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fishmech posted:You must be absolutely furious that car companies have to also test their car's safety in real labs with the cars as built, instead of just having the car company say they ran a simulation and it was perfectly fine.
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Sep 24, 2018 18:55
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bawfuls posted:yes, as an engineer i am personally furious about this Yes, we should just take the car company's word for it. A reputable car company like Volkswagen would never fib. Edit: Anyway, why don't they just put up highway sign structures like this:  ...except make them parallel to the highway, stretching down the highway with no gaps, and put solar panels along the top? Put the panels on swivels so they could track the sun. Probably a billion times cheaper than embedding them in the road, right? I'll take my Nobel Prize now. Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 20:16
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Zero VGS posted:Edit: Anyway, why don't they just put up highway sign structures like this: But that sounds so reasonable and mundane. How are you going to improve the world by putting already-existing useful technology in places well-suited to installing it 
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Sep 24, 2018 20:33
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Zero VGS posted:Yes, we should just take the car company's word for it. A reputable car company like Volkswagen would never fib. Not nearly disruptive enough. What is even the point of doing anything if you are not DISRUPTING TODAY'S PARADIGM?
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Sep 24, 2018 20:48
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Zero VGS posted:Yes, we should just take the car company's word for it. A reputable car company like Volkswagen would never fib. Heck, on the bike path use solar panels as overhead shade. As a cyclist, I'd appreciate that.
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Sep 24, 2018 21:49
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Zero VGS posted:Yes, we should just take the car company's word for it. A reputable car company like Volkswagen would never fib. South Korea already has a project that's doing this over bike/pedestrian paths along certain highways, but they don't put the solar roofing over the main highway surface due to maintenance concerns. Most of the installs also don't use swiveling, instead just ensuring the panels are mounted for the optimal stationary angle. https://www.fastcompany.com/3048661/this-south-korean-bike-highway-has-a-20-mile-solar-roof
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Sep 24, 2018 22:03
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fishmech posted:You must be absolutely furious that car companies have to also test their car's safety in real labs with the cars as built, instead of just having the car company say they ran a simulation and it was perfectly fine. Full-scale lab testing occurs after small scale demonstration testing and long after the basic physics has been worked out and risks and issues identified. Those steps were skipped here for a kilometer-long demonstration, wasting time and money on an idea that fails even on paper. It turned out that solar roads actually don't violate our knowledge about physics or economics, good job everyone. Now let me tell you about how Bitcoin is the future of money and how I have a special cylinder that I use to create cold fusion reactions (no you can't see the cylinder or the reaction, what a ridiculous request, the only testing I'll permit is a full-scale operational system obviously) QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 22:37
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the beer drinking duck gets it
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Sep 24, 2018 22:46
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you loving idiots think steel poles are going to make something cheaper goddamn i mean on the one hand solar roads is a really dumb idea, but on the other hand y'all figuring out a way to sound dumber
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Sep 24, 2018 23:10
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StabbinHobo posted:you loving idiots think steel poles are going to make something cheaper I think not needing to make solar panels withstand weight and weather would be cheaper, yes.
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Sep 24, 2018 23:25
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Modern solar panels are made of tempered glass (on the outside, anyway) and are already tough as hell and survive the weather for decades without maintenance. It's not that stupid to wonder if they can be made tough enough to withstand traffic more cheaply than building miles and miles of steel building framing, on top of the logistic and aesthetic issues of basically turning major roads into tunnels (and the safety issues of putting high-voltage power generators above ground with reduced ability to turn them off in case of an accident). It turns out that solar roads didn't work, they aren't strong enough, and they don't generate enough power. It was a bad idea to try it the way they did, but it wasn't THAT stupid. The cost of the experiment wasn't that high in the first place. It also turns out that the usable roof space we already has isn't being adequately tapped into, so maybe that should be happening more instead of having frankenroads.
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Sep 25, 2018 00:15
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QuarkJets posted:Full-scale lab testing occurs after small scale demonstration testing and long after the basic physics has been worked out and risks and issues identified. Those steps were skipped here for a kilometer-long demonstration, wasting time and money on an idea that fails even on paper. Which kilometer long demonstration? The one in France? The one in the Netherlands that's a bike path? The one in America that was only a footpath and 3/4 of the panels were defective before being put in the ground, and then another 15% broke in the ensuing weeks actually being inside? The one wherever it was that was just a small plaza in front of some toilets made of like 20 tiles, and those never even managed to light their LEDs properly let alone provide power? Any of the others that all hosed up? There were several different companies/governments doing this in a bunch of different conditions, some that surely did  full scale lab testing before being installed. They all broke in different ways and indicated it's actually a far stupider idea than anyone would have guessed at the start, where it was merely obvious they'd have bad power output and be expensive. Nobody really expected they could self destruct in the many varied ways that turned up in actual use. You can't even rely on them to just sit there, never take anything heavier than people walking around, and provide a gimmicky light show - they turn out to just be too fragile somehow.
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Sep 25, 2018 00:51
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Infinite Karma posted:(and the safety issues of putting high-voltage power generators above ground with reduced ability to turn them off in case of an accident). Like power lines already are? As opposed to... Having them at ground level?
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Sep 25, 2018 01:27
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angryrobots posted:Like power lines already are? As opposed to... Having them at ground level? Power lines can have breakers upstream to shut off the power when there is a break. Solar panels keep generating power anyway, there's always a hot line between the panels and the first disconnect switch.
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Sep 25, 2018 01:30
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If distributed generation is a priority, it seems like it would be easier to bury a small self-contained nuclear reactor every few thousand people or so. Put in enough fuel for 30? 50? years and replace it when that runs out - no pollution (directly from the generation), no maintenance.
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Sep 25, 2018 01:46
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fishmech posted:Which kilometer long demonstration? The one in France? The one in the Netherlands that's a bike path? The one in America that was only a footpath and 3/4 of the panels were defective before being put in the ground, and then another 15% broke in the ensuing weeks actually being inside? The one wherever it was that was just a small plaza in front of some toilets made of like 20 tiles, and those never even managed to light their LEDs properly let alone provide power? Any of the others that all hosed up? Great job fishmech, you cracked the case, solar roads failed at every attempted scale and were a terrible idea
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Sep 25, 2018 03:52
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Infinite Karma posted:Power lines can have breakers upstream to shut off the power when there is a break. Solar panels keep generating power anyway, there's always a hot line between the panels and the first disconnect switch. That was one of the points being upsold to the public though, that these hexagonal cells were each trivially easy to replace and posed basically no risk to people walking over them. It just turned out that they were low risk because most of them didn't generate any power at all lol But more seriously there is nothing inherently odd about placing solar panels above things, countless parking lots in sunny places are literally doing that now. The Costco by my house created a ton of covered parking with solar panels on top. If you were really running out of surfaces to put solar panels on (which we are not) then creating covers for roadways would work way better than solar roads
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Sep 25, 2018 04:00
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Zero VGS posted:Yes, we should just take the car company's word for it. A reputable car company like Volkswagen would never fib. Those sign supports are very expensive, and placing structure that close to the flow of traffic is a real hazard during accidents. Imagine a big rig hitting one and collapsing a section of panels and supports across all the lanes that could be dozens of meters long and electricaly live. Just no. It would also be far cheaper to just buy up a big open field somewhere and build them all there, or subsidize putting them on rooftops, or something. I have no idea why the roadway surface as a solar cell got so much traction, and I like the idea of modular roads.
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Sep 25, 2018 04:12
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:If distributed generation is a priority, it seems like it would be easier to bury a small self-contained nuclear reactor every few thousand people or so. Put in enough fuel for 30? 50? years and replace it when that runs out - no pollution (directly from the generation), no maintenance. Also since a modular reactor has not yet been built, I would argue its premature to claim "no maintenance". Zero VGS posted:Yes, we should just take the car company's word for it. A reputable car company like Volkswagen would never fib. 1.) Wind shear from large trucks and wind shear in general. 2.) Difficulty of the maintenance. (Are you going to build a catwalk to access all that?) 3.) Cheaper to use an empty piece of land and not make a large "sail". (Galvanized steel is not that cheap if you're talking about miles of the stuff.
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Sep 25, 2018 04:18
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Infinite Karma posted:Power lines can have breakers upstream to shut off the power when there is a break. Solar panels keep generating power anyway, there's always a hot line between the panels and the first disconnect switch. Still don't see how being at ground level is more safe than being elevated out of reach. Even ignoring the technical difficulty of a solar road or walkway itself, if we're talking about public safety in the event of damage to the system, a damaged PV array that people are expected to walk or drive on seems a lot more likely to expose energized electrical parts.
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Sep 25, 2018 04:25
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EoRaptor posted:Those sign supports are very expensive, and placing structure that close to the flow of traffic is a real hazard during accidents. Imagine a big rig hitting one and collapsing a section of panels and supports across all the lanes that could be dozens of meters long and electricaly live. OK, well as this guy confirmed a few posts after me, Korea has already built 20 miles of Just No. I don't see any reason why you couldn't build those past the guard rails / jersey barriers of normal US highways: fishmech posted:South Korea already has a project that's doing this over bike/pedestrian paths along certain highways, but they don't put the solar roofing over the main highway surface due to maintenance concerns. Most of the installs also don't use swiveling, instead just ensuring the panels are mounted for the optimal stationary angle. Also, it is easy to make devices between panels that will disconnect when they lose communication with neighboring panels. Ordinary contractors like these can do the job: http://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_13&products_id=273&osCsid=kjvdo6k1qotmtn8rtvegsao9g1 . Anyway, this Korean thing been around since about 2015 from the looks of it, does anyone know more about the budget? It says it is powering the highway lights and electric car chargers, and another article says it also powers "nearby areas", I'd be interested to see if it is actually powering homes/businesses. Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Sep 25, 2018 05:01
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Senor P. posted:You then have to have licensing costs of many different sites. Looks like the idea popped up a decade ago and didn't go anywhere: 2008: quote:The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) contacted PhysOrg.com to state that the NRC has no plans to review the Hyperion design in the near future, although the NRC and Hyperion have had preliminary talks. Because the Hyperion design is unique, the NRC expects that it will take significant time to ensure safety requirements. In a response to a letter from October 2008, the NRC stated: 2014: quote:Although the Energy Department has sunk $450 million into a multi-year effort to persuade the industry that the technology can be developed profitably, companies have been drifting away from the project, citing funding and regulatory questions. It would be at least another six years before one could be built, Magwood said.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:14
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EoRaptor posted:Those sign supports are very expensive, and placing structure that close to the flow of traffic is a real hazard during accidents. Imagine a big rig hitting one and collapsing a section of panels and supports across all the lanes that could be dozens of meters long and electricaly live. They became popular because someone made a nice video about how solar roads are the roads of the future. It was as simple as that. It was techy enough to sound plausibly good and shallow enough to not be obviously stupid to the average person, and it used the same production choices that all would-be viral videos used at the time. And the naming was on point: SOLAR ROADS aren't your grandpa's roads Pulling in investors was the goal, and it worked. Also lol at "just no" actually being in-use somewhere in Korea right now, bro it really doesn't sound like as terrible of an idea as you're suggesting in areas that may be space constrained. Have you ever seen a double decker freeway? Expensive, yes, but far from implausible, maybe the right choice sometimes, and always a better option than SOLAR ROADS roflmao QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Sep 25, 2018 05:19
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Looks like the idea popped up a decade ago and didn't go anywhere: If they ain't on the NRC's webpage, then they ain't poo poo. https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr.html The only people currently in the running are Nuscale (a lot further ahead than anyone else), Babcock and Wilcox (mPower), and Holtec International. At least that is for the United States. I am not sure what the other major nuclear powers are doing with regards to modular reactors. (Russia, China, South Korea, India, United Kingdom, France...) Senor P. fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Sep 25, 2018 05:21
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EoRaptor posted:Those sign supports are very expensive, and placing structure that close to the flow of traffic is a real hazard during accidents. Imagine a big rig hitting one and collapsing a section of panels and supports across all the lanes that could be dozens of meters long and electricaly live. The elephant in the room about solar roads is that road and rail construction is the last remaining arena of public works that is permitted in the United States. You can't get the political will to build publicly-owned solar plants because that's seen as infringing on the profit margins of the capitalists, but you can get bonds passed to build and upgrade roads. If they had found a way to routinely incorporate solar panels into road construction on a cost savings basis, that would have lead to a quiet energy transformation. And there's all sorts of neat things you could do with roads if they had powerlines running through them. But the technology just isn't there - it's prohibitively expensive to make the system work.
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Sep 25, 2018 06:12
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Kaal posted:The elephant in the room about solar roads is that road and rail construction is the last remaining arena of public works that is permitted in the United States. You can't get the political will to build publicly-owned solar plants because that's seen as infringing on the profit margins of the capitalists, but you can get bonds passed to build and upgrade roads. If they had found a way to routinely incorporate solar panels into road construction on a cost savings basis, that would have lead to a quiet energy transformation. And there's all sorts of neat things you could do with roads if they had powerlines running through them. But the technology just isn't there - it's prohibitively expensive to make the system work. Nah. Solar roadways are total nonsense and one of the most impractical ways to generate electricity from solar energy. This is not something you can do with public or private funds and any first year engineering major can name you 10 reasons why it's completely impractical.
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Sep 25, 2018 07:22
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Senor P. posted:You then have to have licensing costs of many different sites. In socialist Europe we build noise barriers along a significant portion of highways. Given that miles and miles of steel and concrete structures are going up anyway we might as well stick solar panels on top instead of further increasing land use. As a bonus, these barriers are about 10m (that’s like 10 yards for the metrically challenged) from the roads so they won’t even get touched by 99% of accidents and won’t physically hit the road if they topple over somehow.
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Sep 25, 2018 10:32
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Kaal posted:The elephant in the room about solar roads is that road and rail construction is the last remaining arena of public works that is permitted in the United States. You can't get the political will to build publicly-owned solar plants because that's seen as infringing on the profit margins of the capitalists, but you can get bonds passed to build and upgrade roads. If they had found a way to routinely incorporate solar panels into road construction on a cost savings basis, that would have lead to a quiet energy transformation. And there's all sorts of neat things you could do with roads if they had powerlines running through them. But the technology just isn't there - it's prohibitively expensive to make the system work. lol no, that's just naive; the end result of solar roads would be a bunch of poorly maintained roads that are even harder to fund than solar power, a situation that is worse than the worst of both worlds
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Sep 25, 2018 11:30
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:Nah. Solar roadways are total nonsense and one of the most impractical ways to generate electricity from solar energy. This is not something you can do with public or private funds and any first year engineering major can name you 10 reasons why it's completely impractical. And incorporating solar cells into the road surface in some way is one thing but that's not what SolarRoadways were going for. They wanted to replace roads with massive concrete/steel structures complete with crawl spaces. The glass hexagons would then be bolted on top. http://www.solarroadways.com/Research/Research It's dumb on an incomprehensible scale.
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Sep 25, 2018 11:34
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Bates posted:And incorporating solar cells into the road surface in some way is one thing but that's not what SolarRoadways were going for. They wanted to replace roads with massive concrete/steel structures complete with crawl spaces. The glass hexagons would then be bolted on top. http://www.solarroadways.com/Research/Research Resurfacing the road with anything other than wear resistant bulk materials is already stupid beyond words, putting crawl spaces which presumably can’t be allowed to flood during every day of heavy rainfall makes it so utterly ridiculous you couldn’t even write a near future scifi novel about it without sounding unrealistic.
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Sep 25, 2018 14:23
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angryrobots posted:Still don't see how being at ground level is more safe than being elevated out of reach. Even ignoring the technical difficulty of a solar road or walkway itself, if we're talking about public safety in the event of damage to the system, a damaged PV array that people are expected to walk or drive on seems a lot more likely to expose energized electrical parts. It's like the difference between a broken sprinkler and a broken fire hydrant. An individual panel might be 10A at 30V and fairly harmless (plus if you broke the glass, the cells underneath are very fragile and would break as soon as you touched them). The energized copper wire that links them might be 30A at 300V or more, which is extremely deadly. If the wires are buried, it's hard for damage to expose them. But if they're running above-ground along the road, you're one car accident away from exposing those wires, and there's no simple way to circuit break them. Yes, power at that voltage is common in buildings and carports, but they are set back from high speed and high volume traffic. Like QuarkJets said, we're not hurting for roof space to install solar on, why build fake roofs in more dangerous places? Just because public works dollars might pay for it?
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Sep 25, 2018 16:17
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there is a reason that firefighters have started to gear up with a special foam to cover solar panels with, because there is no off switch on those and it turns out that water+powered cable is a bad combination.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:28
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:If distributed generation is a priority, it seems like it would be easier to bury a small self-contained nuclear reactor every few thousand people or so. Put in enough fuel for 30? 50? years and replace it when that runs out - no pollution (directly from the generation), no maintenance. I'd love to see that but currently, SDG&E is trying to bury a huge amount of high-level waste from the San Onofre nuclear plant (that they broke) onto a beach in containers that might last 40 years. So I just don't trust the industry.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:40
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Infinite Karma posted:Like QuarkJets said, we're not hurting for roof space to install solar on, why build fake roofs in more dangerous places? Just because public works dollars might pay for it? I think it's an economy of scale thing... it's easier to build a uniform, 20-mile stretch like they did in Korea than it is to put down 20 miles worth of panels across 2000 different buildings, with different people paying for each project and purchasing in smaller quantities, etc. If I were a local business I'd chip into a pool to do the highway thing once if it meant no electric bill forevermore. Plus, roof space is generally fine for powering houses; it is easy to get enough panels on just about any 1-3 family house's roof to power the home, but when you're talking about apartment buildings or office buildings that have 20 floors to power, the highway thing would give a lot more surface area for less overall money. And again, where is this "more dangerous" stuff coming from? Do we really have 16-wheelers plowing through guard rails and jersey barriers on a regular basis? My last post has a link for a 1000 volt, 4000 amp contractor, for $100 (probably much less in quantity, that's all you'd need between every couple panels to instantly reduce them to a touch-safe voltage in a catastrophic event.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:34
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Infinite Karma posted:
I'm not advocating for this at all, just trying to understand it as a safety concern. As someone who works daily on power lines that already run beside roadways, I fail to see how this is any less safe. Maybe there isn't a good way to automatically shut off a section of panels, but it can still be fused and sectionalized. Power lines often sit on the ground hot when they fall too, at a much higher voltage than anything that's part of a PV system. If you run it all underground, there will be above ground terminations/disconnects etc that are vulnerable to traffic (and from personal experience, the average person does not realize the danger of, like they do a fallen line). Again I'm not advocatng for solar adjacent to roadways, but as a safety concern it's something that already exists and is acceptable *if it were economically feasible on its own*.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:42
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A covered bike path is hardly a difficult engineering feat. Bridges too: 
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Sep 25, 2018 20:59
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People are acting like utility scale PV farms don't exist. They do and they're better than rooftop PV from a LCOE perspective, but smaller actors can put up rooftop PV on their own so that's a mitigating factor. If we want the most resource efficient solution for solar it is utility scale PV farms. If we want the lowest cost of initial action it is rooftop PV. Grid connected solar roads don't make sense. In Q1 of 2018 they installed an additional 1.8GW-DC of utility scale solar in the US for context. So they're getting permits and building farms.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:36
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Zero VGS posted:I think it's an economy of scale thing... it's easier to build a uniform, 20-mile stretch like they did in Korea than it is to put down 20 miles worth of panels across 2000 different buildings, with different people paying for each project and purchasing in smaller quantities, etc. If I were a local business I'd chip into a pool to do the highway thing once if it meant no electric bill forevermore. Plus, roof space is generally fine for powering houses; it is easy to get enough panels on just about any 1-3 family house's roof to power the home, but when you're talking about apartment buildings or office buildings that have 20 floors to power, the highway thing would give a lot more surface area for less overall money. If you need space for a solar power installation you can rent or buy cheap land on the edge or outside the city. There is absolutely no reason to build a solar power installation over highways, cursed Indian burial grounds or active volcanos. What is it with these dumb highways? Putting solar panels over highways is like the human version of catnip.
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Sep 26, 2018 00:34
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VideoGameVet posted:I'd love to see that but currently, SDG&E is trying to bury a huge amount of high-level waste from the San Onofre nuclear plant (that they broke) onto a beach in containers that might last 40 years. Putting fuel in intermediate storage isn't really a serious issue though. Spent fuel barrels aren't exactly going to spontaneously crack open even if they're attended to by idiots.
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Sep 26, 2018 01:09
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suck my woke dick posted:Putting fuel in intermediate storage isn't really a serious issue though. Spent fuel barrels aren't exactly going to spontaneously crack open even if they're attended to by idiots. most people have no idea how radiological waste works but that doesn't slow them down
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Sep 26, 2018 02:08
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