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Solar Freakin' Roadways

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#aheadofhistime
 
wakelaxer said:
This full report was quite interesting. Had some interesting points on when grid parity will be seen in each state, I still think the solar thing might be a little blown out of proportion but if the whole storage costs come down it should allow for most widespread adoption. While some might be intrigued with the solar roadways, something that might be more plausible is to line the interstates with solar panels in the lane dividers.
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I have often contemplated the acres and acres of essentially wasted space taken up by the medians in divided highways and what sort of use they could be put to - this might be a great option.

There is almost 8000 miles of interstate highway just in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. If you assume all of those miles have a median and the median averages only 30 feet wide, that gives you about 29000 acres of space. If you divide that by 3 and say you could only use about a third of it for solar panels, that still gives you 10000 acres of space. Covered completely by solar panels, that could generate as much power as probably 4 coal or nuclear plants. You would have plenty of issues around storage and transmission, etc. but there does seem to be some potential there...?
 
the energy lobby is the strongest lobby in both florida and tx. good luck.
 
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i do wonder how much tax policy plays a role in either cost of solar or coal/natural gas in these charts.
 
scooter84 said:
I have often contemplated the acres and acres of essentially wasted space taken up by the medians in divided highways and what sort of use they could be put to - this might be a great option.

There is almost 8000 miles of interstate highway just in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. If you assume all of those miles have a median and the median averages only 30 feet wide, that gives you about 29000 acres of space. If you divide that by 3 and say you could only use about a third of it for solar panels, that still gives you 10000 acres of space. Covered completely by solar panels, that could generate as much power as probably 4 coal or nuclear plants. You would have plenty of issues around storage and transmission, etc. but there does seem to be some potential there...?
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I'm not sure how much of that 8000 miles actually has a median. A lot of it consists of just a concrete divider, but yes, that would be a nice use of unused space.
 
I don’t agree if it is only half the cost, because I would think you would get to use the power you capture and given estimates of roof panels it would not take long to recoup the cost. As you mentioned I think “half” is extremely generous, my bet is that it would be more like 10x the cost.

EatLeadCommie said:
Yes, but who is going to pay for that? How much does it cost to replace a driveway with this stuff? That's a personal expense. If I can get a couple Mexicans to come out and pour me a new driveway for 1/2 the cost (and I'm guessing that's being generous), concrete is going to win every time. Neighborhood and back roads are city and county expenses and would have to be approved at that level. If it's not friendly to the wallets, I think it is even less likely to pass muster at the local level than it would be at the federal level.
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Traditional solar panels would be fine on the top of the divider.
 
PhDeac said:
Traditional solar panels would be fine on the top of the divider.
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But isn't the current issue that traditional panels are easy to transport the energy to home use due to proximity whereas the ones you have on the median you need to store/transport?
 
palmab03 said:
But isn't the current issue that traditional panels are easy to transport the energy to home use due to proximity whereas the ones you have on the median you need to store/transport?
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Nothing weirder than reading something you wrote 5 months ago that you currently have no knowledge of. The fuck did I get that from?
 
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