Solar roadway opens in the Netherlands

[Borgholio]

http://www.collective-evolution.com/201 ... or-public/

The world’s first solar bike lane is soon to be available for use in the Netherlands! The bike path that connects the Amsterdam suburbs of Krommenie and Wormerveer is a 70-meter stretch of solar-powered roadway set to open for the public on November 12th, 2014.

The new solar road, which costs €3m (AUD$4.3m), was created as the first step in a project that the local government hopes will see the path being extended to 100 metres by 2016.

More complimentary plans are also on the table as the country intends to power everything from traffic lights to electric cars using solar panels.

School children and commuters see the bike road as very useful and a cool part of their daily commute, with approximately 2,000 cyclists expected to use it on an average day.

The road, which is named by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) as SolaRoad, is set to open in the next week. It is made up of rows of crystalline silicon solar cells, which were embedded into the concrete of the path and covered with a translucent layer of tempered glass.
The team says that the top layer is translucent so as to allow the sunlight through

Science Alert reported:

“The surface of the road has been treated with a special non-adhesive coating, and the road itself was built to sit at a slight tilt in an effort to keep dust and dirt from accumulating and obscuring the solar cells.”

Since the path cannot be adjusted to the position of the sun, the panels will generate approximately 30% less energy than those placed on roofs. However, the road is tilted slightly to aid water run-off and achieve a better angle to the sun and its creators expect to generate more energy as the path is extended to 100 metres in 2016.

Actually, SolaRoad is not the first project aimed at turning roads and pathways into energy-harvesting surfaces. Solar Roadways are another major project -you can find out more about them by clicking HERE. The following video was posted online less than year ago, getting over $2.2 million to start the production.

The Guardian reported:

“If all the roads in the US were converted to solar roadways, the Solar Roadways website claims, the country would generate three times as much energy as it currently uses and cut greenhouse gases by 75 percent.”

But the difference between the two projects is that Solar Roadways are working to integrate programmable LEDs in order to achieve custom road signs, heating components to drive away ice and snow, and specific kind of corridors to store fiber optic and TV cables.

So they spend 3 million euros on a 70-meter roadway that will be only a faction as efficient as, say, a solar awning over a conventional roadway, and hope to have it extended by 15 meters PER YEAR...and they call it a success?

Sorry, but as pro-solar as I am, this is a waste of money. They'd be better off building a conventional roadway and shading it with a solar awning. That way you have less dust, dirt, debris, people, and bicycles blocking the sun. It would also cost less than having to over-engineer the panels to withstand daily foot and bike traffic.

The last quote really is stupid too. Sure, converting all roadways to solar would provide us with more than enough energy, but it would cost $367.8 TRILLION. Yeah...right.

[Darth Tanner]

Terrible scheme if you insist on building solar then 3m euros would pay for 390 4KW rooftop installations (1.5MW peak generation) in the UK and you would have enough cash left to put a normal cycle path down.

“If all the roads in the US were converted to solar roadways, the Solar Roadways website claims, the country would generate three times as much energy as it currently uses and cut greenhouse gases by 75 percent.”

I'm not sure how you would cut CO2 emissions by 75% by doing it either as you would still need fossil fuels for the majority of the energy consumed when solar could not provide.

[Me2005]

In the other thread on Solar Roadways (the company planning to develop & build them in the US, as opposed to this roadway built in the Netherlands), I realized that their overall goal wasn't so bad - use the power generated by the road to help pay for the road, modular construction, and getting all the infrastructure in one in-ground grid. Even there, the system would probably have been better if they took the solar cells out and put them above the road, just using the other bits in the road.

This doesn't sound like it does any of those, and is just a solar-generating road. Funny that they did it first despite the hype of the US campaign though.

[Borgholio]

In the other thread on Solar Roadways (the company planning to develop & build them in the US, as opposed to this roadway built in the Netherlands), I realized that their overall goal wasn't so bad - use the power generated by the road to help pay for the road, modular construction, and getting all the infrastructure in one in-ground grid. Even there, the system would probably have been better if they took the solar cells out and put them above the road, just using the other bits in the road.

This doesn't sound like it does any of those, and is just a solar-generating road. Funny that they did it first despite the hype of the US campaign though.

Yeah the GOAL of solar roadways is commendable...it's the implementation where it falls flat on it's face. Using the prices from the article, a single bike path is 92 million dollars per mile. An 8-lane highway would thus be 3/4 of a billion dollars per mile. Doing some rough calculations, one mile of solar 8-lane highway will produce about $5,000 per day in electricity. Payback time is over 4 centuries.

Yeah, not happening.

[salm]

While I don´t think that solar roads or bicycle lanes are reasonable, using the price for the first ever built 70 meters test project and extrapolating this number isn´t all that reasonable either.

[Darth Tanner]

Even if you could install it at the price per square meter of current domestic solar panels and magically could lay highways and roads at the same cost as a 1m wide path your still talking about $1.5 trillion... and would still generate didly squat at night.

[Darth Tanner]

Just looking at that figure again if you did replace all US roads with solar panels you would yield around 51GW of solar derated capacity.

For a similar amount of cash you could build around 45 3.2GW nuclear reactors at the same highly inflated cost as the UKs Hinkley Point station (seriously its $38 billion now!) That would result in a derated capacity of 130GW... so over double your money/MW and it will work at night.

Alternatively if you had a competent energy sector and could build nuclear stations at the cost the Chinese are seeing then you would end up with 241 stations yielding 760GW derated capacity.

[salm]

Good luck with finding the political will to build 240 nuclear reactors.
I wouldn´t have a problem with going fully nuclear but I´ve abandoned that thought because it´s not going to happen. At least not here. People don´t want it.

[Simon_Jester]

Whether they like nuclear reactors or not, if the Germans (and various other countries) keep trying to get electricity at a cost of billions of dollars for a few megawatts of generating capacity, they'll spend themselves into ruin. At some point they have to either spend more rationally, or buy their electricity from someone else who does.

[Darth Tanner]

The UK is in the situation that it is quite likely to face a blackout due to lack of capacity over the next two winters. Once the lights are off people might find their objections to nuclear power fade a bit.

Germany gets around it by burning coal... once it starts failing environmental targets it might change its mind too, especially as its paying for all its renewables with some of the most expensive energy in Europe despite not having cut its emissions at all.

[salm]

I doubt it. The hate for nuclear is deeply ingrained and Fukushima was the last nail in the coffin. No matter how irrational that might be.
Investing in nuclear is a waste of time and money which is better spent on better and cheaper renewables and perhaps cleaner coal for the adaptation time.

[Darth Tanner]

The hate for nuclear is deeply ingrained and Fukushima was the last nail in the coffin. No matter how irrational that might be.

Really support for nuclear has outpaced opposition since the millennium in the UK atelast. Obviously your mileage will vary.

Investing in nuclear is a waste of time and money which is better spent on better and cheaper renewables and perhaps cleaner coal for the adaptation time.

Which renewables are cheaper? Solar, wind and wave are all more expensive per MWh than even Hinkley point nuclear with UK prices. You also then have the huge issue of not having a controllable energy grid.

CCS is horribly expensive, all the large pilot stations have shut down due to operating costs.

[mr friendly guy]

As much as I love nuclear energy, I now look at the refusal by a lot of European countries to adopt nuclear as simply someone else's gain. Particularly China, India, and to a lesser extent the US and Russia.

Just ask China. They sure loved getting their hands on the German pebble bed designs which they have made improvements on. If Germany didn't want to treat their nuclear scientists and engineers with the respect they deserved, at least China did.

[salm]

Which renewables are cheaper? Solar, wind and wave are all more expensive per MWh than even Hinkley point nuclear with UK prices. You also then have the huge issue of not having a controllable energy grid.

CCS is horribly expensive, all the large pilot stations have shut down due to operating costs.

I meant to say investing in research in order to make renewables cheaper and develop storage capacities for future installations is money better spent than investing in developing new nuclear reactor designs. It is decided that more renewables are going to be built whereas it is decided that no more nukes are going to be built. It doesn´t look like this decission is going to be changed in the future because of widely spread hate for nuclear reactors.

[salm]

As much as I love nuclear energy, I now look at the refusal by a lot of European countries to adopt nuclear as simply someone else's gain. Particularly China, India, and to a lesser extent the US and Russia.

Just ask China. They sure loved getting their hands on the German pebble bed designs which they have made improvements on. If Germany didn't want to treat their nuclear scientists and engineers with the respect they deserved, at least China did.

Indeed. It´s very important that China and India have access to clean energy and I think it´s more likely to happen there by means of nuclear reactors than by renewables.
I really don´t care which of these technologies "wins" as long as one of them does as opposed to stagnating or going back to dirtier alternatives.

[Borgholio]

I wonder why nobody has tried to aggressively promote fast-neutron (breeder) reactors? They are more expensive than conventional reactors but they are so efficient that they can actually run on our existing stockpile of buried nuclear waste, using over 90% of it as fuel. The stuff that's left over is only radioactive for a few decades instead of a few millennia. It would be fairly easy to sell that to the public if there was enough of a desire to do so.

[Nephtys]

The greatest contributors to Solar and Wind are Oil, Gas and Coal companies. Because those two sources are absolutely unable to provide enough energy, while appeasing nuclear hate-groups. This solar roadway is yet another feelgood measure that both doesn't provide any economic benefit, while wasting money that could actually be spent on power generation that is beneficial to the environment.

Every dollar spent on a stupid thing like this is a dollar not being spent on a real alternative to fossil fuels.

[Darth Tanner]

I wonder why nobody has tried to aggressively promote fast-neutron (breeder) reactors? They are more expensive than conventional reactors but they are so efficient that they can actually run on our existing stockpile of buried nuclear waste, using over 90% of it as fuel. The stuff that's left over is only radioactive for a few decades instead of a few millennia. It would be fairly easy to sell that to the public if there was enough of a desire to do so.

India, Russia and France are all building them. China, Russia and Japan have working prototypes.

I meant to say investing in research in order to make renewables cheaper and develop storage capacities for future installations is money better spent than investing in developing new nuclear reactor designs.

Good luck with storage... we'll probably crack cheap grid scale energy storage just after fussion and a cure for cancer.

It is decided that more renewables are going to be built whereas it is decided that no more nukes are going to be built.

Decided by who... lots of people are building new nukes... when people who refuse to build them are left with massive bills to subsidise their renewables and their lights go out they may regret their short sightedness.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The problem with nuclear is that there's no one willing to run an expensive propaganda campaign to counter misconceptions. The power companies don't want to invest in something that won't break even for a decade and carries so much risk, especially not when they can just fire up natural gas and coal plants at will with a guaranteed profit margin. They're certainly not going to spend billions getting the public to accept nuclear power so they can spend billions more building plants that might have a flawed design and need to be closed (Washington State's "Whoops" reactor), or might be defeated by NIMBY's after money has already been sunk. Nuclear might make long-term economic sense, but CEO's are only thinking about results for the next quarter, and more dimly about the next 3-5 years.

For this reason, nuclear doesn't work without heavy government backing (guaranteeing bonds, for instance), but given that politics these days is bought and paid for and industry doesn't see enough financial incentive to be interested, no politician is going to take up the cause. I don't think it's an accident that the only developed country to go full nuclear (France) also has a heavily socialized form of capitalism. However, this does make China an excellent candidate for taking up the uranium torch and showing the rest of the world how it's done.

[salm]

Good luck with storage... we'll probably crack cheap grid scale energy storage just after fussion and a cure for cancer.

Yeah it´s pretty difficult esspecially because the same people who want clean energy don´t want pump storage on "their" hill. It can be quite frustrating at times. Just like the nimbys in Bavaria who are demonstrating agaist infrastrucure being built where they live.

Decided by who... lots of people are building new nukes... when people who refuse to build them are left with massive bills to subsidise their renewables and their lights go out they may regret their short sightedness.

Eh, I was being rather Germany centric here. The "Energiewende" has gained quite some momentum and most likely won´t be abandoned.
Other places will go for nukes, I don´t deny or regret that.
I´m not convinced that going for renewables will end in a clusterfuck. I think we can pull it off. Germany has lots of resources and I think it´s worth a try. I´d prefer economical and reliable renewables to nukes.

[Me2005]

...I´d prefer economical and reliable renewables to nukes.

Emphasis added

Isn't this like, the definition of nuclear power though? And the antithesis of renewables? Or am I way off-base thinking that neither solar nor wind are reliable or cheap on the scale where talking about a nuclear plant makes sense?

[salm]

Well, I did mention investing in researching how to make it cheaper not that it is cheap today seveal times.

[Nephtys]

There is no economical, reliable, and sufficient non-nuclear non-carbon option.

Simply none. Nothing else has the quantifiable capacity to handle it. Literally, it is impossible for wind and solar to replace the grid. If not for a multitude of reasons (manufacturing, uneven distribution of where wind blows/sun shines), but also simply for the fact that sometimes it's cloudy and sometimes the wind doesn't blow. But even beyond that, it simply will NOT produce the energy we need even in the most ideal of circumstances.

Solar and Wind produce less than half of 1 percent of US energy. Even our crippled nuclear infrastructure running 30 year old technology produces over 10%.

Making it 'cheaper' isn't enough. You need to remake PHYSICS and GEOLOGY to make it even possible much less cheaper to replace our current power consumption... much less what we're going to be using in 10 or 20 years.

[mr friendly guy]

Indeed. It´s very important that China and India have access to clean energy and I think it´s more likely to happen there by means of nuclear reactors than by renewables.
I really don´t care which of these technologies "wins" as long as one of them does as opposed to stagnating or going back to dirtier alternatives.

I am not sure one will "win" over another. I think most of these less polluting sources will be put to use. I just happen to think in the mid to long term nuclear will do the lion's share.

The problem with nuclear is that there's no one willing to run an expensive propaganda campaign to counter misconceptions. The power companies don't want to invest in something that won't break even for a decade and carries so much risk, especially not when they can just fire up natural gas and coal plants at will with a guaranteed profit margin. They're certainly not going to spend billions getting the public to accept nuclear power so they can spend billions more building plants that might have a flawed design and need to be closed (Washington State's "Whoops" reactor), or might be defeated by NIMBY's after money has already been sunk. Nuclear might make long-term economic sense, but CEO's are only thinking about results for the next quarter, and more dimly about the next 3-5 years.

For this reason, nuclear doesn't work without heavy government backing (guaranteeing bonds, for instance), but given that politics these days is bought and paid for and industry doesn't see enough financial incentive to be interested, no politician is going to take up the cause. I don't think it's an accident that the only developed country to go full nuclear (France) also has a heavily socialized form of capitalism. However, this does make China an excellent candidate for taking up the uranium torch and showing the rest of the world how it's done.

Good points. Just like to point out other nations especially China are also considering using thorium as well as uranium for their nuclear needs. You can google China's thorium reactor and seeing how many resources they are throwing at the problem.

[salm]

I am not sure one will "win" over another. I think most of these less polluting sources will be put to use. I just happen to think in the mid to long term nuclear will do the lion's share.

At the moment they are difficult to exist side by side because with renewables you need something that can be booted up and down relatively quickly if the renewables don´t produce enough power. Nuclear plants are not flexible in that way while coal, for example, is flexible. This means that you either use mainly nukes or combine renewables with something like coal as a backup.
Perhaps in the future there will be more flexible nuclear reactors?