Solar Freakin’ Roadways
Solar Freakin’ Roadways: Possibility or Pipe Dream?
In 2014, an American Company called Solar Roadways created a viral internet marketing video entitled Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways! to raise awareness for their solar panel pavement-replacement initiative. It sounds great! Every driving, walking, parking, and even outdoor sports surface is covered in solar panels with warming capabilities to keep ice from forming and LED lights to change court configurations or send warning messages to drivers on the road of any upcoming obstruction. Why have plain ol’ asphalt sitting there doing nothing when we could have solar freakin’ roadways generating electricity and keeping us safer?
The cost of solar technology has plummeted since its inception—70% in the last decade alone. With that plummet comes a skyrocket in consumer affordability, which means jobs! With more than 17% growth in 2019, the solar industry’s future is bright (sorry, couldn’t resist at least one bad pun). The number of photons hitting the Earth from the Sun in one hour could power the globe for an entire year. Why not put those boring roadways to use?
Solar Roadways did install solar panels at a town square in Sandpoint, Idaho in 2016. The project opened in a town square (not a roadway), containing 30 hexagonal solar panels (totaling 150 square feet), and electricity production has been lower than expected. Almost one-third of the energy produced by the solar panels is used to power the LED lights; remaining electricity is used to heat the panels and prevent freezing. While this is an accomplishment, it falls short of their claim that solar roadways would pay for themselves and lower everyone’s electric bills.
Other countries have gone even further and installed solar panel roadways. In 2016, France became the first country to install a stretch of solar highway (1 kilometer or 0.6 miles). Projections placed the roadway at creating 800 kilowatt hours a day, but it looks like actual results are closer to half that.
China debuted a 1-kilometer solar highway in 2017, claiming the capability of producing 1 gigawatt of electricity every year. However, 14 weeks after opening, the highway had created electricity at far less than half of the projected rate (96 megawatts). While the highway was purported to be able to withstand 10 times the pressure of typical asphalt, the Chinese solar roadway was reportedly damaged by falling debris just a few days after opening.
Solar (freakin’) roadways bring with them a number of hurdles. The biggest of which is they have to lie flat. Standard solar panels have ventilation in the back of the cell to allow the panel to operate at the ideal temperature (if a solar panel is too warm, it loses efficiency). Solar roadways can’t be tilted at an angle to catch the most sun, fall victim to dirt, shade, and traffic jams – all of which reduce efficiency. Just 5% of a solar panel being shaded can cut the amount of electricity produced by 50%.
The cost of solar highways versus other solar projects also appears prohibitive. A standard asphalt road costs about $5 per 1 square meter. France’s solar project cost $5.2 million for one kilometer (0.6 miles), and China’s project was $458 per square meter, totaling $2.7 million. These were both pilot projects, which are traditionally far more expensive than any final, mass-produced product. However, many critics point out solar arrays cost a fraction of a solar highway and create three times the electricity. Given the immediacy of the need to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, those critics argue, we should be investing more in getting cities off fossil fuels with proven and efficient methods before focusing on innovation that needs more refining.
Innovation is baked into the American psyche and a myriad of solar projects and start-ups prove this. The Ray C. Anderson Foundation in Atlanta has taken 18 miles of Interstate 85 and decided to feature emissions-reducing technologies, including a small stretch of solar roadway in front of the visitor center (produced by the same company that developed the solar kilometer in France!) that powers electric vehicle charging stations.
Other solar-powered projects include Bigbelly, a solar powered, smart trash can that uses its own electricity to compact trash and alert city workers when it needs to be emptied. Sunflare has created a flexible, peel-and-stick panel just millimeters thick that you can put on almost anything. Pvilion, an innovative solar fabric company, is integrating solar power into products like curtains and awnings and has even partnered with Tommy Hilfiger to create a solar-powered jacket! Floating solar farms, “floatovolatics” for the jargon-heads out there, are popping up all over the world.
Two big solar breakthroughs this year came from Tesla and Heliogen. Tesla, whose V3 Solar Roof looks like traditional shingles but also doubles as solar panels, has turned a corner and is ready for market installation. Telsa has graduated beyond test installations; reducing production and installation to a competitive level. Heliogen, a Bill Gates-backed company, utilized artificial intelligence to configure an array of mirrors “to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.” This is truly a breakthrough, because industrial products like steel and cement, which require extreme heat to produce and are responsible for 7% of the Earth’s carbon emissions, can be made without using fossil fuels. “Greening” those processes will revolutionize the construction and production industries.
Are solar (freakin’) roadways ever going to get off the proverbial ground? Who knows? The technology seems to be there, but the results have been less than stellar; costing millions to implement and failing producing projected savings Maybe solar roadways aren’t practical right now, but revolutionary things are rarely practical before they change the world.
The first computer was the size of an entire room. The first motorized flight by the Wright brothers lasted a whopping 20 seconds. Technological progress isn’t linear. Eighty-two years after the world’s first computer and 116 years after the Wright brothers finally succeeded, we’re cramming hundreds of people into airplanes, all of whom have hand-held, personal computers to entertain them along the way.