World’s highways could host 52.3 billion solar panels, say researchers

8 comments

1. Electrical companies will just sue taxpayers for lost revenue. It’s a thing.

2. This is a bit light on viability. It’s merely an analysis that says highways cover a certain area of landmass. If that landmass was also covered with 250W panels (which are on the small side today) you get this projected output. Ok. Good in theory. What are the complexities are installation and maintenance? How does it impact grid integration? What are the costs? Etc etc.

3. This has been an idea for a long time. But it’s just not worth it. Overhead is expensive, on the road is not viable with a massive truck driving over it.

4. Right up until someone has an accident and drives thru a bunch of supports and shuts down the highway for hours while crews remove the debris.

   But there are never accidents on highways right?

   This is the same reason why transmission towers aren’t put down the middle of highways.

5. Covering open air water canals makes more sense

6. Are we doing this again?

7. Solar covered roads are dumb and needlessly expensive. This has been proven over and over again. Why are people still chasing this? There’s plenty of space for solar (e.g. 50% of roof space would be enough to power the world…and there’s plenty of places that are way cheaper than roofs…not to mention agrivoltaics)

8. You could also put that many solar panels in the desert a lot less expensively. The cost to make solar panels drivable is not optimal.