So, lets talk about solar roadways for a second. To listen to this guy is like listening to Billy Mays hail the praises of OxiClean. I mean, by the time I was 5 minutes into this informercial, I was ready to sell off everything I own, run up and down the street and hug every tree in Jackson county. But wait! Lets think about this. It doesnt work at NIGHT. Those fancy LEDs that they count on using for white and yellow lines, signals, alerts, and other messages - well, theyll need to be driven from our power grid. Oh, yeah - and the Federal Highway Administration is in cahoots with this company. Guess what they are trying to pull off? A complete monopoly on the product and technology. That means they can charge whatever they want for the product. You think that will get cheaper over time? Ha, they can charge 6 to 10 times as much as original cost after the warranty period is over. What will we do, pull a 12 foot by 12 foot section of the highway out and fill it with asphalt? Hardly. Well be STUCK, buying the stuff from this vendor. What if they go belly up? After all, count the number of green/clean energy start ups that declared bankruptcy AND kept our tax dollars. So, what if you have a vehicle accident on one of these glow-in-the-dark wonderous freeways? If you damaged 240 of these panels as you skid across them, you could be left holding the bill to repair them, you could be looking at over $200,000 in damage, just for the materials and labor to repair the highway. What WOULD be cool is if these panels replaced intersections of busy streets, where the crosswalk, lane arrows, and other information could be displayed by the LEDs. In areas where fog is a serious safety issue, the LEDs would be quite effective, especially if the lane lines changed color based on an accident ahead. Blind corners could become much safer. Beyond this, its a specialized product, and it cant replace fossil fuels to support our power grid. Sorry, its just not ready for prime time.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 01:32:19 +0000
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