Column by Loretta Redd
The first asphalt paved road in North America was laid in 1870 in Newark, New Jersey, followed by Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC and 5th Avenue in New York City. Although the material has changed somewhat from its original composition, and a variety of additives have been tried, the same pliable yet relatively durable black goo has been covering our nation ever since.
In 1919, a young officer named Dwight Eisenhower, was impressed with the difficulty of road travel as part of the Army’s first cross-country Motor Transport Convoy. While in Germany during WWII, he noted how the Autobahn had served the enemy transport of military hardware and troops, as well as the relative ease of repair compared to reconstructing bombed out rail lines.
By the 1950′s, President Eisenhower was governing a country living with the fear of nuclear attack from the Soviets. The President foresaw the potential need for massive evacuations from populated areas, along with the rapid deployment of our military. By 1956, the Federal Aid Highway Act was enacted, leading to our 42,000 miles of interstate highways, and its millions offshoot roads across every state, city and town.
What’s Wrong with Our Roads?
Today, roughly 3.25 trillion miles are driven annually in the United States. Although that number has been flat for a decade, the condition of our roads and highways has been in constant decline. We still rely on the same smelly, heat attracting, toxic asphalt for most of our roadways, and suffer the erosion of our Public Works budgets as the material cost for this petroleum product rises astronomically.
So why haven’t we invented a better material than asphalt, which has limited durability and is toxic to both the applicators as well as ground water and the environment? Apparently we’ve tried.
In addition to concrete, which is durable but more difficult to apply correctly and to spot repair, bright minds have created a variety of new products. Landlock is a paving material made from natural soils, but it can’t withstand the rapidly increasing heavy transport traffic.
Another product, Ironweave, is used for dust control and paving large transport areas like truck stops. But it’s actually recycled asphalt covered with a penetrant made from pine resin.
There’s a new company called Eco-Pave, now using polymers that are elastic and strong, but the cost is not significantly lower, and the composite is untested over time. Yet another company is creating sandstone roads which are “organically grown” using a common microbe called Bacilus Pasteurii that cements the grains of sand with calcium carbonate.
Solar Panel Roads
As I researched alternatives, it appeared we were stuck with rough roads of potholes and seas of slurry seal, until I read about an Idaho company called Solar Roadways, brainchild of Scott Brusaw. If what I’m about to write sounds so incredibly amazing that it can’t possibly be true…well, it’s as true as NASA, supercomputers, iphones and all the other unimaginable inventions of our lives. If nothing else, it sets the ‘roadways’ of our minds off in a different direction.
The product consists of panels made from glass, which can be manufactured to be as strong as steel and have at least the same traction as today’s surfaces. And underneath the top layer there are solar panels that store the sun’s energy. One mile of road could produce enough electricity to power more than 400 homes.
If the antiquated federal highway system of Dwight Eisenhower were replaced with Solar Roadways, it would produce three times the energy need of the United States. Electric vehicles could potentially be recharged while driving through mutual induction techniques. (Think our young genius might be making Edison and Exxon just a little nervous?)
Scott writes that the roads would be build upon a base layer of recycled garbage pellets, relieving landfills and being carbon neutral. Because they store energy, they could be heated to speed the drying after rain, or melt ice and snow, making road salt and snowplows unnecessary, while alleviating millions of dollars in auto damages and personal injury.
The roads also have dynamic lighting, which could display warning signals, or illuminate the pedestrian or bike path. Potentially, they could house fiber optic cables as well, creating a cross country web of communication capacity. The sections would be built to last 22 years, according to the website, “exactly the time they would take to produce enough electricity to pay for themselves, so in practice they’d cost nothing.”
Solar Roadways may not be the answer to our fossil-fueled nightmare of a highway and roadway system in need of constant repair, but if it points us in a new direction of earth-saving, tax lowering, budget slimming roadways, even the old “I Like Ike” crowd might jump on this new highway! Would someone in Santa Barbara, with our residents and government dedicated to reducing our landfill, improving our environment and saving the planet want to make a little investment in the future?
Pavement Maintenance Zones for Santa Barbara
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Sounds promising.
Great story. Doubt the transportation lobbies will let this get too far but MEMO to Das and Hannah in Sucramento.
The roads are like hell around here
Huh? And to think the county is spending tens of millions to add a third lane of asphalt from Cochita to Montecito
Forward thinking
I am a big fan of solar roadways. However, they do not store energy! The PV panels convert solar energy (i.e. photons) into electrical energy, which has to be used or transported via power lines to a consumer instantaneously. Unless there is a means of energy/electricity storage (e.g. battery, capacitor, thermal, mechanical ect.) they cannot store the produced electricity. Large scale energy/electricity storage is a big challenge upon itself. The solar roadway project is a GREAT idea, but it has to overcome many technical and economical hurdles to become successful.
It’s true, but luckily peak electricity use hours coincide with peak sunlight hours. Battery technology will increase with time; getting a head start on the infrastructure won’t hurt anybody. Also, as the amount of electric cars increase, the storage capacity of the power grid will increase as well- we’re effectively adding another high-capacity battery to the system with each plug-in electric sold, and the grid can both store and draw power from each. Certainly we need better means of electric storage, but we shouldn’t let that need scare us away from using alternative energy sources now.
The problem of implementing such technologies is an economical one. For example Germany has so many PV panels by now that there is excess electricity during the day, i.e. there are no consumers for the produced electricity. If you don’t have a consumer or you can’t store the excess electricity for a later time (for example at night or cloudy days), the PV panels will not pay for themselves anymore. The German government solves this via subsidies, which now becomes a political issue and is not sustainable. In the solar roadway case one is left with a very expensive road, which does not pay for itself anymore.
The idea of using electric vehicles for grid electricity storage (vehicle to grid) is neat but has its own issues. For example it does not provide long storage ranges (being able to feed into a battery for long periods of time until it’s full), or reduction of lifetime (what e-vehicle owner is willing to share his battery with the grid when this drastically reduces the lifetime of his battery/vehicle).
Again I am a big fan of the solar roadways idea, which has many upsides, however there are still tremendous technical, economical, and political issues that have to be solved in order for it to be implemented on a large scale.
Do what the electric Company does. When they produce more energy that immediately needed they pump water up hill so it can generate electricity as the stored water is permitted to flow down again. I believe that many of the readers are more progressive than I am and i would like top remind everyone that you can do little to offend friends and nothing to please enemies. Also after an election it is never as bad as the losers think it will be or as good as the winners think. I do believe that we are all becoming paranoid in our thinking and I wish to remind myself and everyone else that “Negative thinking usually produces negative results and Positive thinking usually produces Positive results. A classic example is the beautiful fountain in front of the City College’s Garvin theater. It was originally designed to be 2 feet higher but the Sculpture (World Reknowned) did not want to get into a verbal contest with a handful of protesters and therefore complied to their wishes and built it 2 feet shorter than the original design. My point is that, protest can have a serious negative impact and we should all admit it when we are wrong. I have lived long enough to see that most solutions create larger problems eventually. I have witnessed fuel control in our hills permitting fuel to grow to the point that when it is eventually ignited it creates fire storms which are impossible to control. Control burns on the other hand open the controller to the possibility of a law suit so there are fewer.
feel free to make corrections in Grammar and Spelling my first (That. MY word top should be a to should be a than. I should also mention that the Sculpture was the result of a gift by Eli Luria and Michael Towbes. Both friends of SBCC The second word top should also be to
Thanks so much for this good read, Loretta. We are indeed stuck in the past. Time to pave the way to a better future!
Nice to see someone with solutions. Thanks Loretta.
Probably the best local column I’ve read in many months. Sharp- researched- solution driven and a look into the future – kudos to the author
That is so coool loreta I hope it really goes soemwhere.
Fantastic out-of-the-box thinking, but hardly as real as things like supercomputers and iPhones. Even if it is deployable in a garage, I can’t imagine the maintenance costs will allow this to be anything but prohibitively expensive at scale. Good to see it can support a semi, but what about a snow-plow scraping across the top of it? Will it still maintain traction with lubricant and dust build-up on it?
Again, I applaud their effort, but probably more realistic (and cheaper) to build some PV panel farms actually closer to consumption locations to keep transmission costs down.
Honest debate I have found forces the participants to reach to the depth of their bowels to prove they are right and usually truth will filter to the top. I once suggested that each local developer donate 25 to 50 from the centerline of each creek which runs from the top of the mountain which is our property to the mean high tide line so in the future it could be developed like the masses of the community chose to develop it and we all would have free access from the Ocean to the mountains. Everyone thought it was a great idea but no one wanted it developed in their back yards for fear of what strangers it could attract. I am happy to say that the bike path which runs from town to the University has increased the value of the properties which adjoin it.. I am much too old to fight for worthy causes but perhaps one of you will take the idea and run with it.
Donate 25 to 50 feet of land was what I intended to say. I also know there are usually flaws in an idea or exceptions to common sense providing an answer. All problems created can also be removed or modified as they are discovered. Perhaps in my next life I will take the time to become more active. For now my recommendation is to sleep until nap time and then nap until bed-time. I want to go to bed early tonight so I can get up early and finish what i started today which was nothing.
What most people DON’T realize about solar panels is that they must be kept CLEAN in order to produce at peak efficiency. Take a look at our roads and highways – they are NOT clean. They are oily (which comes up when it rains and sometimes causes accidents) and just plain dirty from dirt, car and truck tires, birds and animals (usually dead) and more.
My neighbor has solar panels on his roof. He was told in a report by the solar company that they would pay for themselves in about 15 years. But a few issues came up:
1) They degrade over time – within 10 years the efficiency is down almost 50% (even when cleaned monthly!)
2) They need to be cleaned every month or they lose efficiency IMMEDIATELY – seems that the sun can’t get through the dirt… Hmmm… They never told him that upfront…
3) Cleaning requires you to climb up on the roof, VERY carefully clean them (don’t slip on those very slippery panels!) and climb down again. Oh, and you have to use the proper cleaning agents or they will leave a ‘film’ which can make it worse.
So, here he is, 10 years in and even though he did the maintenance every month (he hired someone to do it after the first couple of times) he STILL is not getting enough to make it pay for itself in 15 years. So, he thought, well, that’s okay if it takes 20… Problem is, by year 15 they will likely only produce 1/3rd and by year 20? Less than 10 percent!
So, I ask you…. WHO IS GOING TO CLEAN AND POLISH THEM EVERY MONTH? Is THAT cost factored in?
Oh, and if they only last 22 years, that means that around year 10 or so, they will be producing MUCH LESS – was that factored in? I bet not!
Great idea, but it would be better served if they put them ABOVE the roads and parking lots instead of making the roads out of them. They would be easier to maintain (without having to shut down that Interstate or freeway) and would produce MORE because they could be angled if necessary to optimize capture. In addition, they would cool the roads in summer and keep them dryer/snow free in winter – making the roads themselves last MUCH longer.
Concrete is still the BEST thing to make roads out of – it lasts longer and if properly installed and grooved can actually give BETTER gas mileage while needing much LESS maintenance as well as lasting 3-5 times as long as asphalt roads.
The number one cost of roads is maintenance! That cost goes UP constantly because the materials costs go up over time AND because WAGES go up as well. If if costs $1 million dollars for a mile of asphalt (yeah, right) and a concrete one for $4 million, it sure looks like the asphalt is the way to go… HOWEVER, if you need to ‘fix’ it (potholes, cracks, etc.) every year (costing you $50k per mile not including rising costs each year) and then replace it in 15 (costing you $3 million in 15 yrs because of rising costs), it ends up costing you $5.5 million OR MORE for 30 years worth of use. While the concrete costs $4 million and will last for 30-40 years and maintenance is only about 1/3rd the cost per year!
Oh, and finally, it saves EVERYONE a lot of TIME! Because the roads are not re-done as often they are OPEN more. Because the maintenance time is about 1/10th the time, they don’t have to shut them down as often.
Lastly… Ask yourself this… Why do you think that BRIDGES are built with CONCRETE instead of asphalt?
I rarely clean my solar panels, and they work just fine for me. I suppose I could get another little bit out of them if I cleaned them more frequently, but I find it easier to simply unplug
things that would otherwise be drawing power when I’m not using them.
It is true that roads would be dirty, so not the best for solar in a place without much rain….