Solar roadways can power the USA with electricity, study finds |
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Wikinews
August 28, 2010
Scott Brusaw, co-founder and CEO of the "Solar Roadways" organization in Idaho, USA, and his colleagues have developed solar road panels technology to take the advantage of sunlight and the area covered by roads. Though initially expensive, the implementation of the idea over the southern states of United States could suffice as electricity source for the whole nation.
One 12' x 12' panel makes it possible to use about 440 panels for one mile of a single-lane road. The corresponding cost equals approximately USD 4,400,000. The panels are expected to be slot together, linking up through junction boxes beneath them. Assuming that the sun is high above horizon about 4 hours daily, the researchers came to conclusion that the energy outcome of each of these panels is approximately 7.6 kilowatt-hours of energy a day.
One mile of road would supply 428 homes with electricity, and take roughly 20 years to pay back. Some of the prices are expected to drop with the growth of manufacturing scale. As for now, laying roads with asphalt is four times cheaper than laying them with solar panels, according to Brusaw's calculations.
The development and testing of glass and glass-like materials to withstand the weight of the vehicles is yet a big challenge. With different friction and strength properties of glass and a number of other substances, Brusaw tends to choose glass as the topmost one for the solar panels, saying that "This is possible, as glass can have as high of strength as steel... [driving on glass] has got to have the same traction as asphalt."
The researchers were assuming 15%-efficiency of the solar cells (which is quite a moderate value), and consulted the American Geophysical Union to get the surface area of alsphalted areas in the lower 48 states which turned out to be more than 25,000 square miles. As Scott Brusaw noticed, this is expected to give “three times as much electricity that we produce on an annual basis — almost enough to power the entire world."
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