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July 21, 2011 in Idaho
Sandpoint engineer gets research funds to test panels
Paving U.S. roadways with solar panels could wean the nation off of coal-fired power plants and provide other benefits, too, says a North Idaho electrical engineer.
Scott Brusaw has spent 5 ½ years working on the concept of “intelligent pavement” that generates electricity, acts like a power grid and even melts snow and ice.
This week, his company, Solar Roadways Inc., received a $750,000 research contract from the Federal Highway Administration for a smaller-scale project that could serve as a first step: a solar parking lot.
Brusaw will install the solar panels outside his electronics lab near Sandpoint. Each of the 12-foot-square panels will produce about 7.6 kilowatt hours of electricity daily. Four of the panels would supply a typical household’s electrical needs.
“We’ll do our own parking lot first,” Brusaw said, “so we can monitor it 24/7, get all our data … and start seeing how it holds up under all kinds of load tests.”
Parking lots are a good test site for the solar panels, because the vehicle traffic is lightweight and slow-moving. Brusaw also envisions the solar panels in driveways, patios, playgrounds and residential streets – anything with a hard surface.
“The ultimate goal is the nation’s highways,” he said. “That is what we will probably do last.”
Brusaw had kicked around the idea of power-producing roadways for years. After the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” drew public attention to global warming, Brusaw’s wife, Julie, encouraged him to quit his job as a contract electrical engineer and “see if anyone was interested in our idea,” he said.
Since then, Brusaw’s work has attracted international attention. Last year, Solar Roadways was a winner in General Electric’s Ecomagination Challenge, which solicited ideas for building the “next generation power grid.” Film crews from Japan, Korea and Canada have visited Brusaw’s lab.
In 2009, the Federal Highway Administration awarded Solar Roadways a $100,000 contract to build the first solar panel prototypes. Brusaw said the latest, two-year contract will help advance the prototype to the point where his company could begin attracting investors for future commercial production. It will also help with production cost estimates.
“Everyone is interested, but wants to know how you’re going to do this,” he said. “It sounds great on paper, but there are a lot of engineering challenges.”
Manufacturing textured glass strong enough to drive on is one of them. Solar Roadways has been working with the materials research institute at Penn State University on the project.
Later this month, Brusaw and his wife will head to Vancouver, B.C., to talk to a glass manufacturer that ships glass sidewalks to New York City. Glass sidewalks are used in places such as Madison Square Garden, where underground lights illuminate the sidewalks.
The panels will contain solar cells, LED lights and electronics, hermetically sealed between layers of textured glass. The panels generate enough heat to melt snow and defrost ice. LED lights would be able to spell out traffic warnings or light up crosswalks at night.
Solar roadways could benefit the drivers of electric cars by providing charging stations. Brusaw said the panels’ smart-grid component could even allow them to communicate with electric cars, alerting drivers to upcoming obstacles such as accidents or deer in the roads.
According to Brusaw’s calculations, installing solar panels in the approximately 28,000 miles of paved surfaces in the lower 48 states would generate about three times more electricity than U.S. citizens use each year.
“Your parking lot could power your building,” he said.
Miners to return to Lucky Friday 
schleufer on July 21 at 7:42 a.m.
it leaves me almost speechless that our government is spending so much money on something like this. its wrong in so many ways aside from this country being so deep in debt. the cost of this per mile for roadway is going to be staggering and what about the high tech maintenance or footprint? then how about the lines to connect it all? are these panels going to click together like leggo blocks? how do you create a perfectly flat surface that dont settle so that the panels stay flat? what about the custom cut wedge peices of glass you would need for curves in the road? the whole thing would be an engineering nitemare.
can you imagine how much natural gas you would need to melt enough glass to cover 28,000 miles of road? then how about at nite when its raning or snowing and you have to slam on the brakes driving on a sheet of glass? the glass would have to have some sort of texture for traction then how do you keep it clean from from dirt oil grease and skid marks? how about the occasional semi truck fire? you cant just patch the asphault…you call the specially trained electrical techs to fix the road.
this guy is going to spend hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars on something that just isnt workable. so this trip to vancouver i suppose is going to be paid for out of this $750.000? then i suppose they will need to fly to NY and do some research on the sidewalks there too. someone at the federal highway admin needs a pink slip for this one. i think a reporter from this paper needs to contact that person and do a followup on this story. this is what happens when you put college educated idiots in charge.
monkeyman on July 21 at 8:23 a.m.
Congratulations to the Mr. Brusaw for seeing his efforts over the years being recognized.
I first read about this last year, and am still personally skeptical of the idea’s viability in the near future. Perhaps he had a really compelling case to have already convinced GE 2009. My question right now is why don’t we start with affordable rooftops and car-roofs? They are too expensive to begin with.
Good to see national and international coverage of a local effort:
www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OJIL3G0.htm
http://blogs.wsj.com/in-charge/2011/07/20/firm-nets-750k-for-‘solar-parking-lot’/
www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/07/21/business-us-id-solar-highway_8577000.html
monkeyman on July 21 at 8:32 a.m.
BTW, regarding the funding - it is less than that for deploying a soldier to Afghanistan, at ~$1M/year.
I bet this project would be more productive for the US economy than the other option regardless of the degree of success…
(Economically speaking - they are already planning to spend it on travel etc.)
nutz4utwo on July 21 at 8:36 a.m.
That is about 50 cents of electricity a day for each panel. With the panels costing $10,000 each (their estimate), installation, financing, and maintenance, the economics of this are laughable at best.
The thermodynamics are fuzzy too. It takes a lot of energy to melt snow. To keep them ice free all winter, I bet these panels would consume more electricity then they produce all year long. Glass is slippery when wet too! I guess he has never walked on one of those glass sidewalks. They suck!
I am ashamed that we are wasting $$$ on this “research”
schleufer on July 21 at 8:46 a.m.
So just how thick would the glass have to be to support a bouncing fully loaded semi? Or how about those mega loads?
mikeln on July 21 at 10:00 a.m.
Just another example of how corporate america charges us for the “research” then reaps the profits if there are any. This is what corporations do, socialize the risks and then privitize the profits, leaving the average american broke. I am tired of this type of capitalism that favors the well connected over the many. There really is not that much difference between it and communism but stupid people have been convinced otherwise.
schleufer on July 21 at 10:45 a.m.
if they were going to attempt to melt snow and ice at nite they would have to have a battery back up or go on the grid and speaking of grid like gridlock with alot of traffic there would be alot of shade cutting any possible potential way down.
anybody have any idea how thick a 12 ft square peice of glass would have to be to support big loads. i dont think id start with anything less than 4 to 6 inches. yeah a 12 foot wide 6 inch thick peice of glass 28,000 miles long. the glass companies would make out like a bandit.
the tax payers are being taken to the cleaners on this one.
greenlibertarian on July 21 at 7:58 p.m.
nutz4utwo on July 21 at 8:36 a.m.
That is about 50 cents of electricity a day for each panel. With the panels costing $10,000 each (their estimate), installation, financing, and maintenance, the economics of this are laughable at best.
Actually it’s about 60 cents at Avista Idaho rates, and more like a dollar at average US kWh rates.
The “per watt” cost of solar cells has been drastically falling in recent years due to improved technologies.
The company’s conservative numbers point to a 22 year payback from the electricity produced, but there are many other factors to consider, which they do mention on their web site.
I have a few friends in the Materials Science business, and there are going to be some revolutionary breakthroughs coming in the next 10-20 years.
There are already 3-D copiers that you can stick a Cresent wrench into and will precisely duplicate it, in a polymer, but soon they’ll be able use a variety of alloys and metals.
decturkey on July 22 at 12:44 p.m.
I’d rather have the government spend money on this than a lot of the other crap they throw there money away on. Just like the two ships they spent $300 million on that weren’t ever finished or used. At least this has a shot at working, even if just used in parking lots. I’d like to see the results they find using it in their parking lot. Then if they can find ways to implement them more from there, great!!!
DaveImrett on August 16 at 5:24 p.m.
It’s ironic how many folks, without any experience in the application of this technology, already know everything about it. They know it won’t work based on the information they have gleaned from other things that they think are related. Somebody once said this is the age of the instantaneous expert. If I read a couple of articles, then I am an expert and know how to run everything.
The whole point to a research grant is to try an idea and find out if it works. These solar parking lots may be a flop, or they may be a small contribution to solving the energy problem, or they may be a big one. We won’t know for sure until we try it. Taking a risk to find out what works is what research ( and venture capital) are all about.
We are not talking about a huge amount of money. Give it a try. See if it works, See if the problems that crop up can be fixed. If nothing else, we will have some new pieces to the puzzle that we did not have before. That alone is probably worth the money.