It has often been fashionable to try to trash new ideas and inventions, especially those like powered flight that garner widespread public interest. So it's hard to be surprised at the surge of criticism directed at Solar Roadway's vision to turn America's roads into power-generating solar panels. The brainchild of Scott Brusaw, these "solar roads" could generate three times the energy the U.S. uses in a year — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent — if they replaced all of America's roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc. And the company just raised over $1.8 million in crowd funding on IndieGoGo. When I told Solar Roadways' Scott Brusaw that I had been looking online for criticism of his idea he laughed and told me "you didn't have to look far."
"The solar roadway is a terrible idea" writes Scott Torchinsky at Jalopnik, citing the views of David Forbes, an engineer who works with radio telescopes. Forbes worries about the cost, citing the fact that solar cells and LEDs are both highly expensive, while plain asphalt is cheap. He worries about the durability of the surface and whether the roads' displays could be hacked. He cites the fact that less sunlight will be absorbed by the cells than in a typical solar panel, as the glass is four times thicker. He even argues that driving at high speeds over the surface could result in a high-pitched whining sound.
Other critics have said they just don't see the point — a YouTube user put together a 28-minute video critiquing the idea. He argued:
Solar panels under the road is a bad idea from the start. If they are under the roads, they are hard to maintain. They will have reduced light from parked cars etc. They are fragile. Not really congenial to the conditions you are likely to get on a road. In many ways building a shed over the road, or just having solar panels by the side of the road is a far better idea.
He adds that driving over glass will grind away the surface and worries that power transmission costs will make much of the energy generated useless.
Brusaw points out that most of these arguments have already been addressed in the company's FAQ section.
But the really strange thing about a lot of this rampant criticism is that Solar Roadways aren't really dependent on unproven technology, the way the Wright brothers' attempts at powered flight were. It's not like Scott and Julie Brusaw have claimed they can invent human teleportation. Tempered glass technology already exists, and many large companies beside Solar Roadways are already spending lots of money researching even stronger glass technologies, like Sapphire Glass. The solar cells also already exist, and are rapidly decreasing in cost and increasing in efficiency. Advanced and highly efficient battery technologies for energy storage are emerging.
So this isn't some wild utopian fantasy founded on untested or undeveloped technology. This is a bringing together of existing technologies. Ambitious, yes, but the Brusaws' small protoype — built as part of a contract with the Federal Highways Agency — is already generating electricity. Their pictures show a tractor being driven over it, and load testing at civil engineering labs showed that the panels can handle more than 250,000 lbs, over three times the legal limit (80,000 lbs) for a semi-truck. Tests have shown their textured glass can stop a car going 80 mph on a wet surface. In that sense, their invention is already a success.
