In theory, the idea could work: replace all of the nation’s
asphalt with solar panels, and we’d generate more than three times the electricity the US
Unfortunately, the list of obstacles is long. The main problem
is cost. There are roughly 29,000 square miles of road surface to cover. We
need roughly 5.6 billion panels to cover that area. That’s a price tag of $56
trillion.
The researchers have been
unable to secure any large piece of the more than $2 billion a year spent on solar
research and development around the world. Probably because there are too many
more-practical, more-promising investments to be made to seriously consider
this pipe dream.
This brings up a good point. Rooftop panels and solar arrays are
already established as a viable power source, but adoption is still low. It’s
hard to imagine a city ripping up asphalt and installing a largely unproven
technology when it could achieve the same level of power generation by planting
panels along the road.
Most of the technological challenges seem solvable. Those
include things like how to keep the roads clean, how to increase the efficiency
of the panels in the road, how to store the solar power, how to get electricity
from more remote roads to the grid, and whether the glass is durable enough.
Whether they’re solvable for a reasonable price tag is another question.
The first thing that one has to understand before
beginning to look at numbers is this: an apples to apples comparison between
asphalt or concrete roads and solar roads is not possible.
An asphalt/concrete
road is simply a hard surface to drive a vehicle on. A solar is a
modern modular system with a multitude of uses and features.
For an accurate
cost comparison between current systems and the solar road system, you'd have
to combine the costs of current roads (including snow removal, line repainting,
pothole repair, etc.), power plants (and the coal or nuclear material to run
them), and power and data delivery systems (power poles and relay stations) to
be comparable with the solar road system, which provides all three.
This will be interesting to watch.
