Solar Roadways has raised $1,884,633 in six weeks from Earth Day to now
on a goal of $1,000,000 in indiegogo
(which was already
a record for most contributors with 36,000 people at $1.5 million).
Yes, to all those who have asked me, I think it could work.
Add solar roadways to rooftop solar and solar farms and wind,
and
the EPA’s new CO2 rule (which doesn’t even do much about coal for years
and does nothing about about “natural” gas)
will seem like a quaint baby step in a few years after this happens:
Everyone has power. No more power shortages, no more roaming power
outages, no more need to burn coal (50% of greenhouse gases). Less
need for fossil fuels and less dependency upon foreign oil. Much
less pollution. How about this for a long term advantage: an
electric road allows all-electric vehicles to recharge anywhere:
rest stops, parking lots, etc. They would then have the same range
as a gasoline-powered vehicle. Internal combustion engines would
become obsolete. Our dependency on oil would come to an abrupt end.
Scott Brusaw’s TEDx
talk includes engineering solar roads to
deal with stormwater better, double-purposing the cable channels they have to have
anyway to transmit the generated electricity.
That could help with
the flooding problem we have around here.
And he talks about making road support structures out of
recycled landfill trash.
If they can work out how to do that without it leaching into that stormwater,
it would be a better solution than
piling up trash on top of an aquifer recharge zone like we do now.
Here are
some reasons I think solar roadways could work:
Did you know:
- Solar Roadways has received two phases of funding from the U.S.
Federal Highway Administration for research and development of a
paving system that will pay for itself over its lifespan. We are
about to wrap up our Phase II contract (to build a prototype parking
lot) and now need to raise funding for production.- Our glass surface has been tested for traction, load testing, and
impact resistance testing in civil engineering laboratories around
the country, and exceeded all requirements.- Solar Roadways is a modular system that will modernize our aging
infrastructure with an intelligent system that can become the new
Smart Grid. We won the Community Award of $50,000 by getting the
most votes in GE’s Ecomagination Challenge for “Powering the Grid”
in 2010. We had the most votes again in their 2011 Ecomagination
Challenge for “Powering the Home”.- On August 21, 2013, Solar Roadways was selected by their peers as a
Finalist in the World Technology Award For Energy, presented in
association with TIME, Fortune, CNN, and Science.- Solar Roadways was chosen by Google to be one of their Moonshots in
May of 2013. Solar Roadways was chosen as a finalist in the IEEE Ace
Awards in 2009 and 2010.- Solar Roadways has given presentations around the country including:
TEDx Sacramento, Google’s Solve for X at Google’s NYC Headquarters,
NASA, Keynote Speaker for the International Parking Institute’s
Conference and much more…
Solar Roadways is tackling more than solar energy: The FHWA tasked
us with addressing the problem of stormwater. Currently, over 50% of
the pollution in U.S. waterways comes from stormwater. We have
created a section in our Cable Corridors for storing, treating, and
moving stormwater.
The implementation of our concept on a grand scale could create
thousands of jobs in the U.S. and around the world. It could allow
us all the ability to manufacture our way out of our current
economic crisis.
As I mentioned at the
Southern Company stockholder meeting
(video still to come from SO),
if big utilities like SO don’t get moving on solar and wind power
through a smart grid, the Google of that new industry may well be
Google itself.
And Google already recognized Solar Roadways as a Moonshot worth taking.
Are Scott and Julie Brusaw the Wright Brothers of a solar smart grid?
I don’t know.
If one man, Elon Musk, can successfully deploy affordable space travel (SpaceX),
finance-to-installation solar panels (Solar City),
and electric cars (Tesla),
maybe one couple can successfully deploy solar roadways.
Obscure science fiction reference:
If Elon Musk is D.D. Harriman (the man who sold the moon),
maybe the Brusaws are Archibald Douglas and Mary Lou Martin
(inventors of a process that popularized solar power).
A couple of million dollars to find out if Solar Roadways work
is dirt cheap compared to
more than $3 billion dollars for an unneeded, hazardous, land-grabbing
fracked methane pipeline
or
more than $8.3 billion for a couple more white-elephant nukes
sucking up more water from the Savannah River than the city of Savannah uses.
Solar Freakin’ Roadways could do even better than not using any water
to generate power: they could help save stormwater while generating power
and recycling landfill garbage.
Solar roads must roll.
Go Brusaws!
-jsq