Inspired by this announcement, I started looking at solar panels yesterday. Actually I learned that there are also "solar shingles" that replace regular shingles, and blend in better, but are not as efficient as PV panels.

I signed up to be notified on the Tesla site - would be neat to own.

I also learned that northeast USA has more average sunlight (~4 kWh/m^2/Day) than Germany, which leads the world in solar adoption. Obviously places in southwest are better suited (~6.5 kWh/m^2/Day)

One more thought that I had:

Before Tesla, electric cars were niche marketed as adequate. In the sense that if you were a person very highly motivated to be "green", you could get one, drive around short distances, and in general enjoy a small subset of the versatility of an internal combustion gas guzzling car. You could get by, but in general life with an electric car was a step back from life with a gas car.

The reason Tesla is amazing is that it flipped that on its head. You're not sacrificing anything, you don't need an attitude of "I can use a bit less and take one for the team" for a Tesla to appeal to you. Everything I watch about the Model S says it is a fast, high-performance, fun to drive, luxurious car -- objectively BETTER than a similarly priced gas-powered car to most users (who can afford one, but that will include more and more people over time).


Same thing goes for home solar and other "green energy". Adoption rates are NEVER going to soar when solar is "adequate". And then only adequate if you make very big lifestyle changes like cutting back on heating and cooling, using low-draw appliances, etc. etc.

But as Tesla is doing to cars, maybe this can do to energy. Musk is saying NO, you don't have to cut back. You don't have to settle for less. You don't have to take one for the team. Install some (currently fairly expensive) solar panels and 1, 2, or however many of our power packs, and you can have a BETTER experience than being on the grid, paying high bills every month and dealing with the occasional outage, etc.

I guarantee that pitch will do more to push the adoption of green energy than 10 years of Al Gore living in a mansion and flying around constantly on a private jet to give $100,000 lectures explaining why everybody else needs to cut back or we're all going to melt...

The info on the batteries is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

There are different types of Lithium ion batteries, so I'm curious as to what combination of minerals Tesla is using. The temperature range they can operate in seems decent, from -20 to +43 degrees C, which is ok for most places. Shipping outside the US is probably going to be really expensive, as they weigh 100kg each, so add up to about another thousand dollars for that.

Overall though, looks like an amazing solution - hook a couple of these up, and with some solar panels you can stop paying for grid power altogether.

I'm not trying to be a hater, but I do want people to get what they deserve...and in this instance I believe those that ignore and deny that AGW is real and in part their fault (and every thing I read and all actual scientists I talk to agree that nearly ALL scientists agree that AGW is real and happening now, contrary to your claim that only 4% agree) deserve to have their offspring eat them alive when the food runs out due to their denial based actions.
Really, you claim you personally spoke to "most climate scientists"?!? So now I know for certain that YOU are just a bold faced liar, because that's an impossibility. ;-)
But I already did my hair and put my party dress on, I'm crashing your party! I'll hide among the other scientists and you'll never notice me until the lampshade hat goes on and I climb onto the bar to dance badly to Bolero.
I am 100% certain that either you or Obama has made a mistake here...4% is an exaggeration of the number of scientists that DON'T theorize that AGW is real, not the other way around. Someone got the wires crossed.
It's a poor argument, when presented with facts that are contrary to your theory, to reply with 'who cares what you think'...but perhaps the best argument against my statements that you have?
I do walk to work, in my own yard. I have a vegi garden and an orchard. I do eat mostly just my own vegis, but not completely, there's also chicken and pork that I don't raise myself (but source locally). My beef intake is miniscule. I drive minimally, well under 5K per year (still adding to the problem, agreed, but far less than average), I don't have children (the best and most useful thing one can do for the massively overpopulated planet IMO) and try at every opportunity to convince others to not have them either, I do have solar panels AND hot water tubes, I do grow >90% of my (and my wife's) food. Most of those things I do because they save me money, because as I said, I have no personal incentive to "save the planet" for more than 40+- years, and I also don't think it's possible at this point. I can try to not add to the problem as much as possible, but at the same time I don't let my methods rule or ruin my life. It's my opinion that the time to minimize AGW was in the 80's, when it was completely ignored, and that now it's far too late to minimize things, the system reacts slowly and the last century of CO2 (and others) will continue to effect the system long after we stop adding more...and I think we're already to the point where that unavoidable rise in temp will melt methalhydrates, giving us boiling oceans on fire and at least another 5 deg of near instant temperature rise (likely far more). The tipping point was back when we could avoid that, and I have been convinced by data that that time came and went long ago and now we're hosed.
I will concede that the ONN is a GREAT place for 'news'.

And don't be a hater man... I don't have any children (unlike all the other people contributing to "overpopulation," or whatever your idea is about people with children).
In any case, I spoke to most climate scientists. They disagree with your points.
And the only party I have is the one you are not invited to. But there's a good number of scientist invited though.
The 4% statistic is in the report that Obama cited.

Maybe what I say is asinine in your view, but who really cares what you think?

And what exactly are you doing to fix the problem? I don't know, but there's a good chance I have less of a carbon footprint than you do. Unless of course you walk to work, eat vegetarian, have no children, drive electric, etc. have solar panels at home. You know, the basics.
Take deep slow breaths.
Don't buy plastic.
Or smoke.
Grow my own fruit in the yard.
But let's not jump to conclusions. What do you do (besides attacking people's views online)?

you're not wrong that rooftop solar panels would collect more energy. but this also kills many birds with one idea/stone. since asphalt is petroleum-based, the costs for roads is constantly going up, this solves that. this solves a lot of issues with electric vehicles, and snow plowing and many others that the video addresses.

but hey, even if this idea ultimately doesn't work out. any work done on this project can be spun off into a new project that could benefit us greatly.

so I've got zero problem investing in this, even if it ultimately it doesn't pan out, because this work will ultimately benefit someone else's work.

Part of the premise when this first surfaced a few years back is that solar panels are getting cheaper and cheaper to produce whereas asphalt, being a petroleum product, is getting more and more expensive.

It's only a matter of time before the upfront costs of this are cheaper before you even consider the returns.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Solar, roads, solar panel, electricity, power' to 'Solar, roads, solar panel, electricity, power, solar roadways' - edited by xxovercastxx

Tags for this video have been changed from 'solar panels, heating element, sidewalks, roads, parking lots, energy, sun' to 'solar panels, heating element, sidewalks, roads, parking lots, energy, solar roadways' - edited by xxovercastxx

According to the American Road and Transport Builders Association, the upfront costs of current construction are pretty significant already:

"Construct a new 2-lane undivided road – about $2-$3 million per mile in rural areas, about $3-5 million in urban areas.

Mill and resurface a 4-lane road – about $1.25 million per mile.

Expand an Interstate Highway from 4 lanes to 6 lanes – about $4 million per mile."

So really you'd have to look at the replacement costs of a technology like this rather than just assigning all those initial costs to the category of boondoggle.

But this really points to a larger issue that makes this question very hard to quantify and is actually addressed by the Solar Roadways people:

"For an accurate cost comparison between current systems and the Solar Roadways system, you'd have to combine the costs of current roads (including snow removal, line repainting, pothole repair, etc.), power plants (and the coal or nuclear material to run them), and power and data delivery systems (power poles and relay stations) to be comparable with the Solar Roadway system, which provides all three. So the comparison is more like an apple to a fruit basket."

One further interesting note from their website is that the numbers they used for electricity generation of the solar roadway system came out of their testing. In Northern Idaho. In the dead of winter. In other words, the worst possible conditions for solar panel systems.

Energy cost nothing. How about the cost in dollars. Sure any solar panel will eventually pay for itself, so why isn't every surface in the world covered in them yet?

Common sense, combined with the fact that he never in 7 minutes makes any mention of the fixed upfront cost, leads me to believe that this would be the boondoggle to end all boondoggles. Hell, even just burying our utility wires underground is too expensive for any but the richest or densest cities.

As long as we Americans want to waste cheap electricity and drive SUVs, we don't really get to complain about where it comes from. Sure, fracking needs some common sense regulation, but let's talk about how many people have died to maintain our supply of cheap foreign oil.

This is self centered NIMBYism at its worst. Either put solar panels on your house and drive a Volt, or shut up.

Inquiries Here for anyone that has answers?

Only place I could find the styrofoam liner is a round 8 quart styrofoam bait container at Gander Mtn does anyone else know where we can get a round Styrofoam liner, that wouldn't have to be modified to fit the 5 gallon bucket?

Also where does a person find that 12" ?? size Model Fan?

And the Solar Panel?

I was checking into a 16" 3 Speed with a Quiet motor to use in a bedroom but that might be too big for the 5 gallon bucket

I sure could be wrong, but it seems like the frozen plastic Milk container works best since even though it could/would add a bit of humidity, it's not going to be very much due to the Insulation properties of the Styrofoam liner.

Thank you to anyone that can answer these questions please?

You're fucking high.

The "over-arching" question is "why would you double up the roadway as a solar-powered generator?" It doesn't make sense, you'd spend just as much time running this solar panels parallel to the roadways.

This idea is impractical as it was the FIRST time I saw this on the sift...