Solar roadways

I see they plan to add piezoelectric circuits to the next models making them even more efficient. Very cool, but their video needs an update out of the 90s.

I felt like I was watching an old Beyond 2000 episode there...
 
DJ... said:
I see they plan to add piezoelectric circuits to the next models making them even more efficient. Very cool, but their video needs an update out of the 90s.

I felt like I was watching an old Beyond 2000 episode there...
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Lol yeah there website is pretty shocking too. It could mean their money is going into the product rather than a fancy site and video production.

A dimensional drawing of the units and how the connect could inspire people to think off road. Imagine RDP houses work these on the roof? You can't steal them as they can probably be setup to link to a specific power supply.
 
Solar FREAKIN' Roadways!

[video=youtube;qlTA3rnpgzU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU[/video]
 
Nice idea. Wont happen unfortunently. The pannels are waaaaaaay too expensive to be mass produced (~10 000USD for 7" hexagon... thats like R100 000 not even per square meter.)
 
agentrfr said:
Nice idea. Wont happen unfortunently. The pannels are waaaaaaay too expensive to be mass produced (~10 000USD for 7" hexagon... thats like R100 000 not even per square meter.)
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But isn't that because of the current scale?
 
iaywtimnbe said:
But isn't that because of the current scale?
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Materials of construction. Even if they could get it down to a tenth ~R10 000 per hexagon, it is still muuuuuuuch more expensive than normal paving. If they could get it down to like 5x the price per square meter compared to tar paving, then maybe. Otherwise, not a chance.
 
agentrfr said:
Materials of construction. Even if they could get it down to a tenth ~R10 000 per hexagon, it is still muuuuuuuch more expensive than normal paving. If they could get it down to like 5x the price per square meter compared to tar paving, then maybe. Otherwise, not a chance.
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...and when you factor in revenue generation, maintenance, etc - is it still that much more expensive?
 
iaywtimnbe said:
...and when you factor in revenue generation, maintenance, etc - is it still that much more expensive?
Click to expand...

The world's best Si PV is 20% efficient. Let's assume we have 1kW of solar radiation for 12 hours per day per square meter facing the sun. This is a gross over-estimation. A 7 " hexagon = 0.0280584 m^2. For a full day of sunshine of 12kWh/m^2, we now have each hexagon generate 0.06734016 kWh of power, or R0.10101024 (R1.50 per kWh) in electricity per day. This means it will take the hexagon 98 999.86 days to pay for its self (assuming R10k per hexagon) ~= 271 years. or three lifetimes

This assumes best efficiencies, best sunlight conditions all year round, and no dust or rubber accumulating on the cells' faces.

Bear in mind that this is DC power, and is useless to transmit over 200m, so we still need to invert this to high voltage AC to make it transmittable.

I don't think I need to continue from here on, you get the idea.

They are far, far, far, far too expensive to make and use.

See why the hype video mentions no numbers?
 
Seems they reached their target of $1 Million funding, in fact they ended up getting $2.2 Million

Wanted to invest a couple bob in there, but the cutoff was 20 June and I only remember about it today.
 
I very much doubt this will ever be a very very niche product.

I don't see it gaining traction in things like public roads at all.
 
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