Solar Roadways, etc
I've been thinking about solar panels a lot lately, not sure why. (Probably because I've been reading a lot of apocalyptica, and thinking about energy and technology trends).
A coworker sent me a link to the Solar FREAKIN' Roadways! youtube video. Which is an exuberant info video about the Solar Roadways Indiegogo project.
So the video is awesome. But I was immediately thinking, wait, so, what's the downside here. Cause it seems way too interesting and promising.
And the first question that popped into my mind was -- the manufacture process is key here. I wasn't quite sure about what was involved in the process of solar cell manufacturing, but I vaguely remembered various doom-prophecying analysts saying that solar tech at the moment involves too many rare metals, so is not scalable, etc.
Taking a look at the project's FAQ page did not fill me with confidence.
Q: Are you using rare earth metals in your Solar Road Panels? Will there be enough? Will it be toxic?
A: "Neither of us have expertise in this area, but we plan to hire a materials engineer who does to help us. [...]"
Yeah, see, that did NOT sound promising to me. "A materials engineer"? If the fundamental limitation to manufacture is rare elements, that aint gonna cut it.
So I shrugged and moved on.
But kept thinking about it, in the back of my mind. And eventually, pulled up some Wikipedia.
First, I looked at solar panels and their manufacture. Huh! Well, that's not so bad. There's a ton of different methods, and many of them involve just silicon crystals. And there's a virtuous cycle there, the more panels are manufactured, the more research and optimization is done, the cheaper each one becomes. Well, ok.
My next thought was - copper. Are we not facing a 'Peak Copper' sort of scenario (again, vaguely remembering some analyst or other)? Pulled up that page.
Fascinating! So, the US is actually the second largest producer of copper in the world. Another factoid that caught my eye was - copper is ridiculously highly recyclable. And that more copper goes onto the market (in the US) from recycling previously made copper, than is mined. Neat! And that some unlikely high percentage of all the copper ever mined in the history of humanity, is still in circulation. So, promising..
And lastly, I was thinking about lithium, and batteries. (This was relevant and amusing since I was riding in a Prius hybrid at the time). Even if we get the solar panels thing down, how are we going to build enough high capacity batteries to power enough transport, to matter? Pulled up a page on lithium and mining. And again! Not too bad. I had no idea that much of it is extracted from brine. And that there's plenty of evidence that we'll have enough lithium, as a planet, to build a ridiculous amount of Prius-sized batteries.
I figured I'd share my thoughts and findings. Since, while not a cure-all for our energy problems, the situation was at least slightly better than I thought.
(Also, I pulled up the Indiegogo page for the 'Roadways, today. And it surprised me -- just a few days ago, they were at like 20% of their goal. And now, it's fully funded and then some.)
A coworker sent me a link to the Solar FREAKIN' Roadways! youtube video. Which is an exuberant info video about the Solar Roadways Indiegogo project.
So the video is awesome. But I was immediately thinking, wait, so, what's the downside here. Cause it seems way too interesting and promising.
And the first question that popped into my mind was -- the manufacture process is key here. I wasn't quite sure about what was involved in the process of solar cell manufacturing, but I vaguely remembered various doom-prophecying analysts saying that solar tech at the moment involves too many rare metals, so is not scalable, etc.
Taking a look at the project's FAQ page did not fill me with confidence.
Q: Are you using rare earth metals in your Solar Road Panels? Will there be enough? Will it be toxic?
A: "Neither of us have expertise in this area, but we plan to hire a materials engineer who does to help us. [...]"
Yeah, see, that did NOT sound promising to me. "A materials engineer"? If the fundamental limitation to manufacture is rare elements, that aint gonna cut it.
So I shrugged and moved on.
But kept thinking about it, in the back of my mind. And eventually, pulled up some Wikipedia.
First, I looked at solar panels and their manufacture. Huh! Well, that's not so bad. There's a ton of different methods, and many of them involve just silicon crystals. And there's a virtuous cycle there, the more panels are manufactured, the more research and optimization is done, the cheaper each one becomes. Well, ok.
My next thought was - copper. Are we not facing a 'Peak Copper' sort of scenario (again, vaguely remembering some analyst or other)? Pulled up that page.
Fascinating! So, the US is actually the second largest producer of copper in the world. Another factoid that caught my eye was - copper is ridiculously highly recyclable. And that more copper goes onto the market (in the US) from recycling previously made copper, than is mined. Neat! And that some unlikely high percentage of all the copper ever mined in the history of humanity, is still in circulation. So, promising..
And lastly, I was thinking about lithium, and batteries. (This was relevant and amusing since I was riding in a Prius hybrid at the time). Even if we get the solar panels thing down, how are we going to build enough high capacity batteries to power enough transport, to matter? Pulled up a page on lithium and mining. And again! Not too bad. I had no idea that much of it is extracted from brine. And that there's plenty of evidence that we'll have enough lithium, as a planet, to build a ridiculous amount of Prius-sized batteries.
I figured I'd share my thoughts and findings. Since, while not a cure-all for our energy problems, the situation was at least slightly better than I thought.
(Also, I pulled up the Indiegogo page for the 'Roadways, today. And it surprised me -- just a few days ago, they were at like 20% of their goal. And now, it's fully funded and then some.)