Follow the solar roadway
Solar roadways inventor Brusaw stands on a prototype
The United States highway network stretches over tens of thousands kilometers across the country. Could this surface could be used to produce electricity?
A small company from Indiana is working on the this outlandish idea,. His founder and CEO, Scott Brusaw, firmly believes his idea is the the all-round solution to generate renewable power, fix the crumbling pavement, and much more.
The road he is developing would be composed of relatively inexpensive solar panels encapsulated in high-strength glass capable of supporting the weight of vehicles moving at high speeds. The technical challenge is high and Scott Brusaw is building prototypes with the funding of the Departement of Transportation (DoT). But Scott Brusas wants to go further: "We’ve gotten estimates from the universities for developing the glass and it would cost about $50 million to complete the research and get ready for production,” The key to make the road resistant enough will be the glass containing a solar cell, a LED and a yet-to-be invented way of storing or transporting electricity, as the roads would serve as a distribution grid. The glass surface would also have to be textured to allow tires to grip, even though asphalt-like roadholding will be extremely difficult to achieve.
The company he set up to develop the revolutionary panels, Solar Roadways, hopes to raise funds to conduct research on the new materials needed. It already won the GE ecomagination, with a 50 000$ award.
And because stopping here would be so lazy, the solar roads should solve a few other problems as well. According to Solar Roadways's website, built-in LED displays could warn drivers against road incidents and a heating system would avoid the need to clear the road of the snow in cold climates.
But the big question is the price. How much would this cost? According to Scott Brusaw, the target price is around $4.4 million per mile (around 7 million per km).
And maintenance issues are still unanswered. As is the question of lifespan compared to asphalt: how will these high-tech roads whistand the head, cold, and vibrations?
A first prototype is to be delivered to the DoT in february, and put through durability testing. If it proves successful, the revolutionary pavement should be tested on parking lots, where – according to Brusaw – "You have slow-moving, lightweight vehicles. We can learn all the lessons there before moving into the fast lane."