspective, which I totally understand. They're so like,
Speaker 1: look at this, this is going to create millions of jobs.
Speaker 1: But millions of jobs means you have to pay those people. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it also means that you're going to run into
Speaker 1: a lot of equipment costs and manufacturing costs, materials. What
Speaker 1: are you going to do while you are retrofitting a highway?
Speaker 1: You know, what what exactly is going to take place
Speaker 1: with this? Because we don't even know what their proposal
Speaker 1: is for the replacement part. We don't know doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they're going to play solar panels on top of
Speaker 1: pre existing infrastructure. Are we going to have to dig
Speaker 1: up all of the roads right? What where are people
Speaker 1: going to drive while that's going on? You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of questions here that are going to
Speaker 1: be a big challenges. And then of course, you know
Speaker 1: there's cost, like we kind of just said, attached to
Speaker 1: all of this, not only logistical costs, but very real
Speaker 1: money dollar costs, or as very real as money, and
Speaker 1: dollars ever, are right, that's an entirely different conversation that
Speaker 1: we've also had. But uh yeah, I mean these are
Speaker 1: things that they had to take into account, all right.
Speaker 1: So the first prototype they built was a rectangular prototype.
Speaker 1: It was our square really because it was it was
Speaker 1: twelve feet by twelve feet that's about three point seven meters.
Speaker 1: Like cow, you're on the ball today, all right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was this. It was really to test the idea
Speaker 1: to to try the l e eds to create the
Speaker 1: microprocessors that communicate with each other. They do so wirelessly
Speaker 1: by the way. They do this uh kind of messaging
Speaker 1: system between them. Um, the videos are pretty cool, like
Speaker 1: he showed, Uh, I guess it's I assume it's his
Speaker 1: daughter who stands on a panel that's separate from the
Speaker 1: the huge solar panel, the twelve foot one, and when
Speaker 1: she steps on it, it creates that flashing pattern on
Speaker 1: the panel she steps on and then it spells out
Speaker 1: slow down on the test panel, yeah, the giant one.
Speaker 1: Then he also did things like created a maze, a
Speaker 1: little like Pacman style maze that kids could run through
Speaker 1: on this solar panel, which just really showing that the
Speaker 1: L E D s could in fact show Yeah, they
Speaker 1: could be all sorts of different patterns. Um. So that
Speaker 1: was the first prototype. But that, of course is not
Speaker 1: what the the current panel looks like. The current panels
Speaker 1: are hexagonal in shape. I'll talk about that in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: they decided to use glass, like we said, to be
Speaker 1: the protective layer because it let's light pass through and
Speaker 1: the compression strength is good. Now they keep on saying
Speaker 1: it's somewhere between steel and stainless steel for compression. I
Speaker 1: keep in mind, there are lots of different types of strength, right,
Speaker 1: there's tensile strength, there's compressive strength, there's the you know
Speaker 1: how how impact sort of strength. There's all these kind
Speaker 1: of different approaches that you have to look at. And
Speaker 1: in fact, they needed to find a glass that was
Speaker 1: going to be shatter proof, which not that unusual. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen bulletproof glass, so it's not like this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff doesn't exist. Sure, And and tempering glass is
Speaker 1: they talk about it on the site and it's one
Speaker 1: of the things that they get very right. I think,
Speaker 1: and as far as I know about material science, that
Speaker 1: that the tempering process does more or less that that
Speaker 1: thing of of making things very strong and can also
Speaker 1: involve um, you know, shatter resistant coatings or you know
Speaker 1: the kind of glass that's used for example, in car
Speaker 1: wind shields to uh that that will crumble rather than
Speaker 1: charting right right, you won't end up with these these
Speaker 1: incredibly sharp shards of glass. You would have this sort
Speaker 1: of glass rubble that would be a pain to clean up,
Speaker 1: but not so dangerous, yes, less less dangerous. Um. And
Speaker 1: they also needed to pick one that they could add
Speaker 1: a texture to the top of so that vehicles could
Speaker 1: have traction on them. That's kind of important because if
Speaker 1: you would imagine just driving a vehicle over you know,
Speaker 1: like a glass mirror, that would suck. Not to be fair,
Speaker 1: rubber against glass is that you get some attraction. But
Speaker 1: add water to that because I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: been outside, but sometimes it rains, and sometimes it rains
Speaker 1: when you need to drive somewhere occasionally. So they were
Speaker 1: looking at raising like they have actually another hexagonal pattern
Speaker 1: on top of this giant hexagon that is repeated that
Speaker 1: creates the texture so that it helps tires grip the road. Um.
Speaker 1: They claimed that the gripping tests were outperformed asphalt. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how all those tests were conducted,
Speaker 1: but that's that's the claim. Yeah. I also believe that
Speaker 1: they claimed that the the pattern of the glass acts
Speaker 1: like a like a prism to help direct the light
Speaker 1: down into the photovoltaics beneath it. And as for the
Speaker 1: l E d s, those are light emitting diodes. We
Speaker 1: talked about that in the past. Diodes are very basic
Speaker 1: electronic components, one of the basic components in electronics. So
Speaker 1: anyone who happens to have worked with electronics, like if
Speaker 1: you build a circuit, you've probably at some time or
Speaker 1: another wired an LED to some sort of circuit. They
Speaker 1: don't require a lot of energy. They can put off
Speaker 1: a fairly bright light depending upon the LED that you're using. Um.
Speaker 1: Scott Brusol also claims that the prism like nature of
Speaker 1: those hexagons that Lauren was just talking belt also allow
Speaker 1: the led s to project light out six different ways.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what that means. I think he's
Speaker 1: talking about, um, you know, for for that pattern. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, I see capacity right right, Um, it's certainly interesting. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: then we got the heating element, right, which are you know,
Speaker 1: similar to the wires that might run through your your
Speaker 1: rear windshield. That that helps you defrost your car in
Speaker 1: the winter. And uh, he says. Bruce Saw says that
Speaker 1: the tests showed that heating the heating element works well
Speaker 1: and can prevent snow and ice from forming on the
Speaker 1: road itself. They show off a a single solar pedal
Speaker 1: hexagon test photos yes, surrounded by others covered in snow
Speaker 1: that have not had the heating element turned on. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you would have some form of other sensors in
Speaker 1: the in the panel, because you would have to have
Speaker 1: them in order to detect pressure for the other element.
Speaker 1: We were talking about where an animal or child or
Speaker 1: something else is in the road, and thus the road
Speaker 1: is to acting that and alerting the drivers to it
Speaker 1: so that they can prepare themselves. Like I could see
Speaker 1: this being really useful in lots of different ways. Like
Speaker 1: in California, my wife and I went on a road
Speaker 1: trip where we went down a road that frequently would
Speaker 1: get covered up by by mud slides during the rain,
Speaker 1: and it was pouring down rain, and sure enough we
Speaker 1: had to skirt around a couple of mud slides. And
Speaker 1: when you've got a precipitous drop to the Pacific Ocean
Speaker 1: on the other side of it. That's somewhat of a
Speaker 1: nerve wracking experience. We have more to say about solar
Speaker 1: freaking roadways, but first let's take a quig break. Now.
Speaker 1: I mentioned that the microprocessors had little Wi Fi elements
Speaker 1: in them that allow them to talk to each other communication. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the important part of that would be. One of the
Speaker 1: important parts of that, besides sending the messages so that
Speaker 1: the right message is are displayed to drivers so that
Speaker 1: they're alerted to changing conditions, is that if a panel
Speaker 1: were to malfunction, let's say it was hit by lightning
Speaker 1: or some other thing damaged it. Maybe a person who
Speaker 1: knows there some issues with that as well. But let's
Speaker 1: say something damages a one of these hexagons. What's going
Speaker 1: on in the microprocessors is that they're constantly sending out
Speaker 1: little signals to each other. Hey are you there? Oh
Speaker 1: you're there? Hey are you there? Oh you're there. So
Speaker 1: if one of them stops responding, then the rest can
Speaker 1: send a message down the line to get a technician
Speaker 1: out there to replace that guy. Yeah, so the technician
Speaker 1: gets a message saying, hey, this one panel that's at
Speaker 1: mile marker seventy three. It's the third one over from
Speaker 1: the edge of the road needs to be replaced. They
Speaker 1: can go out there. Uh, you know, the lane itself
Speaker 1: can actually help direct traffic around the work area. The
Speaker 1: worker could then pop the the dead panel out, put
Speaker 1: a new panel in and program it with a little
Speaker 1: handheld computer device and supposedly be in and out in
Speaker 1: like ten minutes, and then take the broken solar panel
Speaker 1: back for repairs. Um. At least that's the way it's
Speaker 1: being presented. Now. What they have actually created so far
Speaker 1: is this little test trip that I mentioned earlier, a
Speaker 1: sort of parking lot outside of their workshop. It's twelve
Speaker 1: ft wide by thirty six ft long, which is uh,
Speaker 1: I got three point seven by eleven. It's not a contest. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been looking ahead at those notes all podcasts long
Speaker 1: and doing calculations in my head. Uh. This little this
Speaker 1: little test strip is is meant to be a test trip.
Speaker 1: But it's a little environment for them to work out
Speaker 1: every everything from you know, from the stress tests to
Speaker 1: the electronic components functionality, making sure the heating elements are working,
Speaker 1: make sure the LEDs work. They've driven a smallish tractor
Speaker 1: across it, to kind of demonstrate that it can withstand
Speaker 1: the pressure of a vehicle. But that's it is a
Speaker 1: smalleish tractor and it is not moving very quickly. That's
Speaker 1: not to say that they haven't done other tests, oh certainly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they've been working on this project. They in
Speaker 1: fact received a few grants from the Department of Transportation
Speaker 1: and specifically the Federal Highway Administrations to I think along
Speaker 1: the lines of of like seven hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: and then their Indigo, their indiego Go project funded right right,
Speaker 1: so than funded. Yeah, and let's talk about that Indiego
Speaker 1: Go campaign. Okay. So, so, like, like we said, this
Speaker 1: project has been going on since about two thousand six,
Speaker 1: but it really went viral in when they opened up
Speaker 1: this Indie Go Go campaign on April one, which is
Speaker 1: the day before Earth Day, which is very clever marketing.
Speaker 1: And uh. They talked all about what this potential project
Speaker 1: could do in an ideal implementation it. Their tagline um,
Speaker 1: which which I think is telling about many things about
Speaker 1: the project is i'll quote quote it for you guys,
Speaker 1: solar panels that you can drive, park and walk on.
Speaker 1: They melt snow and cut greenhouse gases by question mark,
Speaker 1: exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point triple and taro bang. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty incredible. Yeah, they they've extended the campaign right
Speaker 1: as of this recording. We are recording this show on June,
Speaker 1: they have more than doubled their campaign goal of a
Speaker 1: million bucks and still have nine days left. So they've
Speaker 1: successfully funded, more than successful. And um, so what was that?
Speaker 1: What's that million dollars for? Exactly? Well, although the campaign
Speaker 1: page does suggest all of these huge possibilities for the
Speaker 1: future that we talked about earlier on in the show,
Speaker 1: that million dollars is really just for hiring an initial
Speaker 1: team of engineers and I quote to help us make
Speaker 1: a few needed tweaks in our product and streamline our
Speaker 1: process so that we could go from prototype to production.
Speaker 1: And they were hoping to go into production by the
Speaker 1: end of That's that's ambitious. Yeah, that that's one way
Speaker 1: of putting it. That is incredibly ambitious because, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: even if they produce, they then have to have a
Speaker 1: place to put them. Um, but we'll we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that in a second. Yes, Um, so that this
Speaker 1: this campaign really went viral with the help of a
Speaker 1: particular video. At the very beginning of this podcast, I
Speaker 1: talked about solar Freaking Roadways. Roadway Roadways. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: produced by the team and repeatedly uses the phrase solar
Speaker 1: freaking roadways. You probably have seen it if you, I know,
Speaker 1: it went viral on Facebook. I saw it posted by
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends. I thought on on Tumblr
Speaker 1: and Twitter as well. Um, and it has in fact
Speaker 1: set an Indigogo record for the number of individual backers
Speaker 1: attached to a single project. Currently it is sitting at
Speaker 1: forty thousand, three d and seven, which in metric is
Speaker 1: a lot. It's the same it's the same number, same number.
Speaker 1: But you know, but but they they are all based
Speaker 1: on a specific person who's kept in a vault in Switzerland. Uh.
Speaker 1: Moving on to the critics, or, as some have termed them,
Speaker 1: the haters. So here's the thing. You put any idea
Speaker 1: up online, people are going to respond to it in
Speaker 1: multiple ways some people. Some people will likely be supportive,
Speaker 1: and some people will be critical, not not necessarily in
Speaker 1: an effort to be mean or nasty, although that often
Speaker 1: happens to that's frequently a side effect. Yeah, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just to say, um, hang on. So there have
Speaker 1: been multiple responses to this video in the are critical
Speaker 1: in nature, and again some of them are are more
Speaker 1: kind of measured and saying I do not understand how
Speaker 1: they are going to achieve X. Some of them are
Speaker 1: a little more direct, saying there's no way they could
Speaker 1: possibly achieve X, and some of them are like, you
Speaker 1: are stupid if you think you can achieve X, You're stupid,
Speaker 1: and your face is stupid, and your cat is stupid.
Speaker 1: Mom is stupid. Yeah. Yeah, So, at any rate, we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about some of the criticisms or more
Speaker 1: of those former reasonable ones, less the cat thing. Some
Speaker 1: of them got a little snarky, and we might as well.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, there's a website called gelot Nick
Speaker 1: that sent a request to another electrical engineer. Because you
Speaker 1: may remember we said Scott Brusso's an electrical engineer. This
Speaker 1: electrical engineer is named David David Forbes, so this is
Speaker 1: we're talking about a person named Forbes, not the magazine, sure,
Speaker 1: and they asked them to evaluate this solar roadways proposal,
Speaker 1: and Forbes listed some some concerns and said that the
Speaker 1: campaign was quote so flawed that I don't know where
Speaker 1: to start end quote. Specifically, he pointed out the problem
Speaker 1: with costs. Uh that installation time would be incredible, and
Speaker 1: thus the expense for paying people to install all of
Speaker 1: these panels into roads would also be incredible. Said that
Speaker 1: laying an asphalt road pretty much involves using an enormous
Speaker 1: machine that does all the work for you. You just
Speaker 1: walk along to make sure the machine is still working properly.
Speaker 1: But this would take really intensive human labor. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: laying down these hexagonal panels would be more of a
Speaker 1: human job less than a machine job. So if you're
Speaker 1: just talking about replacing one road, I mean just think
Speaker 1: of a typical road in your area, and imagine having
Speaker 1: to replace all of that panel by panel with these
Speaker 1: hexagonal panels. There are a couple of feet across, less
Speaker 1: than a meter across, and you you have to replace
Speaker 1: the whole thing. That's significant, And we're talking about potentially,
Speaker 1: like if you're if you're taking the video at face value,
Speaker 1: eventually replacing all roads that's and that's enormous, And that
Speaker 1: also includes the time it takes to either prep the
Speaker 1: existing road surface or to tear it, tear it right up.
Speaker 1: I would imagine you would have to tear it up.
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine just putting the panels on top of it,
Speaker 1: because where where are the power? Where's the power coming
Speaker 1: out of? Like, if if these solar panels are collecting energy,
Speaker 1: how do you get that energy from the solar panel
Speaker 1: to anything else that would actually be useful? And they
Speaker 1: were also talking so much about about the trenching that
Speaker 1: the cable trenches and all in the runoff trenches and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Now, if somehow the hexagonal
Speaker 1: panels interlock so that they can become kind of a
Speaker 1: channel for power, I suppose you could end up having
Speaker 1: just one side of it, be the the section that
Speaker 1: connects to a larger cable, and then the panels in
Speaker 1: that row would all feed. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's the case, because certainly the signals that's sending back
Speaker 1: and forth are through this wireless microprocessor. It's not a
Speaker 1: circuit that's connected by edge to edge contact, So I
Speaker 1: don't think that's actually how it's happening, Which means you
Speaker 1: have to wire each individual panel to your conduit that
Speaker 1: is taking the energy from the panel and sending it
Speaker 1: to wherever it needs to go. All right, that's before
Speaker 1: you even get to the point of where does the
Speaker 1: power go? Because you can't just magically make it go
Speaker 1: to where it needs to be. You actually have to
Speaker 1: build the infrastructure in their little transmission stations to collect
Speaker 1: that power and send it on and change the the
Speaker 1: the voltage of it. I mean, that's why we have transformers,
Speaker 1: because we need to be able to you know, there's
Speaker 1: lots of problems, and then there's the current issue voltage
Speaker 1: versus current lots of problems there um. That not to
Speaker 1: say that it's insurmountable amountable or that they don't have
Speaker 1: answers to those those questions, but I haven't seen them.
Speaker 1: I have not either, So that would mean that you
Speaker 1: have to rip up all that road. So first you
Speaker 1: gotta rip up the road before you even do anything else.
Speaker 1: Then you have to prepare the ground that you've just
Speaker 1: ripped up for laying the solar panels down. And then
Speaker 1: you have to lay the solar panels down. So this
Speaker 1: is a monumental job. Um. Also that that expense issue,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, solar panels just from a material's cost,
Speaker 1: just the silicone in them, silicon silicon, just the silicon
Speaker 1: in them is really expensive. Also, l ed s also glass,
Speaker 1: all of these things. I mean, you're you're talking about
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand square miles of material. Ultimately you're talking
Speaker 1: about so just twenty square miles of glass would be expensive.
Speaker 1: And yes, it gets less expensive per unit when you're
Speaker 1: buying in volume in bulk. But but but even so,
Speaker 1: that expense can only go down so far before you
Speaker 1: finally have hit at cost. And it's never going to
Speaker 1: be less than that certainly, So there's that issue. Um.
Speaker 1: And then Forbes brought up an interesting warning about about
Speaker 1: the possibility if you have the complex electronics. Yes, what
Speaker 1: happens if someone whimsically decides to mess mess with that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say that you have these microprocessors all communicating wirelessly
Speaker 1: to each other. What happens if a hacker is able
Speaker 1: to manipulate that system and is able to insert some
Speaker 1: malicious commands so that a command that normally would say
Speaker 1: slow down doesn't show up, or they end up changing
Speaker 1: all the lanes, or they change the lanes looking like
Speaker 1: like that reversible lane example is telling you what if
Speaker 1: from both sides of travel, they make it look like
Speaker 1: that center lane is the appropriate lane. That's bad times.
Speaker 1: That's bad times. That's that's crash times, not good times.
Speaker 1: So I mean whether or not that particular system would
Speaker 1: be easy to hack or not easy to hack, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you someone would try to do it. And eventually,
Speaker 1: if someone is determined enough, they would be able to
Speaker 1: do something if nothing else may be disrupted. So you
Speaker 1: just have a big blank slate that you're driving on
Speaker 1: that alone would be difficult because you don't have any
Speaker 1: lanes at all, and then you just have an enormous
Speaker 1: wide road to be like, be like our highway system
Speaker 1: turned into all those country lanes I went on in
Speaker 1: Ireland where you're like, I don't even know if this
Speaker 1: is for two way traffic or this is a thing
Speaker 1: that Forbes did not bring up that that that I
Speaker 1: remember seeing. But but what if you just got a
Speaker 1: blue screen? Yeah, yeah, if essentially crash and but now
Speaker 1: presumably if you had maybe just one crash, you would
Speaker 1: get that you know, the person or the entity that
Speaker 1: overseasian and the whole thing. But if you're talking about
Speaker 1: something that ends up perhaps affecting a wide stretch of road,
Speaker 1: then you've got some serious problems. And then yeah, sending
Speaker 1: someone out to reset a single panel, that's and then
Speaker 1: making sure that person is safe while they are doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this is not necessarily easy. Other critics
Speaker 1: brought up lots of other concerns, like traction, what happens
Speaker 1: when the glass gets wet um. Some people talked about
Speaker 1: the glasses resilience to scratches. So you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just rubber that's having those roads. It's dirt and sand
Speaker 1: and weird gritty particles in the you know, claws of
Speaker 1: animals whatever, So that ends up getting up ends up
Speaker 1: getting rubbed in as the as the tires go over
Speaker 1: the road. Sand especially could cause scratches and the glass
Speaker 1: because sand is made of glass yep, and ends up
Speaker 1: possibly making it more opaque, which means that less light
Speaker 1: can actually get through or at the very least bouncing
Speaker 1: around light in ways that are not ideal to getting
Speaker 1: it down to the photovoltaic layers. So then your your
Speaker 1: energy collection becomes less efficient. Keep in mind that one
Speaker 1: of the big claims we didn't really mention this, but
Speaker 1: that one of the big claims of this is that
Speaker 1: if this were deployed throughout the entire United States and
Speaker 1: did replace all those paved areas we had talked about
Speaker 1: According to the claim, we would be producing three times
Speaker 1: the amount of energy we currently consume. So that's not
Speaker 1: to say that we would suddenly be in a energy
Speaker 1: surplus and we'd have more energy than we need, because
Speaker 1: as we've all seen, we'll we'll use that surplus. We
Speaker 1: find ways we don't. We don't suddenly have a bounty.
Speaker 1: We just have a larger pool that we work in
Speaker 1: at any rate. Other u other criticisms were that LED
Speaker 1: visibility visibility in bright light might be an issue. There's
Speaker 1: there's debate on this because it depends on how how
Speaker 1: it's implemented. Yeah, I feel like this is I mean,
Speaker 1: it's certainly a concern, you know, because you know, but
Speaker 1: we've we've got signs and traffic signals that use L
Speaker 1: E D s, but that's usually in a perpendicular plane
Speaker 1: to where sunlight's coming down. If it's if the sun's
Speaker 1: directly overhead and it's a really bright day, there is
Speaker 1: some question about whether or not the L E ED
Speaker 1: lanes would be visible and night would be great. Oh,
Speaker 1: it would be perfect at night bright sunlight situation during
Speaker 1: the day unless those prisms, uh that that Scott was
Speaker 1: talking about are really very well aligned. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see how direct the lights so that you can actually
Speaker 1: see it even in the brightest of sunlight. It's possible.
Speaker 1: I just haven't seen any demonstration of it. By the way,
Speaker 1: we should also mention, uh, their workshop is in Idaho,
Speaker 1: about an hour from the border from Canada, so their
Speaker 1: sunlight conditions are slightly different than say here in Georgia. Sure,
Speaker 1: but they also get a lot more snow. Uh, So
Speaker 1: there's that as well. Then there's the question, speaking of
Speaker 1: snow and ice, about is that really the most efficient
Speaker 1: way to melt it, to to use a heating element too,
Speaker 1: Is that or does it mean that you're actually using
Speaker 1: more energy to get rid of that snow and ice
Speaker 1: than you would if you were to say, use salt
Speaker 1: trucks and plows and uh, you know, it all depends
Speaker 1: on how much snow there is, how cold it is. Um.
Speaker 1: It also keep in mind that when it's snowing, there's
Speaker 1: a problem when you're using a solar panel based techn
Speaker 1: knowledge because in the middle of a snowstorm, you're not
Speaker 1: getting as much sun he would during other times. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: any sun probably, Yeah, the sunlight factors is kind of
Speaker 1: a non factor in that case not to mention like
Speaker 1: if it snows at night, you know, then you get
Speaker 1: the double problem. So you need to power this heating
Speaker 1: system in some way, and that means you would be
Speaker 1: pumping power from back in. So then you have the
Speaker 1: problem of Now, grant, if the United States had one
Speaker 1: giant smart grid where power could route from any part
Speaker 1: of the United States to any other part of the
Speaker 1: United States at will, that would be a non issue.
Speaker 1: That is not how it works at all. We have
Speaker 1: regional power grids and most of them are working at capacity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there are definitely some remote areas that would have
Speaker 1: a huge problem with this kind of thing under our
Speaker 1: current infrastructure. Yea, So that is a real issue there. Also,
Speaker 1: there's just the question of if it's made up of tiles,
Speaker 1: that means you do have edges. Yeah, these these places
Speaker 1: where tiles meet up against each other. So there's the
Speaker 1: possibility of stuff getting between those edges and disrupting the
Speaker 1: the road system that way. For instance, just water that's freezing.
Speaker 1: And sure, maybe the water on the surface of the
Speaker 1: tiles doesn't freeze because it's heated, but maybe water getting
Speaker 1: between tiles could freeze and then expand and push these
Speaker 1: tiles apart, or you know, the ground moves. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: ground can change. I mean, ground can change for lots
Speaker 1: of reasons, not just earthquakes. Oh yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if if trees or other plants are growing nearby, root
Speaker 1: systems can disrupt the shape of a flat otherwise flat
Speaker 1: ground surface. Anyone who's walked along any sidewalk that's made
Speaker 1: up of these panels has probably seen cracks in the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: which comes from the movements and the ground, and thus
Speaker 1: the movements of the the material itself. You know, material
Speaker 1: can expand and contract as the heat changes, right, Oh, certainly.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, furthermore, any time it rains, the
Speaker 1: ground is changing dynamically with that rainfall. No matter how
Speaker 1: well you seeal a roadway off, it's never going to
Speaker 1: be completely perfec It's time for another quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll be back to close out the solar roadways story
Speaker 1: as at least as far as June six thousand fourteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got the hardness of glass versus the softness of asphalt.
Speaker 1: Asphalt bends with your car as you're driving over it,
Speaker 1: and this is intrinsic to the way that people design
Speaker 1: cars by The Way Car Stuff is about to record
Speaker 1: an episode about solar roadways. It should be publishing this week,
Speaker 1: right around the same time that this episode publishes, so well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll try to remember to drop a link out to
Speaker 1: it on social I hope that this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that they're going to talk about, because I
Speaker 1: find I'm a little bit clueless about how that entire
Speaker 1: thing works, and I'm interested to hear more about it. Well,
Speaker 1: on top of that, I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: the the solar panels all that weight. Sure you've got
Speaker 1: the glass that's protecting the solar panel technology, but it's
Speaker 1: not like the glass just absorbs all the force. That
Speaker 1: force still is going to be going through the solar
Speaker 1: panel and then into the base of the solar panel. Uh,
Speaker 1: depending upon what the ground is beneath it. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's able to do this without
Speaker 1: damaging the solar panel material. Uh if that could also
Speaker 1: create wiggle room. I mean you're talking about tiles, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're driving over the edge of a tile,
Speaker 1: like you imagine that the pressure it's not constantly pressing
Speaker 1: straight down on the tile, it's moving across the tile
Speaker 1: like like a rolling pin across the dough. If you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to roll out cookie dough, you know that
Speaker 1: it's actually a little bit of work to get that
Speaker 1: surface flat. And even because you're working with a curved surface,
Speaker 1: that's going to affect things slightly differently, so you could
Speaker 1: end up creating UH like tiles could be wiggling at
Speaker 1: the edges and then they could become uneven. If they
Speaker 1: become uneven, then you have other edges that are sticking
Speaker 1: up higher than the one next to it, So then
Speaker 1: it becomes a bumpy surface to drive on, perhaps even
Speaker 1: a dangerous one. Share. These are all criticisms that people
Speaker 1: have made UH that you know, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the implementation won't somehow address them, but it's stuff that
Speaker 1: hasn't hasn't really been covered so far by by the team. UM.
Speaker 1: And a couple more before we transition away UM the
Speaker 1: question there's a question of whether tires could leave tread
Speaker 1: marks on the glass UH, adding to the opacity and
Speaker 1: reducing the efficiency UM and also the loudness of a
Speaker 1: car traveling at speed over glass. UM. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes roads noisy is the
Speaker 1: material that that road is made of um and any
Speaker 1: kind of gaps or cracks, and the material tend to
Speaker 1: produce a lot of noise. And so if you're working
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of tiles, uh, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of gaps and cracks. And also just I mean, the
Speaker 1: surface of the glass is different from asphalt, and so
Speaker 1: it could it could hypothetically be very noisy. If you
Speaker 1: ever have driven over a road that's made of brick,
Speaker 1: for example, then you've probably heard the difference, not much
Speaker 1: felt the difference, but but definitely heard the difference. And
Speaker 1: now these these panels are larger than that, so you
Speaker 1: would actually that would mean that the noise could be
Speaker 1: even more irritating. Actually yeah, but uh yes, So all
Speaker 1: of these materials problems. And then there is the price.
Speaker 1: Of course, it is completely impossible to say exactly how
Speaker 1: much the project would actually cost if undertaken so massively,
Speaker 1: you know, with all of the lowest bitter manufacturing and
Speaker 1: installation costs that any government project has. But what we
Speaker 1: do know is the cost of asphalt um, which is
Speaker 1: variable at some three to fifteen bucks per square foot
Speaker 1: once installed, depending on a whole number of factors UM.
Speaker 1: And we know the rough cost of solar panels, the
Speaker 1: very rough cost really it's it's currently some seventy five
Speaker 1: cents per what of capacity for consumer installation UM with
Speaker 1: a square foot of solar panel comprising some eight to
Speaker 1: ten watts, which means that you're talking about like five
Speaker 1: bucks to seven and a half bucks per square foot
Speaker 1: for the photo voltaics alone right at on top of that,
Speaker 1: the cost of micro microprocessors, the other sensors that are
Speaker 1: involved the glass. One YouTuber that you looked at had
Speaker 1: done some numbers on the glass. Thunderfoot is the name
Speaker 1: of the YouTuber who has a twenty eight minute long
Speaker 1: video that's a critique of this project. Uh and and
Speaker 1: Thunderfoot is he's little less diplomatic than other people, but
Speaker 1: he on YouTube on YouTube, but he makes some very
Speaker 1: interesting points that you know, these are concerns that have
Speaker 1: to be answered, and one of those was just he
Speaker 1: was just looking at the sheer amount, no pun intended,
Speaker 1: of glass needed for this project, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: five thousand square miles of roads, and he through his
Speaker 1: calculations he said, well, just based upon the amount that
Speaker 1: this glass cost and the amount of area UM, I
Speaker 1: come up with twenty trillion dollars just for the class.
Speaker 1: That's more money than what I think anyone is prepared
Speaker 1: to pay for. Yes, I have seen estimates around the
Speaker 1: internet arranging close to fifty to sixty trillion dollars for
Speaker 1: the total cost of the project. To put this in
Speaker 1: perspective a little bit, the annual budget that the Department
Speaker 1: of Transportation asked for for the National Highway Association uh
Speaker 1: IN was forty one billion dollars, so less than a
Speaker 1: ten of what this would potentially cost, according to some people,
Speaker 1: could potentially cost. Maybe now. Solar Roadways has responded to
Speaker 1: a lot of these criticisms, not necessarily effectively in my
Speaker 1: in my opinion, but one of the things, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: for the cost. The response to the cost I don't
Speaker 1: think was a real response. Again in my opinion, they said, essentially,
Speaker 1: we don't know how much a panel is going to
Speaker 1: cost yet because we haven't cost out the prototype, because
Speaker 1: this is all stuff that we're buying off the shelf
Speaker 1: to make a working concept, right and don't have a
Speaker 1: production model yet. Right this the dollars that we are
Speaker 1: getting from our indio go campaign are going to people
Speaker 1: who are very intelligent and are going to help us
Speaker 1: make this cost efficiency, so they don't. So their response
Speaker 1: to it doesn't cost fifty or sixty trillion dollars because
Speaker 1: we don't know how much it costs yet. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a fair response in the sense that they don't
Speaker 1: have a figure. But it also and and it is
Speaker 1: it is fair when they say that, Um, any journalist
Speaker 1: who reports on the exact number that's going to cost
Speaker 1: doesn't know what they're talking about because technically none of
Speaker 1: us know what we're talking about. Now, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it won't cost fifty or sixty trillion dollars. It
Speaker 1: might it might cost more than that, depending upon what
Speaker 1: the final cost of any individual solar panel is. Uh,
Speaker 1: it may cost more than that to outfit the entire
Speaker 1: United States. The point they were making is that we
Speaker 1: don't know yet, so don't report those numbers. Because I
Speaker 1: don't know why they're so concerned. Their indiegog project has
Speaker 1: already funded, so they can at least uh continue on
Speaker 1: and see how feasible this is. But it's one of
Speaker 1: the responses. And it was actually a flexible, flexible funding one,
Speaker 1: which means that even if they hadn't reached their full
Speaker 1: funding amount, the money that people had given to the
Speaker 1: project would have still most of it would have gone
Speaker 1: to them. Well, Indie goog takes a bigger chunk on
Speaker 1: that case. But uh, Then some of the other refutations
Speaker 1: they had didn't seem to address what the concern was.
Speaker 1: For example, that criticism about heating roadways being inefficient and
Speaker 1: expensive compared to say, using a snowplow. Their response first
Speaker 1: was that um, driving in the wind in the winter
Speaker 1: during ice or snowstorms is dangerous, which no one, no
Speaker 1: one was arguing, and no one had questioned every that's
Speaker 1: that's evident that driving in those conditions is dangerous and
Speaker 1: therefore reducing those conditions is a good thing. No one
Speaker 1: disagrees with that. Then they also said that it's expensive
Speaker 1: to run snow plows and salt trucks, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: No one said it wasn't expensive. Not a question, you know,
Speaker 1: they were saying, is it? You know, it proved to
Speaker 1: us that your approach of using heat is more efficient
Speaker 1: and more cost effective than this other one. Because again,
Speaker 1: if you are in an area that needs this service,
Speaker 1: you are also in an area where you're not generating
Speaker 1: that electricity dynamically and unless you have some magical way
Speaker 1: of getting the electricity from sunny places to the places
Speaker 1: that are under lots of snow. That means you're pouring
Speaker 1: power into the system, and that trying to melt snow
Speaker 1: or ice it caught it requires a lot of energy,
Speaker 1: and so if you're having to use a lot of energy,
Speaker 1: then that means that it might be costing you more
Speaker 1: money in the long run to use that method than
Speaker 1: to use a snowplow. And you can't use a snowplow
Speaker 1: on this type of road. So once it's there, you're
Speaker 1: stuck with you You're stuck with it until you can
Speaker 1: melt it. Uh So, one thing that I haven't seen
Speaker 1: addressed that I did want to mention is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: solar energy is wonderful in theory. I've talked about this
Speaker 1: on the show before. I think um and costs and
Speaker 1: manufacturing practices are improving all the time. But as it stands,
Speaker 1: it is not completely green that this is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a super earth friendly technology. It is frequently better in
Speaker 1: the long run than some other things. But okay, the
Speaker 1: thing is is that solar panels are made with rare
Speaker 1: earth elements, so called not because they're all that rare.
Speaker 1: They're actually fairly common, but rather because they're found in
Speaker 1: very small concentrations and surrounding or refining them is really
Speaker 1: difficult and can involve some truly scary chemical processes. Right now,
Speaker 1: most of this is done in China because their cheapest
Speaker 1: from China, mostly because the minds are state run, their
Speaker 1: employees are terrifically underpaid, and their practices are blatantly irresponsible.
Speaker 1: We're talking about these sites which are situated smack in
Speaker 1: the middle of residential areas, dumping you know, like toxic
Speaker 1: sulfuric acid vapor into the local air and radioactive thorium
Speaker 1: into the local water systems. It is a really huge concern.
Speaker 1: Right So, while the generating of electricity itself is green,
Speaker 1: the generating of the solar panels is not. Is not
Speaker 1: and and of course you know the these these minds
Speaker 1: in China, are these irresponsible minds in China are not
Speaker 1: the only ones producing the materials for our solar panels.
Speaker 1: I don't want to represent that because that would be untrue.
Speaker 1: And I do believe that there are many places that
Speaker 1: are working towards much better systems, but still a current
Speaker 1: concern and anyone who's listened to Uh, there's an old
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff episode on rare Earth minerals as well, where
Speaker 1: we really go into the detail of what they are
Speaker 1: and why there's this this problem with them. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, everything from the issues you were just talking
Speaker 1: about Lauren too to artificial scarcity, where you have a
Speaker 1: country like China restricting how much they will deport, how
Speaker 1: much they will export, not deport how much they'll export
Speaker 1: to other countries, almost as a way of like some
Speaker 1: people would call it extortion. It's controlling the market. Certainly,
Speaker 1: they are forcing foreign companies to build plants in their
Speaker 1: borders in order to do their thing right, and once
Speaker 1: money gets into China it rarely um so, so there's that. Also,
Speaker 1: I did want to point out that a lot of
Speaker 1: the teams, the solar roadways teams ideas, really aren't related
Speaker 1: to the solar part of the roadway at all, but
Speaker 1: are rather, you know, to the l ed s and
Speaker 1: the potential smart capacity of the system, which is another
Speaker 1: are twillions of dollars more in research and development and implementation. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is again we're talking about an enormous endeavor. I
Speaker 1: guess you could argue that these early days are still
Speaker 1: to prove the concept is viable, and if in fact
Speaker 1: it is viable, maybe we see the rollout as an
Speaker 1: extremely gradual role. It would have to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's no magical manufacturing process that's going to turn
Speaker 1: these things out in the volume necessary to cover all
Speaker 1: the roads anyway. Oh, certainly not. But you know, maybe
Speaker 1: for private practices it could be a you know, if
Speaker 1: a company wanted to pave their parking lot. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see this as being something that's used on
Speaker 1: a more modest scale. A lot of the critics also say,
Speaker 1: why pour money into this particular project when we could
Speaker 1: use a similar approach to places that are not constantly
Speaker 1: covered by cars, like putting solar panels along the sides
Speaker 1: of roads or on top of buildings. So, in that sense,
Speaker 1: using this technology to uh in ways where you don't
Speaker 1: have the considerations of how do you do this without
Speaker 1: disrupting all traffic everywhere or putting things in danger or
Speaker 1: having a an infrastructure that has to be replaced frequently
Speaker 1: because of just the wear and tear. I'm curious about
Speaker 1: why a system of kinetic kinetic road plates hasn't received
Speaker 1: this kind of attention, and yeah, I mean kinetic road
Speaker 1: plates would have their own issue because you're talking about
Speaker 1: transferring kinetic motion from the car to the roadway, and
Speaker 1: unless you do it in a very very smart way,
Speaker 1: you're just adding more work for the car to do.
Speaker 1: So it's just a you're not you're not generating more
Speaker 1: energy that way. You're actually spending the same amount of
Speaker 1: energy you would be capturing just in your car. You'd
Speaker 1: be collecting it in aggregate, but your car would have
Speaker 1: to work harder so on each you know, it's a
Speaker 1: This is why energy problems are hard, because they're big.
Speaker 1: You know, you can look at one individual piece of
Speaker 1: an energy problem and you say, oh, if we just
Speaker 1: fix this, everything's fine, But then you have to step
Speaker 1: outside of that and look at a bigger picture, and
Speaker 1: that's when it gets really complicated. So personally, I think
Speaker 1: the idea as presented is worth exploring at least to
Speaker 1: see how feasible it is and in what context. So
Speaker 1: I would be amazed if this actually becomes a viable
Speaker 1: means of replacing roads. I really would. I think it's
Speaker 1: a neat idea. I just don't see it working. I
Speaker 1: would eat my proverbial hat. Yeah, it is proverbial. She
Speaker 1: is not wearing a hat because the headphones don't fit
Speaker 1: over hats. Um. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm extremely dubious, you guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it could potentially be something interesting for you know,
Speaker 1: parking lots or paved public spaces, sidewalks that could maybe
Speaker 1: be But I mean, I think in the sidewalks I
Speaker 1: walked down and how the things like a tree growing
Speaker 1: ends up completely destroying the sidewalk in the matter of
Speaker 1: a couple of years. Uh. And that's that's a you know,
Speaker 1: regular old clay ceramic dial that doesn't have any you
Speaker 1: know in it poisonous electronics. So I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's worth looking into because if nothing else, it means
Speaker 1: that we might get ideas for alternate approaches that could
Speaker 1: builp down the road. I just don't think this one's
Speaker 1: gonna pay yea. And I certainly don't want to quash
Speaker 1: you know, scientific inquiry and and curiosity, nor do I
Speaker 1: want to green areas and roadways. That's terrific. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: if any of you have contributed to this project, we're
Speaker 1: not even saying that that was a mistake, not at all.
Speaker 1: What we're saying is that, uh, don't buy into the
Speaker 1: hype wholeheartedly, go in with some skepticism, some critical thinking,
Speaker 1: and realize that even if this doesn't end up paying
Speaker 1: off in the implementation they're talking about, we could end
Speaker 1: up coming up with some really cool ideas that are
Speaker 1: similar to it and that we could benefit from other ways.
Speaker 1: And and who knows. The worst case scenario with our
Speaker 1: personal opinions is that we're wrong and it works, and
Speaker 1: if it works, it's awesome. Actually that's kind of a
Speaker 1: best case scenario really from the project, Like I would
Speaker 1: take that I would love to be proven wrong, that
Speaker 1: that's true. I would love that my skepticism turns out
Speaker 1: to be unwarranted and that the problems I foresee, like
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to think of using a hexagonal system
Speaker 1: of tiles in areas that have lots of hills and
Speaker 1: valleys and turns in them that would require some pretty
Speaker 1: you know, how do you get it? They also have
Speaker 1: trapezoidal half test that yeah, it just but it doesn't
Speaker 1: make me nonetheless, Yeah, but but I would love to
Speaker 1: be proven wrong and to see that this works perfectly,
Speaker 1: because you know, I want to drive around in tron
Speaker 1: world or at least have my driverless car take me
Speaker 1: around in tron world. Oh yeah, me too. And if
Speaker 1: this ultimately did work out and we were also able
Speaker 1: to have electric vehicles everywhere and really cut back on
Speaker 1: that pollution, that'd be fantastic. Um yeah. Some of their
Speaker 1: further ideas are to you know, provide induction surfaces to
Speaker 1: let these this the solar powered roadway also directly charge
Speaker 1: your electric vehicle as you drive it around. Yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be that's pretty awesome. That'd be pretty amazing. Yeah, essentially
Speaker 1: you have a car that you never have to refuel. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a future that can charge in a parking
Speaker 1: lot while you're you know, while you're at Taco bell
Speaker 1: or whatever. Talk about sorry I said the taco bell
Speaker 1: word has been growling this whole podcast. Um yeah, I
Speaker 1: could eat like a king. I got like three bucks
Speaker 1: in my pocket. Uh yeah, this is this is something
Speaker 1: that we would love to see happen. We just really
Speaker 1: think that it's a long shot, you know. Now, this
Speaker 1: is Jonathan from one Again. Just wanted to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, the solar roadways groups, they're still they're still active,
Speaker 1: but you know, clearly we haven't seen an enormous revolution.
Speaker 1: It's not like the world or even a single country
Speaker 1: has replaced all of its roadways with solar panels. Such
Speaker 1: an endeavor would be enormous, incredibly time consuming, incredibly disruptive
Speaker 1: to daily life. Um And as it turns out, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to get that technology to work properly so
Speaker 1: that it is consistently reliable and doesn't require replacement super frequently. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it has seemed to proven to be
Speaker 1: impractical at least so far. And um, you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't hasn't stopped people from trying. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a worthy effort for certain applications. I'm not convinced roadways
Speaker 1: or one of them. I think they're too many other
Speaker 1: factors that complicate things as far as roadways go. But
Speaker 1: being able to cover certain surfaces with solar panels so
Speaker 1: that we can use them that otherwise would just go
Speaker 1: unused to generate electricity, I think that's a pretty smart idea,
Speaker 1: depending on where you are. Obviously, if you're in a
Speaker 1: place that doesn't get a lot of sun exposure, doesn't
Speaker 1: make much sense. It would just be really expensive. But
Speaker 1: I like the concept. I just wish it were more practical.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
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