Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoopd | Hacker News Reader

Logistically speaking, there's a nightmarish level of complexity introduced here. Put a country's food distribution network on top of its energy production system? Put solar cells where you know they'll be constantly driven over by heavy machinery? Replace some of the most durable materials known to man (asphalt and concrete) with glass encased electronics?

These things aren't impossible, but it's such an uphill battle that I wouldn't hold my breath. (http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible-idea...)

View on HN

I gather from their website that the solar panels are embedded on top of the concrete roadway, so it would seem to have the same strength.

Durability, not strength. Asphalt is very durable and it fails in predictable ways, it's difficult to design glass that fails gracefully. Yes, it's a surmountable engineering challenge but this project has more than it's fair share of things that fall in the "technically not impossible" or "we'll figure it out later" categories.

Asphalt is cheap, but not really that durable. 3-5 years in you generally see some cracking and should start matence. 5-7 years you generally need some patches and 15-20 you need to replace the surface. Though that's assuming good conditions and reasonable traffic patterns in some areas you need to resurface within 10 years. Concrete on the other hand generally lasts twice as long.

From a material perspective glass is much closer to concrete than asphalt. Ex: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_brick the point being glass withstands sunlight and the elements without issue, it's being driven on that's going to be an issue. And luckily that kind of stress is much easer to simulate in a lab vs weathering.

PS: That or ice which can handle heavy loads with little issue.

Point granted, we use asphalt because it's a cheap and I should know better. I would still expect it to last longer than wildly complicated solar panel/computer/light displays that have many more modes of failure.

For this to work you have to do several things to the glass at the same time, none of which come easy: make it strong, make it hard (probably need to get to 8 or 9 on Moh's hardness scale), make it tough, and have it grip rubber as well as asphalt does even when it's wet. Considering scratch resistant and grippy compete with eachother this is not looking hopeful.

Yea, I don't think this is a good idea yet. However, train tracks might be a good option if you could get it durable enough but where having traction issues. The ~1m distance between rails is generally just wasted space and the US has ~400,000 miles of rail if say 20% efficiency over 1/2 of that distance that's ~320GWh per day which is a fair bit of power.

The advantage being rail lines need to trainsport electricity for electric trains, so you get dual use from those power lines.

That's still bundling something fragile with infrastructure that carries heavy machinery. Transporting electricity is a solved problem, we can put a solar farm in the middle of nowhere with current technology. And if we're looking for land that's already owned we could put solar cells underneath long range transmission lines 1000x easier than we could embed them in roads or in train tracks.

Strangely enough, glass lasts a very long time in terms of actual time from the perspective of geologic longevity. Pieces of glass will tell humanity's story long after buildings and roads crumble to dust. I understand that shards resting peacefully and a pathway that is used constantly are very different things, but I never cease to be amazed at the strength of glass and how much it has strengthened in my own life time. Just a thought.

Thick pices of tempered glass are vary durable and could easily outlast asphalt as a road surface. Right now the decreased efficiency makes this a non starter, but long term if solar keeps getting cheaper it may become a reasonable supplement to the power grid.

PS: Bullet resistant glass is surprisingly clear dispite how thick it is.

I wonder what the stopping distance is on this glass?

Not as big as wet glass or icy glass ;)

Materials scientists do fascinating things with glass, but making it competitive with rocks for road surfaces seems like a waste of effort.

Personally I think Elon Musk's solutions for this problem (decentralized clean power generation) are a bit more compelling, especially the part about putting solar panels on our rooftops instead of in our roads.

http://fusion.net/story/129075/elon-musk-reminded-everyone-l...

Is it important that they started with bike lanes and not full roadways? A bicycle vs. a delivery truck present radically different loads to the roadway.

The road is much wider, and pose greater disruption to transport during installation - If the experiment fails because it can't even take bicycle loads, and bicycle wear and tear, there would be bigger waste. If 70m works (physically, politically, economically), do 100m. If 100m works, go for 500m. If that works, do a 50m prototype on a road. Something like that.

It would also be far more costly. As roadways have way higher requirements then bikes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com