The solar road way project is a very promising initiative that recently had a test run in a small town called Sandpoint. The solar roadway project is a renewable energy project to turn roads into energy producers. The road would be made of individual solar cells to collect sunlight. These pieces are hexagonal and are easily replaceable to make road repair much easier. These roadways has been in the work for many years and recently there was a test run of them in their home town of sandpoint where they are being produced. These roadways have many funders but chief among them is the american goverment and the government pushed this deadline to test these roadways. As a result of the deadline the roadways were not ready and the production was flawed. None the less the test still showed how well the process of making them and their basic design still may be flawed. Here are the failures and perhaps how to fix them.
1. Road Surface
The surface of these roads need to make a decent amount of friction to work as real roads. The surface of these individual pieces would be even more hexagons made of plastic. While in theory and in preliminary testing the road surface worked just fine when they made this batch of roads were not laminated correctly and thus the surface had less friction than was needed to be a viable road surface.
2. Power Generation
The entire point of replacing the current roads and making this project was to have roadways that produced power and a good bit of it. The roads that were put in did not produce any electricity at all instead since they aren't painted on and use LED's to make road markings they have a power deficit. If they make no power then they fail in their main objective making them less useful than actual roads.
3. Road Markings
An important part of a road are clear road markings and these roads use LED's to make road markings. Just as a smart phone is unreadable in the sunlight the LED's were unseeable in direct sunlight as well making another failure while trying to reinvent the road.
4. Connected LED's
The pieces were supposed to be interconnected so that if one failed someone would know and also so that if the roads needed to be altered at all you didn't have to program each piece directly you could program one and it would relay the message to the others. But the pieces that turned on weren't connected and once again failed to live up to the simple qualifications of the project.
5. Reflection
An important part off a road is to not be reflective. That's why the current roads are made of asphalt and concrete in an attempt to make the roads non-reflective. So the pieces are not reflective right that would make sense to make the roads drive-able but no sense the pieces are laminated in a clear plastic for the LED's they are very reflective and would be a road hazard in and of themselves.
6. Mass Producible
To be able to make new roads for the entire country the pieces of the new road would need to be able to be made fairly quickly so as not to alarm the country and anger them. But as seen with this test any quick production of them just ends up in complete failure of the pieces. Without being mass producible the hope of making any real change in the roads would be impossible and shows yet another reason why the solar roadways project is improbable at best
7. Drainage
Since the solar roadways are supposed to produce electricity any run off would hurt the system severely. In prelimany testing they made a nigh perfect drainage system that would keep the pieces safe But in this rushed test they werent pu into a working drainage system. All the drainage they had for this recent test was a tarp put under the pieces. Because of the improper drainage most pieces broke quickly. the tarp was a bad substitute for a good drainage system but it was basically what condition they would be in if they were put into the current road system. Making a working drainage system would be required to be able have solar roadways but making a working drainage system for all of the roads in america would take too much time and effort but would be possible to implement
I more than anyone I know want this project to be a reality but with the work that still needs to be done on the roadways they won't be a reality until a long time in the future. This test was a good test of whether the roadways are anywhere near ready to be implemented. And the roadways would be a great boon for the american economy by helping create temporary construction jobs and creating electricity that is a necessity for the world and a resource that we are soon going to need more of. America will need more electricity for the growing industry of electrically powered cars that are needed to push america out of the oil game. America desperately needs to be out of the oil game as gas prices are steadily growing and the oil in the world is quickly being depleted. The solar roadway initiative is just what america needs to advance as a country but they still need a lot of work and so america will need another source of energy if we hope to stay a super power.
