Viewing 31 posts - 1 through 31 (of 31 total)
  • 1000 km of solar panel road in France
  • TPTcruiser
    Full Member

    Plenty of road in that huge country so a drop in the ocean.
    Solar cycle paths

    What tyres, etc…

    andyfla
    Free Member

    not sure I would want to ride on that in the wet ….

    JAG
    Full Member

    A great idea – assuming they have the whole tyre-to-road adhesion thing sorted in all weather conditions 😆

    …otherwise what andyfla said 😯

    medoramas
    Free Member

    Does it charge your iPhone?

    TooTall
    Free Member

    Awful idea. With current tech, ALL solar frikkin roads are a terrible idea.

    Rubber_Buccaneer
    Full Member

    Does it charge your iPhone?

    No, just your CX bike.

    D0NK
    Full Member

    tests have shown that they can bear one million truck tyre passes without damage – and are skid-resistant.

    skid resistant eh? Presumably they have testsed them with bike tyres in the wet too

    retro83
    Free Member

    Presume they’ve thought of a suitably cunning plan to avoid the issue of glare from a low sun.

    Induction charging for cars sounds cool though 8)

    bails
    Full Member

    Are roads cheaper and better at being roads if you don’t make them collect solar energy? And are solar panels cheaper and better at being solar panels if they don’t have to survive having trucks driving over them?

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    Absolutely the stupidest idea ever. A total triumph of marketing over common sense.

    Because the panels have to be horizontal, and because they will get dirty and have to be load bearing, they have something like only 30% of the energy return of a conventional roof mounted (or other structure) set.

    So, for any given capital outlay, they will only return 30% of the total energy over their life as a conventional set up. Then you get to the fact that they require a hugely costly preparation and installation (compared to normal panels you just stick on a pole) and are going to require more maintenance etc.

    So, why in a CAPITALIST economy would you pay 3x more for something?

    For example, if i said, either:

    1) give me £100, and i’ll give you £10 in a years time

    or

    2) give me £100 and i’ll give you £30 in a a years time.

    which one would you go for??

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    BTW, watch this:

    [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds[/video]

    johnnystorm
    Full Member

    First argument in their favour is that if you stick them anywhere else you’ve got to ask first or create an eyesore, this just loses them where there’d be a black stripe anyway. Fwiw I like the idea, got to be worth a punt and tech eventually gets better if tried out in the real world.

    Compared to the billions pissed away on nuclear weapons it’s small change.

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    Well, except for the literally millions of square meters of already existing, and hugely more favourable (in terms of insolation) roofing that covers a lot of our modern countries. Not just Domestic, but industrial too.

    But other than that, yeah, lets put then on roads……….

    And “if the tech gets better” is not a sensible thing to state, because if solar panels get better (more kWHr/m2), you will still get 3x more return by putting them on an south facing angled roof! (ie, any better tech makes conventional panels better too)

    johnnystorm
    Full Member

    Road needs resurfacing, road gets resurfaced.
    Want to put solar panels on every house along that stretch of road, drown in paperwork and sfa happens.

    I’m aware that updates will benefit all types of panels but you don’t get 3x the return on a panel you haven’t installed.

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    johnnystorm
    Road needs resurfacing, road gets resurfaced.

    er, what? In the UK we can’t even afford to resurface most of our road network when the raw materials cost pence per tonne (gravel and a bi-product of the oil refining industry) and require a couple of blokes with a spade.

    And you think that somehow fitting multi-thousand pound solar panels that require careful installation and wiring will make that easier?

    And this is the problem, marketers and politicians get involved, and dupe the poor average person into believing their bull…..

    nickc
    Full Member

    That is perhaps the most annoying Aussie in the world (a remarkable achievement given all the annoy Aussies) 😆

    johnnystorm
    Full Member

    I wasn’t referring to the affordability but instead to the gaining of planning permission. The action of resurfacing a road is presumably less paperwork than getting permission and organising solar panels fitted to all the houses etc along said road.

    You may be right that in the UK we have shit roads but obviously the French have decided it was worth a punt.

    sr0093193
    Free Member

    You’ll find tarmac is considerably more than ‘pence’ per tonne. Lets not make up imaginary numbers to validate your arguments, that’s what politicians do to get people believing their bull. The use of already ugly and largely redundant space is a pretty good concept and becomes increasingly cost effective with a widespread application.

    Just let France iron out all the issues and steal the idea if it has merit in the end.

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    The idea does not have merit, that’s the points! Waste of time energy and money.!Dave Jones doese a good video using basic engineering calcs to explain it all.

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    sr0093193 The use of already ugly and largely redundant space is a pretty good concept and becomes increasingly cost effective

    I’me guess you’re not an engineer right?

    Cost effective? Did you not read what i said earlier?

    I doesn’t matter what the cost of the road installed panels is (which will always be multiple times that of roof mounted panels because you need to drive a car/truck/bus/cyclist/dog/tractor or whatever over them) because they will ALWAYS return 3x less energy than panels mounted to maximise Insolation.

    The concept is fundamentally flawed at a physics level. Just because some a grant was given to develop the tech means nothing. Plenty of EU grants and money is available for in-valid and un-sustainable projects, but that money would have been much better spent on projects that actually return in the long term.

    Interestingly, Korea already has a solar road. It’s just they have done it properly:

    Minimal infrastructure changes, min maintenance, and keeps the walkers and cyclists dry in the rain……..

    johnnystorm
    Full Member

    That Korean one will be dead convenient down my road. We’ll just lose the pavements and front gardens to fit it in and then I’ll go five miles up the road for the next gap.

    andyl
    Free Member

    Solar roofed walk/cycleways are a great idea. I was only thinking about this kind of thing the other day.

    One thing to remember about putting these things in a country like france is that the roads are generally a lot cleaner than ours and the traffic densities a lot lower. Think of a nice cycle path along the side the of lake Annecy. A canopy would be ugly and need framework and still need a decent surface so these things do start to make sense.

    TooTall
    Free Member

    That Korean one will be dead convenient down my road. We’ll just lose the pavements and front gardens to fit it in and then I’ll go five miles up the road for the next gap.

    You do know that everywhere in the world is not suitable for solar PV, right? Perhaps not your road, but other places are suitable.

    konabunny
    Free Member

    This is a solution looking for a problem. There is no shortage of places to put solar panels – as someone above said; there acres and acres of industrial and flat domestic roofing

    There is a shortage of solar panel technology that makes it worthwhile to do!

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    Until we suitably tax Fossil fuels, solar power will only make financial sense when artificial incentives are used (ie grants etc). Right now, hydrocarbon based energy is so cheap it means nothing else gets a look in……

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    This article puts some rather startling figures to the issue:

    Frances Solar Roads Plan is expensive

    johnnystorm
    Full Member

    The article assumes that you could just spend the money on solar farms or put the panels on roofs. Doesn’t that conveniently gloss over the cost and red tape of buying land, paying the owners and getting their permission?

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    i think you’ll find the cost of the land is already accounted for in the cost quoted for the current commercial solar farms, after all, they have’t just built them ghetto style in someones field without being noticed 😉

    johnnystorm
    Full Member

    I reckon you could, who’d complain if you’re saving the planet. 😀

    maxtorque
    Full Member

    Another great debunking video on this from Dave Jones just out:

    [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjbKYNcmFUw[/video]

    Pretty amusing!

    chakaping
    Free Member

    I don’t need to watch any youtube videos to know this is a horrendous gimmick.

    Why not just put more efficient solar panels on the thousands of miles of fencing alongside M-ways & other roads instead?

Viewing 31 posts - 1 through 31 (of 31 total)

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