SolaRoad said the path has been working for 16 days, during which it generated 140 kilowatt hours of electricity, equivalent to around 140 washing machine cycles.
The project has so far cost $US3.7 million, mainly for research, but SolaRoad declined to say what the cost per kilometre might be.
140 KWH in 16 days. That's 8.75 KWH in one day. My solar panels produce up to 8-9 KWH on a good day when they were first installed. It cost me around $2400 AUD to instal it with the inverter. The government no doubt subsidised it, but even if they paid like 90% of it (yeah right) it would still come out far far far cheaper than this. Also note solar panels have become cheaper in recent years due to the glut from Chinese producers.
The solar cells currently put the electricity they generate onto the national grid, but future plans include using the energy to power street lights.
Why not put panels directly on street lights then.
This is just what turned up early on a google search. However I have seen panels on street lights in Xian in China and I suspect others are doing it as well.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
SolaRoad said the path has been working for 16 days, during which it generated 140 kilowatt hours of electricity, equivalent to around 140 washing machine cycles.
The project has so far cost $US3.7 million, mainly for research, but SolaRoad declined to say what the cost per kilometre might be.
140 KWH in 16 days. That's 8.75 KWH in one day. My solar panels produce up to 8-9 KWH on a good day when they were first installed. It cost me around $2400 AUD to install it with the inverter. The government no doubt subsidised it, but even if they paid like 90% of it (yeah right) it would still come out far far far cheaper than this. Also note solar panels have become cheaper in recent years due to the glut from Chinese producers.
The solar cells currently put the electricity they generate onto the national grid, but future plans include using the energy to power street lights.
Why not put panels directly on street lights then.
This is just what turned up early on a google search. However I have seen panels on street lights in Xian in China and I suspect others are doing it as well.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
I don't get the point of this. Why put solar panels on the bicycle path where they eventually will be scratched, covered with dirt and generally degrade and fail much faster than on a normal rooftop installation. Much cheaper solution would be to put a roof over the bicycle path and put solar panels there. You would get a good place for solar panels and also protect people from bad weather maybe encouraging more people to use bicycles to get to work cutting the fossol fuel usage even more.
Simon_Jester wrote: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.
Germany has coal plants and france. They can keep their noses so high they'll get sunburn in their nostrils for a good long time.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.
mr friendly guy wrote:
140 KWH in 16 days. That's 8.75 KWH in one day. My solar panels produce up to 8-9 KWH on a good day when they were first installed. It cost me around $2400 AUD to instal it with the inverter. The government no doubt subsidised it, but even if they paid like 90% of it (yeah right) it would still come out far far far cheaper than this. Also note solar panels have become cheaper in recent years due to the glut from Chinese producers.
But why are you comparing this? It says right there in your quote that a lot of the price is research. It isn´t useful to compare the price of your mass produced and government subsidized solar roof tiles with the full research, development and installment cost of a new technology.
Actually I´m quite sure that the same thing was said when solar roof top installations started.
This doesn´t make solar roads any more plausible but the comparison just doesn´t make any sense.
salm wrote:Eh, I was being rather Germany centric here. The "Energiewende" has gained quite some momentum and most likely won´t be abandoned.
Wasn't Energiewende recently declared a failure and stopped for a review? At least that's what I have heard recently, it turns out it was too optimistic after all.
Anyway, it's in its core a regressive tax. Putting unfairly high load on the poorest. I have no idea why and how anyone could consider it just social policy.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved on Tuesday a reform of Germany's renewable energy law designed to curb a rise in the cost of electricity in Europe's biggest economy driven by the rapid expansion of green power.
The reform will slow the growth of green energy, which accounts for 25 percent of Germany's electricity, and force new investors in green power to take some risk.
Now, the bad news: Germany installed just over 204 MW of PV in May, putting the country on target for 1,984 MW this year. You see, the country had 7,500 MW per year each year in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Installers have seen their market cut 75 percent.
On Tuesday, we saw one prominent example of the effects when German project planner Juwi announced. Allegedly because of the changes made to Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, “investors have lost confidence in wind power projects for the time being,” and the firm says its revenue from PV is only a quarter of the volume for 2012. A quarter of firm’s employees are going to be laid off, most of them in Germany.
This month, the German Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) announced the new number of energy-intensive companies that will not have to pay the full renewables surcharge. For the first time, more than 2,000 firms (2,098, to be specific) will only have to pay as little as a tenth of the renewables surcharge (see this press release in German – although this issue greatly affects the outside world, BAFA has not seen fit to translate the announcement). The number of grid connection points that are exempt has risen roughly fivefold since 2006, the first full year that Angela Merkel was Chancellor.
Government slows down renewable adoption, investors lose confidence, number of energy intensive companies getting exempt from renewable tax balloons fivefold for economic reasons (while end consumers still pay full prices). To me, it doesn't sound good but it's possible I missed something. Polish press isn't very friendly to green industry.
mr friendly guy wrote:
140 KWH in 16 days. That's 8.75 KWH in one day. My solar panels produce up to 8-9 KWH on a good day when they were first installed. It cost me around $2400 AUD to instal it with the inverter. The government no doubt subsidised it, but even if they paid like 90% of it (yeah right) it would still come out far far far cheaper than this. Also note solar panels have become cheaper in recent years due to the glut from Chinese producers.
But why are you comparing this? It says right there in your quote that a lot of the price is research. It isn´t useful to compare the price of your mass produced and government subsidized solar roof tiles with the full research, development and installment cost of a new technology.
Actually I´m quite sure that the same thing was said when solar roof top installations started.
This doesn´t make solar roads any more plausible but the comparison just doesn´t make any sense.
Even if we assume generous government subsidies, this tech still has a long way to go to even match existing solar panels cost wise. Not to mention that panels on roof have a few other advantages besides simply having the cost shared between tax payers (government) and private citizens.
The other issue is, even if you research away, you can't research away physics and reality. Namely the angle you place the panels to improve exposure to the sun, panels not working as well when they are scratched etc. It would make more sense to put panels on rooftops before researching this.
But even if they do research a super efficient solar panel, what's to stop the technology being used for a rooftop panel, without needing all the other fancy stuff required in roadways to stop it being damaged etc. My comparison just shows how pricey it is to do it this way, and with limited funds it might be more efficient to try applying it to rooftops first.
Edit - their refusal to name the cost per kilometre makes it somewhat harder to compare.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
@Ibris: Ah, you meant that. It seemed like you were saying that it stoped, as in not existant anymore.
@Mr. Friendly Guy: I really don´t disagree with you. They need to show a lot more in order to convince me that solar roads can somehow be better than using conventional solar panels. There are plenty of good reasons not to combine roads and solar panels, so why use bad reasons?
Saying that it is bad because the reasarch costs a lot is like saying that Microsoft shouldn´t drop billions of dollars into creating Windows 10 because I can buy Windows 8 für a hundred bucks online.
Edit - their refusal to name the cost per kilometre makes it somewhat harder to compare.
Well at 3 million euros per 70m we're looking at 42.8 million euros per km (roughly) which equates nicely with my original figure of ~90 million dollars per mile.
So yeah even factoring in R&D it's still hideously expensive for something that even under ideal conditions has limited value. I mean I'm all for stuffing solar panels wherever you can, but building a solar awning would be much more productive and cost effective. The only way I can see a solar roadway being worth it is if there's no place to put normal panels. But really...how often is THAT going to happen? Any place like downtown LA or New York where sunlight rarely hits the ground is going to be a shitty places for solar whether or not it's on a post or embedded in the street. Out in the open you can just build a conventional solar farm...
Germany is still 100% comitted to their goal. They do regulate the transistion in order to keep German industry alive, so they probably cut down on some stuff to relieve them. Still, they stick to their goals.
(He is using a lot of the time to scold Greenpeace for not sitting down and be content for getting what they wanted, and demanding an instant-exit from coal on top of the exit from nuclear, while the whole energy net is still rebuilt towards both of these goals, and tells them that they should rather campaign for a needed reform of the emission market, which he thinks of being insanely cheap.)
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay
salm wrote:They need to show a lot more in order to convince me that solar roads can somehow be better than using conventional solar panels. There are plenty of good reasons not to combine roads and solar panels, so why use bad reasons?
Saying that it is bad because the reasarch costs a lot is like saying that Microsoft shouldn´t drop billions of dollars into creating Windows 10 because I can buy Windows 8 für a hundred bucks online.
Give me a million to "research" the best way to integrate solar panels and roads and for ~2 million I'll build you an asphalt bike path with a Solar-cell awning. And then I'll retire. The awning will generate more power than the roads can ever possibly generate - if you get super-effective cells that work with great efficiency on the ground, being ridden/walked over constantly, I'll take them and put them in the awning and get better efficiency. Why? Because my cells aren't being partially blocked, scuffed, trampled, or positioned indirectly to the sunlight they need to work. No matter what tech you put in there, they can't be as efficient as a properly installed cell.
Me2005 wrote:
Give me a million to "research" the best way to integrate solar panels and roads and for ~2 million I'll build you an asphalt bike path with a Solar-cell awning. And then I'll retire. The awning will generate more power than the roads can ever possibly generate - if you get super-effective cells that work with great efficiency on the ground, being ridden/walked over constantly, I'll take them and put them in the awning and get better efficiency. Why? Because my cells aren't being partially blocked, scuffed, trampled, or positioned indirectly to the sunlight they need to work. No matter what tech you put in there, they can't be as efficient as a properly installed cell.
Would be fine with me. Perhaps people don´t want roofs over all of their roads or something? Or building roofs over streets with solar panels is more expensinve than expected. It seems like a pretty obvious solution, at least if you´re out of other space to set up PV.
salm wrote:Would be fine with me. Perhaps people don´t want roofs over all of their roads or something? Or building roofs over streets with solar panels is more expensinve than expected. It seems like a pretty obvious solution, at least if you´re out of other space to set up PV.
Roads, maybe. Big traffic sometimes comes through that doesn't like having a ceiling; bridges or rockets or houses or whatever. You can, to some extent, route around that and make minor streets covered while major thoroughfares are not covered.
This is a bike path though, where a height limit is desirable to keep non-bikes off. Depending on the climate, an awning would be desirable to keep snow, rain, and sun off.
Me2005 wrote:This is a bike path though, where a height limit is desirable to keep non-bikes off. Depending on the climate, an awning would be desirable to keep snow, rain, and sun off.
It would need to be expensive, solid construction, though, or you will get something like this:
Me2005 wrote:This is a bike path though, where a height limit is desirable to keep non-bikes off. Depending on the climate, an awning would be desirable to keep snow, rain, and sun off.
It would need to be expensive, solid construction, though, or you will get something like this:
...
You don't expensive or exceptionally solid construction to make awnings that don't collapse from snow loading. Slope them more than whatever that is (2:12?!?) and they'll do better though. The solar cells themselves would need some reinforcement/protection, but much less than they would from, say, people running on them. Regular-thickness tempered glass should be sufficient.
Me2005 wrote:
Roads, maybe. Big traffic sometimes comes through that doesn't like having a ceiling; bridges or rockets or houses or whatever. You can, to some extent, route around that and make minor streets covered while major thoroughfares are not covered.
This is a bike path though, where a height limit is desirable to keep non-bikes off. Depending on the climate, an awning would be desirable to keep snow, rain, and sun off.
Yeah, but I guess people like being outsides and don´t want to be under a roof all the time, so it might be difficult to justify building roofs over bike lanes.
That´s just a guess why they are investing in solar paths instead of finding cheap ways to build secure PV roofs over bike lanes. I have no better explanation than aesthetics.
On the other hand there are plenty of ideas and a few existing examples (along the city ring of Munich for example) to install PV on existing structures such as sound protection walls. I guess it makes sense to plaster these existing structures with PV before taping into other, more complicated space.
