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Sandpoint Town Square Home to First Public Solar Roadways Panel Installation

posted by martyb on Friday October 07 2016, @08:55PM   
from the paving-squares-with-hexagons dept.

Phoenix666 submitted a story which suggested:

Over 2 years after the laying a bunch of solar harvesting hexagonal panels at its Idaho electronics lab, and 11 months after revealing its more powerful and more colorful third generation units, Solar Roadways has completed its first public installation. The City of Sandpoint, Idaho, is playing host to the proof of concept roll out, with 30 tiles now brightening up a town square – though not all of the panels are operational at the moment.

The 150 sq ft (14 sq m) installation in Sandpoint's Jeff Jones Town Square is made up of 30 SR3 panels. Where Solar Roadways' second generation prototype was a 36-watt panel, the SR3 is the same size but is rated at 48 W, made possible by replacing the panel mounting holes with edge connectors. The new units each include four heating elements to help keep the installation free of snow and ice and over 300 brighter, daylight readable LEDs with over 16 million available colors.

Among other notables, it is the birthplace of former Alaskan governor and vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

More information is available from http://sandpointidaho.gov/visiting-sandpoint/solar-roadways and http://www.solarroadways.com/.

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Original Submission

• Bollocks Bollocks (Score: 5, Informative) by f4r on Saturday October 08 2016, @02:27AM

  by f4r (4515) on Saturday October 08 2016, @02:27AM (#411672)

  Anything involving solar roadways should be discarded. David Jones has done multiple videos spanning a few hours [youtube.com] debunking, disproving and overall showing how bad the idea of solar roadways is. The mathematics simply don't add up. The ultra TL:DR is that it generates less power and costs far, far more than domestic roof-mounted solar, both for the panels and the installation costs, yet people keep pushing for it. Quite simply, it's a bad idea that people think is a good idea. The sooner that this project fails, the better.

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• Re:Bollocks (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08 2016, @02:47AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08 2016, @02:47AM (#411674)

  Agreed, I know an older guy who keeps trying to convince me that installing water pipes in roads to capture the heat would be a good idea. The sheer scale needed is ridiculous and as you sayy there are so many easier methods.

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• Re:Bollocks Re:Bollocks (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 08 2016, @11:38PM

  by Francis (5544) on Saturday October 08 2016, @11:38PM (#411863)

  What happens after you've already placed solar panels on the tops of all the available buildings? Replacing the road surface with them is somewhat more desirable than having to set aside land specifically for solar installations.

  I doubt we're anywhere near the point where this is viable for numerous reasons, but it's a worthy goal to consider as at some point we're likely to have all available rooftops covered in solar cells well before we hit the point where we don't need more production.

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  • Re:Bollocks (Score: 3, Insightful) by f4r on Sunday October 09 2016, @12:54AM

    by f4r (4515) on Sunday October 09 2016, @12:54AM (#411877)

    We'd be miles ahead if we utilized even 25% of unused roof space for solar. Think of the covered stadiums, think of the giant warehouses in industrial areas, all unused. We're still a long, long, loongg way away from being that desperate for space. It just is not realistically viable.

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