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SolaRoad Cycle Path Electricity Yield Exceeds Expectations

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday May 13 2015, @01:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-future's-so-bright... dept.

CoolHand writes:

Phys.org reports on a pilot project in the Netherlands to generate power from solar panels in a bike path that has so far exceeded expectations:

The first six months of the pilot phase were successful, according to a SolaRoad press release issued earlier this month. The energy yield was beyond their expectations. Spokesperson Sten de Wit said they were surprised to see the level of success so quickly. Case in point: "The bike road opened half a year ago and already generated over 3,000 kWh," he said. "If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than the 70 kWh per square meter per year, which we predicted as an upper limit in the laboratory stage. We can therefore conclude that it was a successful first half year."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday May 13 2015, @04:25PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday May 13 2015, @04:25PM (#182448)

    No, no, they said 5Mb - so only 0.625MB, or 640kB. Several hundred pounds seems a bit steep for only a few floppies worth of capacity, but maybe they really needed the speed... /snark

    I agree that, at the moment, this technology doesn't make financial sense - but it's first-gen technology. I guarantee you that first-gen hard drives didn't make financial sense either. Nor first-gen magnetic-core memory, nor pretty much any other high technology. This is a glorified field test to see if there are any horrible unforseen problems. Give the tech 50 years of development and produce it in quantities of a million square miles per year, and I'll bet you the price can be brought down by an order of magnitude or two - at which point it starts making wonderful sense. But that can only happen if there's at least a trickle of funding for its development while in its infancy. And them stupid socialists tend to be willing to invest in long-term solutions - they just don't understand that it doesn't contribute to their quarterly bonuses.

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