HOAX: Solar Roadways

Solar roadways is an idea that proposes to exchange all of the roads and parking lots in the US with hexagonal tiles of solar panels. These solar panels will also have LEDs that can display road signals and have heaters to melt snow during the winter. The developers behind this project have gotten over 2 million dollars from crowd funding and they are asking for more backing. But this idea is simply not feasible and impractical:

-Cars will cover the parking lots during the day, when these solar panels are supposed to work

-By laying the solar panels on the ground, the efficiency is reduced to 30%

-Glass is not an effective road material, and the traction will be terrible during wet weather

-Glass is not mechanical feasible, and will soon be damaged from abrasion

-There is no way to produce enough energy from the solar panels to melt any snow that falls on it

-Just the glass needed for completing this project will cost 20 trillion dollars, 10 times the federal budget

-The money needed to wire the solar panels together will cost 1 million per mile, way to expensive to be probable

-There is no way to clearly see the LEDs during bright sunlight

So why is this unfeasible project so supported?

This is because of the “oh it will be so cool” effect. IF this was possible, then it would be awesome. IF this was possible, then it may solve some issues. But it is simply not possible. Many of the news media that support this do not have the faintest clue on and of the science that goes behind this. Even some reputable science organizations are supporting this because they have not looked closely enough at the details that need to go into this.

The following video goes into some more detail and explains some of the calculations:

Image Citation: N.d. Green Tech Media. Web. 24 Apr. 2016. <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Department-of-Transportation-Official-Discusses-Solar-Roadways>.