Solar roadways, NEVER shovel snow agai... oh

for those in the north the panels use energy they collect to power elements to keep the surface temperature a few degrees above freezing they're heated no more ice and snow on roads causing traffic delays accidents and injury excuse me young man am I being led to believe that this thing is some sort of thing yes it's a thing a real thing no more shoveling your driveway in sidewalk no salt corroding your car or wasting tax money on snow removal and you can ride your bike or drive your motorcycle all year round well the heating elements will keep the road surface snow and ice crea all winter long I have concerns about the future is this thing even possible I told you yes Solar roadway technology was invented by engineering couple julie and scott bruce ah in 2006 they're too humble and wonderful to yell at you over the internet so i'm gonna do it you need to know about this technology you need to get behind it you need to share with everyone you know this is actually happening whoa but now a grassroots effort of concern and inspired people can push this project into independent production if we vote with our money for project we believe it want to save this planet and make it sustainable for your kids in all future generations of life who can look back and say hey at least they invented solar freakin roadways yeah so those have you been following with some earth what two million dollars of Kickstarter money and a further two million dollars of government money can do imagine if the pavement you drive on would never ice over didn't have potholes the lines light up on their own and the pavement would generate electricity a small company from Idaho named solar roadways is making an impression on MoDOT and they federal highway as well solar roadways are ready to deploy and we are the d-o-t that are working with federal highway and solar roadways with some federal highway research dollars to begin that first public deployment of their technology by a state we will launch a crowdfunding campaign again the first ADOT in the country to do something we're going to launch a crowdfunding campaign we believe that there's a lot of fans of their products or roadways that want to see it deployed how you've got this I mean I know let's see what's the worst place in the entire country where you might try to locate such a project all right now I'd say the furthest north you can almost get where it's gonna get the least Sun per year and where it's gonna get coldest where you're gonna get large snowfalls yeah that's the place to build a solar roadways prototype a roadway prototype I should stress which is never had a car drive on it outside of some photoshopped graphics now it might be an apt time to reflect that if those exact same solar panels had been put on a roof they would generate about 10 times as much power for about 5% of the installation costs now that's not a rubbish solar power solar power is actually pretty good these days with modern installations paying off their installation costs in just a few years indeed it's not rubbish novel forms of solar BC while driving around America last summer not only did I visit solid waste at almost the most northern part of America I also drove to this remarkable beastie in the Las Vegas desert it's as simple as you get you just used mirrors to focus light onto a central boiler which then used that to generate steam and run turbines these are solar farms of one sort or another so well hits those gets it focused on the bit in the middle where it boils water pretty god bird birds apparently birds fly into the beams though effectively one heliostat can power one California Tom Doyle is the CEO of NRG the company behind this 2.2 billion dollar solar project workers on site called them streamers because of the smoke plume created when the birds ignite in midair I wanna see wanna point that I just that's right actually amazingly pretty but Thor it's a story of one of these kings you've got all these men to polish their shields and they focus their shields focus the sunlight on the on the ships the ships all caught fire of course you might actually be able to weaponize those things and really quite a nasty fashion so I just got this really nasty idea that someone pointed me just I I didn't think I would sort of evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen ozone in carbon monoxide like a Abington magnifying glass certainly little sons actually sat there in the in the desert oh sure their first shot was kinda hit and miss in fact they only generated about half the power they expected but after a year or so they got that up to 75% of what they initially expected now let's just put that into perspective with Saul roadways which generated about 10% of what comparable acreage of solar panels would have done if you'd have just put them on the roof now it's down to about zero percent now bear in mind electricity cost about 10 cents per kilowatt hour so in a day at its prime in summertime solar roadways was generating about $0.10 of electricity per day and a couple of months later it was a little more overcast it was generating about one cent per day I mean seriously if they just put a wishing well in town it would have earned more money for them and now it's down to generating your stunning zero cents of electricity per day and that's not including all the power they have to pay for to heat the panels and to run the LEDs I mean I did this video some time ago showing that there's actually quite a lot of power consumption for all those LEDs and a lot of that goes into heat so it's absolutely crazy at the moment it's been cold in Sandpoint for so long that all they're doing with all the heat that they're putting into this is they're just heating the ground up from - plenty below freezing - just minus a few degrees below freezing they are completely wasting all of that energy anyway I digress then there was this coalesce walkway thing which was in a different league altogether to solve roadways you know it's a much more practical soul roadway without load LEDs and heated panels nonsense lots of let's have Wi-Fi enabled panels with micro processors and elastic life it's technology that replaces all roadways parking lots sidewalks driveways tarmacs bike paths and outdoor recreation services with solar panels and not just lifeless boring solar panels smart microprocessing interlocking hexagonal solar units I mean seriously what were the people thinking giving these Looney Tunes nonsense two million dollars in the first place all to cheese of adulation seriously some of this stuff just needs to be seeking to be believed so for instance 2017 a smarter path chasing genius from National Geographic 2015 Scott and Justin attended the makers faire Detroit at the invitation of innovation nation and had to display in their booth at the Henry Ford Museum of American innovation 2015 awarded $750,000 by the Department of Transport 2015 solid waste was featured on the TV show innovation nation 2015 solid waste was mentioned in the online version of President Obama's State of the Union address then of course they got the backing of celebrities like Nathan Fillion 2014 popular science one of the seven best of what's new engineering category in the hundred greatest innovations of the Year 2014 popular science 2013 we are honored to have US Senator Mike Crapo not a joke Republican Idaho filmed this endorsement for us 2013 Scott was the keynote speaker at the International parking Institute annual conference 2013 solar roadways was featured in the General Electric focus forward short documentary 2013 Scott solve for X talk Google headquarters New York City 2013 chosen as one of Google's moonshots 2011 General Electric eco imagination powering the home we challenge winner Saul roadways won the Community Award for the second time 2011 awarded another 3/4 of a million dollars by the Department of Transport 2010 TEDx talk Sacramento California Scott was honored to accept an invitation to deliver his TED talk he received a standing ovation and weand jewelry talking to the audience members afterwards and so it goes on anyway coming back to course what way how did they compared to a regular solar installation with colors what ways they cost about ten times what a regular saw installation would have cost and generated one third of the power a third the capacity for nine times the cost based on real measured data there is no way to spin this thing that this is a good idea you just can't argue with demonstrable e true measured data it's just ridiculous it's just this still much better than solid waste which cost twenty times as much as comparable sized solar installation and generated one tenth of the power in fact it's got me thinking that folks like me and Dave from eevblog here are starting slowly to get the cracks to fall win this thing into the mainstream media articles covering this is starting to be a little more skeptical about this sort of thing not just pimping out the misleading media hype oh oh oh what's that Chinese but one now to look well I can tell you now with absolute certainty that when the data rolls in it will be almost exactly the same as they call us what why think cuz the problems with building a solar roadway are intrinsic the bare minimum that you need is solar panels that won't get destroyed they Nene all the wiring and power transport infrastructure and that's just dumb because there are plenty of places to do this where the power infrastructure is in place and you've got a lot of spare space wait you don't have to drive cars over your solar panels and we really use just making a rod for your own back in putting the salt panels in one of the most high stress environments that you can get and all it took was a lot of videos a couple of million dollars of IndieGoGo funds a couple of million dollars of taxpayers money just to show that there simple back of an envelope calculations that you could have done trivially at the beginning of this were correct I mean sure you de la sala roadway it's just a really really expensive way of generating electricity it's like making a car out of a potato or something in the hope that they will get better gas mileage because it'll catch the wind better or something and really does anyone want to give me odds how long it's gonna take before people start to realize that the Hyperloop is sure it's like solar roadways you can make one where the tube alone per kilometer costs about the scene as solar roadways that's not including any of the magic that goes inside it like building the spacecraft that are gonna have to travel at supersonic speeds through these vacuum tube and the only thing that exists so far is this fiberglass shell that beats oh dude it's a capsule that's gonna run in a near frictionless environment so you know what's really gonna help making it streamlined and polishing it sure you can build a Hyperloop it's just a really really dangerous and expensive way of transport reason why we don't drive around in jet-powered car I mean why not jet power would provide great acceleration and great top speeds sorry boys but the Hyperloop is a solid waste on steroids it's just it's strange just going out into the Las Vegas desert and seeing this enormous tunnel running running across the desert and that is the entire Hyperloop well I believe one anyway in fact why not seeing as I visited them both on the same day this is the solar power station I visited and the Hyperloop on the same scale you can see the Hyperloop it's quite small in comparison yep that's it the whole Hyperloop think about broadband at the heart of it is a network that has digital packets that go very fast three types of packets data voice and video think about Hyperloop at the heart of it is a network with three types of physical packets packets of people packets of freight packets of car that can all go on a very Feist fast pipe or conic connection we believe it's the emergence of physical broadband it's big on hype hype hype but in the long game I'll bet you dollars to donuts all it's gonna be left is an empty rusting tube and if you enjoy this video hell what I'll live dangerously and give it a thumbs up and drop a favourite on it and this video was made possible by donations of patrons of this channel and if you want to join them and help this channel you'll find the links below

Channel: Thunderf00t

Views: 324,588

Rating: 4.8884439 out of 5

Keywords: solar, roadways, fail, melt, ice, snow, kickstarter, indiegogo

Id: O0yn-xBjb9c

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 01 2018