EEVblog #1047 - Solar Roadways FINALLY BUSTED! (Colas Wattway)

Dave finally puts an end to the idea of Solar Roadways.
We have the test results of the world's biggest solar roadways project, the 1km long 336kW Colas Wattway project in Tourouvre France.
Stand in awe at how impractical and expensive it is!, and SPOILER, how it won't usher in a new era of renewable solar technology.
TLDR; Impractical Folly

Test results:

Panel data:

NREL Solar Industry Report with costs:
PVWatts Calculator

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[matsv]

"1/3 capacity for 9 times the cost"

Wow, that is some impressive stats.... impressive in the wrong but still impressive.

[swedneck]

the biggest problem with solar roadways is that just installing a solar roof over/next to roads is so much better.

[sircompo]

Solar Roadway companies, please stop this. If you continue, Dave is likely to end up in hospital with 3rd degree facepalm injuries.

[ericsbuds]

well, Dave, did you ever stop to think that we could make our roadways on an angle and install servos to tilt the road surface to track the sun?? HMM!??! think outside the box for once!!!! :P

[TomsLab]

How did Solar Roadways make it this far???

[ChrisGammell]

It's still mind boggling to me that the planning discussions didn't stop right after the words "Pothole" and "multi-ton, high speed vehicles" enter the design constraints. But yeah, the math here was pretty good too!

[richsmith]

1000 kilometres sounds a bit clumsy. 1 Megameter is much cooler!

[mbaksa]

Dave, please don't apologize for video about busting solar roadways, especially at this time of year - it's like a Christmas gift! :)

[RhizometricReality]

Sooo it would be cheaper to just run solar panels along the side of the road?
Install a bike path with solar roof on every highway.

[dudeman]

My favorite response to solar roadways. What happens to all the rubber from tires? It doesn't just disappear, it doesn't stay on the tire because we know tires wear down. It wears into the pavement just like that one picture of the tread marks on the solar road showed. What happens when you get these hot heads who do burnouts on the road, or if someone has to slam on the brakes for something in front of them. Or what about accidents that spill oil and scrape up the ground. Pavement you just put absorbent sand on fluids and keep going. Solar roads now you have to send a cleaning crew out to fix the surface of the road everytime someone gets cut off and slams the brakes, or when some dumb kid does burnouts at an intersection.

[vencibushy]

If you're a politician you can argue against just about anything even math and physics. That's how our broken society works.

[Tuttomenui]

Test installations are an expensive way to prove the math right.

[JanicekTrnecka]

The real reason for solar roadways has nothing to do with ecology and economy - only economical for the person, who installs it and/or approves wasting public money for it.

[hawkeyes]

on tonights news, a man's head has exploded from repeated faceparm's when solar roadways arrive in australia .

[Trottelheimer]

Apart from the utter technical and economic idiocy of it, how is the road safety? I'd not feel comfortable driving on a knobby glass surface - what happens if it gets wet or dusty or covered with snow or ice? What if tiles come loose or apart so that punctures and other damage can happen? My gut feeling is that it's not safe to drive on.

I also assume it's meant for areas with dense population and thus dense traffic - wont it be covered by cars and dirt much of the daytime? Oh well, best forget about it.

[akmason]

I love your videos, I love how you break things down to make it easier for people to understand

[cesarbretschneider]

How about this? Start a Kickstarter, for solar roadways that are lifted off the ground, slightly angled so that rain gets automatically drained... And that you'll make them more efficient by not letting car's drive on them... Maybe some of those solar roadways fans realize it's better that way.

[КириллРагузин-рв]

It is only unpractical during summer and autumn. For the rest of the year the thing is not going to work at all. First of all when winter comes all the roads get coverd by a thick layer of comressed dirty snow so it is zero power output per square meter for almost half a year. And when spring comes it gets even worse - the temperature gets above and below zero every day so the salt and sand mixture that is used to prevent quick ice formation with all the gunk and already salty and dirty water is going to flow into all the electronics and cabling through of all the scratches and cracks that was caused by the traffic and freezing soil movements during the past winter. Even the lights that are being sometimes istalled on some walkways tend to massively die every year. A proper road is going to completely destroy the thing by turning it into small rusty grinded pieces. So the system is definitely not going to survive more than half a year in any reasonable climate like we have in Moscow. Solar power generation is a very questionable idea as it is, but the solar road idea is making it pretty much as stupid as it possibly gets.

[MaverickandStuff]

So for the same price they could have added solar to every government building lowering power bills to nothing.

[JimFortune]

What if you take the solar roadway, raise it about 20 feet above the asphalt on columns and use it to shade the actual roadway?