A cross purpose message

[Ralph Day]

Hi all
The following link provides an interesting take on distributed solar generation. Have a look then see the rest of my comments.

http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways

Yes, the roads and parking lots would provide lots of potential, but then shouldn't we be trying to wean ourselves from the wasteful fossil fuel transportation infrastructure? The limited fossil fuels available in the future should be used for transportation of essentials...food, fuels, people on a large scale (rail, ship)?

The solarhighways plan would see us keep the road infrastructure thus promoting the 1950's oriented individual travel unit...the car!

Any thoughts?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Interesting idea, but nah, I don't see this becoming reality. Now or ever. It's a solution looking for a problem, and not a good solution at that. Despite the guy's opening sentence about the shortage of asphalt in the future (being oil based) there are many other ways and materials to build roads from. Even today, many highways are being made from concrete, not asphalt. If you want to produce solar electricity, there are better (and cheaper) ways to do so. No need to stick it into a road surface where it's subject to incredible abuse, thus has to be incredibly expensive, and still will break down on a regular basis. Heck, if we modified building codes to (a) stipulate that houses/structures have a serious minimum level of insulation (b) use passive solar to provide at least 80% of their heating (c) have a minimum amount of PV on their roof relative to the house's square footage, then we would just have taken care of the majority of energy use (space heating) and produce electrical energy to offset use.

As to promoting personal transportation, a.k.a. the car, if we would move to electrical vehicles and found a way to make sufficient clean electricity (the sunlight is certainly there to provide the basis), that would not have to be an issue.

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

I sometimes look at the amount of space open to the sky over our (electric) railway lines and wonder whether it would be possible to cover the lines with PV panels to help power the trains.

:D

Joe

[Dave Turpin]

The simplest solution would be to require a PV system in all new construction. In a matter of 20 years you would have your large scale distributed system. If every house could offset their usage, you would only need power for industry and infrastructure to provide power at night. Then your hydroelectric and gas plants, which already exist, can be operated with less demand on nature.
Eventually when fusion power becomes viable, we won't need to burn fuel at all. Except for airplanes. I am a proponent for the return of dirigible flight, however.

Edit: well, I suppose the military will always need fuel. But that actually is a small expenditure.