Solar Roadways

What Solar roadways would look like

With all the new technology emerging on our society, one of the more recent inventions is solar roadways.  

In an article Would Solar Roadways Work from Green Tech Solar, a website that introduces new economy-friendly products, Stephen Lacey introduces everything behind the new solar road-panels.

Solar roadways are hexagonal tiles that will actually start paying for them selves at soon as installed.  They do not only provide power, but they are also covered with LED lights that can be programmed to whatever the road, sidewalk, sport court may want.  Streets will have no more pot holes, no more painting the lanes, you can even change the basketball court lines, to a tennis court.  The panels are also heated, so the government doesn't have to spend money clearing roads or highways anymore.  If an animal is crossing the road, it could be programmed to light up to warn the drivers on the road.  These roadways have passed all the traction tests in order to allow cars to drive on them, but the only problem they are having right now is the start up.  

Stephen Lacy believes that "the application can be used for smaller scale purposes -- potentially, pedestrian walkways and sidewalks that get lower load and have fewer safety considerations," he said. "For roads, there are so many unknowns."  

The first is a project in downtown Sandpoint, Idaho, near where the inventors reside. The goal is to develop five pilot projects on non-critical applications such as downtown sidewalks, a train station and part of an airport tarmac. All the year-round data about performance will be streamed to the public for monitoring. The second application could be on tribal lands, which have their own rules governing roads. Brusaw envisions installing a parking-lot scale project at a casino, or outfitting a small residential road on a reservation.

They are extremely expensive to create, and would be even more expensive to implement across our country.  If our nation does decide to go with solar roadways, it could end up creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for our society, and would lessen our global footprint immediately.  

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