Solar Freakin’ Roadways Take a Beating in this Video

June 11, 2014

Well known science advocate, you-tuber Thunderf00t takes a dim view of “Solar Freaking Roadways”, the video that has gone crazy viral over recent weeks.

Posted by greenman3610
Filed in Crock of the Week

36 Comments »

36 Responses to “Solar Freakin’ Roadways Take a Beating in this Video”

ubrew12 Says:

June 11, 2014 at 9:18 am
It’s still an idea worth exploring. LA is 60% roadway and has a need for both residential and industrial power in the vicinity of these roads, over 70% of which are traveled at speeds below 45 mph. And leave the LED’s out. My point is that its an idea worth exploring. Maybe not for everywhere. Maybe, in fact, for nowhere. But all new conceptions will not work under any circumstances, if you preemptively decide to ignore them. Here’s an example: the recent dramatic reductions in Solar PV costs is mostly due to economies of scale (and attendant materials research interest) that COULD have existed in 1978, just as easily as today. But Reagan was elected and we subsequently insisted that Solar PV ‘earn its own way’ against fossil technologies that had a 100 year head-start and massive historical government subsidization. Basically, Solar PV was killed by concerted disinterest. Today, the price is plummeting because people can see that we’ve run out of options, so they paid for the economies of scale, and whala. So, there it is: Sometimes an idea doesn’t work because enough people just conclude that it can’t. And that’s always a real shame. Nobody knows whether Solar Roadways will work or not, or in what circumstances, and in what configuration. It’s just too soon to tell. But claiming that glass tiles aren’t as good as asphalt, is a little like claiming that Solar PV is more expensive than Coal. It’s true until it isn’t.

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toby52 Says:

June 11, 2014 at 11:12 am
To me the solar roadways sounded like modern railway tracks … laid in cheap disposable sections with conduits for cables along the side. And a whole lot of advantages.

When required you just take out the old section and put in a new one. Just like that!

So there may be advantages for specialist applications to start with … therefore I would not slam the door.

So I’m with ubrew12

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rayduray Says:

June 11, 2014 at 3:36 pm
Scott Brusaw should consider paving parking lots at the megachurches of the American South. Can you imagine the preaching for solar salvation once the mega-ministers realize they can make a lot of money selling power back to the powerful? It’s a marriage made in heaven. Prosperity consciousness meets passive money rising every day from the earth. Cable me in, Scotty.

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John Christian Lønningdal Says:

June 12, 2014 at 1:49 am
I do believe it has a novelty use for pavements and plazas in places that are somewhat open (as buildings tend to make shades over pathways next to it). But the cost is the killer here really. I do believe we are running out of cheap energy to manufacture anything like this in a large scale and should focus our efforts on the most efficient ERoEI installations.

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andrewfez Says:

June 12, 2014 at 3:04 am
It’s gonna look like Tron out there…

I don’t want it to look like Tron out there.

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dumboldguy Says:

June 12, 2014 at 11:08 am
No horse (or moose, or dumb idea) is ever too dead to beat, apparently. ubrew and toby? Did you watch this freakin’ video and read the many comments made about Solar Roadways on other Crock threads and understand that the science and economics argue strongly against the concept?

It is not only a “new” idea, it’s a very bad idea, and a distraction from practical applications of PV’s that will be far less expensive and will actually work. And if it ever shows up somewhere else other than that one little “demo”pad outside the house in Idaho that appears in the PR clips, it surely will be a “novelty”—–an impractical, inefficient, expensive toy bought by someone who has money to burn and wants to show off.

PLEASE! Stop already with any further boosting of this idea! (And don’t switch your enthusiasm over to the power tower in Yuma County AZ that needs water to operate but will never get any)

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Alteredstory Says:

June 12, 2014 at 4:18 pm
Not directly relevant to this issue, but Thunderfoot also has a reputation for getting entrenched on issues about which he has strong opinions, and going to rather strange lengths to avoid changing his opinions.

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- dumboldguy Says:
  
  June 12, 2014 at 10:05 pm
  Have you looked in a mirror lately?
  
  Ignoring whatever other “issues” you may be speaking of (which ARE “not relevant to this issue”), his opinions here are based on good science and engineering principles, while yours seem to be based on having fallen in love with this admittedly appealing but unworkable concept.
  
  Reply
  - Alteredstory Says:
    
    June 13, 2014 at 2:45 pm
    His opinions may be, but most of his time was spent sneering about how ridiculous concepts were without fully explaining them, or fully exploring them himself.
    
    In another reply, Engineer-poet went into some greater depth of what miht be involved in laying these roads, and it wouldn’t have been hard for Thunderfoot to do the same.
    
    Again, I’m not convinced that this idea WILL work, but neither does Thunderfoot make a convincing argument that it WON’T, given how many of his arguments seem to hinge on the fact that the prototype setup doesn’t solve all the problems presented by a roadway.
    
    As to Thunderfoot’s history, it’s relevant to his credibility, just as MY history undoubtably informs YOUR judgement of MY credibility.
    
    Reply
    - dumboldguy Says:
      
      June 14, 2014 at 6:20 am
      Either your level of cognitive dissonance makes you irrational, or you are a kid or a troll who is here on Crock to play with us. Either way, I am done with you after responding briefly to these last comments of yours—life is too short to waste it on fools when there are well-informed and open-minded people to talk to.
      
      T-foot didn’t have to “explain” in the kind of detail that ignorant folks like you require. It’s YOUR job to come to discussions like this with the needed minimal science understandings—-either get educated or shut up. I understood exactly what his points were, and appreciated his excellent summary and amusing presentation.
      
      Engineer-poet was NOT serious about what he proposed, but you are too ignorant of science and engineering to understand that he was mocking you.
      
      “As to Thunderfoot’s history, it’s relevant to his credibility, just as MY history
      undoubtedly informs YOUR judgement of MY credibility”. No, the only thing relevant to T-foot’s credibility here is whether what he says is supportable by the evidence he gives—-it is—therefore he’s credible in the here and now. What IS your “history” anyway? Have you made similar displays of ignorance in other places?
      
      Reply
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 2:46 pm
        “T-foot didn’t have to “explain” in the kind of detail that ignorant folks like you require.”
        
        That’s his whole purpose – that’s what he does. He debunks things and explains WHY those things don’t work.
        
        “he was mocking you.” Is that a fact? I didn’t realize you’ve been in contact with him about his motivations.
        
        “What IS your “history” anyway?” I guess that was a bit of difficult reading for you. I’ll try to break it down – you seem to dislike me, and we’ve argued on other topics (like your idiotic assertion that prejudice against cyclists is just like racism). That predisposes you to dislike what I have to say, and I think that your eagerness to jump on my for my take on this video illustrates that pretty well, especially given the effort you’ve clearly given to including insults.
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 3:31 pm
        I don’t need to be “in contact” with E-Pot to know he was mocking you. He is too smart to suggest what he did in seriousness, and he was baiting you.
        
        And thank you for reminding me of another place where you have “displayed ignorance”—-the bike rage thread. I made no assertion there that “prejudice is just like racism”, but you are not able to understand the arguments I was making. I don’t even know you, so haven’t decided I don’t “like” you. What I don’t “like” is ignorant, uninformed people like you who run their mouths about things they do not understand and are too lazy to seek the knowledge they need to comment intelligently.
        
        Your “take” on this video is one of the sorriest excuses for thought that we have ever seen on Crock, and that’s not an insult but merely the truth. Go away.
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 3:56 pm
        He didn’t suggest anything, dear, he was pointing out what he thought would be necessary.
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 3:59 pm
        Talking to you is like talking to a low-IQ brick. Now I AM done. Find someone else to play with, junior.
Alteredstory Says:

June 12, 2014 at 4:44 pm
Engaging the video itself:

(1) Fallacy of “it’s expensive now, so it won’t work.

(2) Says that burying power lines can’t possibly work because it’s expensive (even though this isn’t burying them, it’s including them in the setup of the roads. He then moves on to insist that transmission won’t work with these.

(3) A lot of his problems seem to hinge on personal incredulity. “This seems huge and hard to him, so it can’t possibly work”. I see the same arguments from climate deniers.

(4) He doesn’t seem to grasp the difference between emergency lighting at night (for accidents, etc) and replacing headlights .

(5) Basically, he’s saying that because two people haven’t figured out every aspect of how the roads would work (with markings and whatnot), it can’t possibly work.

(a lot of this feels like the people who used to poo-poo cell phones because they were too heavy to be practical in most situations, or because they cost too much. Or the people who think that solar can’t work because the sun doesn’t shine at night)

(6) Heated panels in the winter can’t possibly work? Really? Oh right, because the sun only shines at night, the existence of these roads would mean no more power plants of any kind ever, and he’s already decided that power transmission would be impossible. And after all, the frozen Northlands never get any sun. That’s why Germany doesn’t use solar power, for example. We also have a lot of vampires up here, as shown in that twilight zone episode.

I also get the impression he’s never seen a road that’s been heated by cars driving over it in a snowstorm – it takes a while before the snow cools it enough to collect. If you keep the surface above freezing, it’ll keep melting snow as it falls, or prevent freezing rain from freezing.

Yes, it would take power to do, but depending on how you do it, there should be power to spare, since people will still be generating their own (as PV gets cheaper), and centralized power plants will still exist.

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- Alteredstory Says:
  
  June 12, 2014 at 4:55 pm
  Part two – he can’t claim the north won’t work because less sun, and then insist that the amount of heat needed will require the entire road system to be hot.
  
  He has some good points, but asserting that it’s impossible for this to work is basically based on his own incredulity and the fact that nobody’s done it yet.
  
  I think that putting panels over or next to the road is better, but again, not going to dismiss the road because Thunderfoot says it’s bad.
  
  Oh, and he seems to be ignoring that we’re trying to stop USING oil, which would mean no byproducts to make tar with.
  
  Also, I’d like to see him provide us with ANY road that goes without extensive maintenance for 20 years.
  
  I’ve seen asphalt that’s gone that long without being replaced, and it’s a bit like driving along a road covered with speed bumps.
  
  Again, he may be right, but he makes a lot of arguments that I don’t find overly convincing (good thing he didn’t argue that getting water to every house in a big city was impossible), and made a few assumptions that seem, well, inaccurate.
  
  Still on the fence on this one, but I think they should keep investigating it.
  
  Reply
  - Engineer-Poet Says:
    
    June 12, 2014 at 7:41 pm
    They’d more or less have to lay these tiles on steel rails to get decent load-spreading properties, then they’d have to bed them in asphalt anyway to seal against water and avoid freeze-thaw blowing the roadway apart from below.
    
    Reply
    - Alteredstory Says:
      
      June 13, 2014 at 2:40 pm
      Ok, I don’t really know much about it, just that Thunderfoot didn’t really make a very coherent argument, from where I’m sitting.
      
      Would it be possible to replace the steel/asphalt setup with another material? Sundry carbon fibre and graphene concepts come to mind, but I don’t know the applicability.
      
      Reply
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 3:55 pm
        The reason that YOU perceive that “Thunderfoot didn’t really make a very coherent argument from where you’re sitting” is that YOU “don’t really know much about it”, and that’s a very circular and telling statement. You are pursuing this topic on Crock based on beliefs and feelings rather than on rational analysis of scientific facts (which you admit you don’t possess). Why do you persist?
        
        You prove my point yet again with “Would it be possible to replace the steel/asphalt setup with another material? Sundry carbon fibre and graphene concepts come to mind, but I don’t know the applicability”.
        
        Carbon fiber and Freakin’ GRAPHENE!!????? For a road??? Why not with other extremely inappropriate and expensive materials like gold leaf? Lord love a duck, but you have to put down the Popular Science mags and pick up some real science textbooks.
        
        Or is it that you are an “investor” and your “broker” keeps calling you and trying to sell you penny stocks featuring the “next great thing”? I just watched The Wolf Of Wall Street last night—are you one of the sheep waiting to be fleeced?
        
        Be sure to invest in that wind tower also—-the one being touted by the guys who used to run Superior Silver Mining, a company that never owned a silver mine. Ir’s also “another great new thing”—-get in on the ground floor and be the first to lose your shirt.
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 4:53 pm
        “You are pursuing this topic on Crock based on beliefs and feelings rather than on rational analysis of scientific facts (which you admit you don’t possess).”
        
        I was pointing out areas where Thunderfood didn’t provide any rational analysis or scientific facts EITHER.
        
        He just said things like “Glass? Glass is soft and slipper! Couldn’t possibly work!”
        
        As to materials, both have been talked about, by people who work with them, as potential replacements for other substances, including steel. They’re not mass-produced right now, but they haven’t been around for very long, either, at least as something people are actively trying to work with.
        
        I don’t know, so I asked. You didn’t actually provide me with a reason WHY there’s a problem, you just compared them to an element that’s known to be (a) rare (carbon isn’t, in case you were confused) and (b) very, very malleable, and not very useful in structures.
        
        Yes, I want the solar roadways to work, and because they’ve never been done before, there are likely to be problems people haven’t spent much time trying to solve before. Maybe they’re unsolvable, but all you or Thunderfoot have done is PRESENT problems, not reasons why those problems can’t possibly have solutions.
        
        As to the rest of your comment, I’ll just hope you’ve gotten a small amount of the bile out. Does it feel better now?
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 7:06 am
        Thunderfoot DID do a rational analysis based on scientific facts—-that’s what his whole piece was—-and it went right over your head.
        
        And yes, Glass IS soft and slippery in this context. And did you know that glass is not actually a solid but an amorphous supercooled liquid? That it flows over time?
        
        I didn’t actually provide you with a reason WHY there’s a problem with carbon fiber or GRAPHENE (Lord love a duck) for use on roads? If you had any real understanding of those materials rather than having read somewhere that they’re “the next big thing”, you would never have mentioned them in the first place. GO LOOK THEM UP and explain to us how they could in any way be used for roads.
        
        “Yes, I WANT the solar roadways to work” is the only explanation for your persistence in this display of ignorance and lack of science knowledge. Get educated—-a good place to start would be to watch T-foot’s video as many times as needed until it sinks in.
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 2:40 pm
        Yes, I know what glass is. I also know that people have used it for things that I wouldn’t have thought of using it for. I don’t know what the material they’re using actually consists of. You can be sure that it’s not the same glass in your window, and it seems like Thunderfoot was trying to appeal to the day-to-day experience we have with glass, rather than looking at that. He was making a rhetorical argument more than a scientific one.
        
        On carbon fibre and graphene, I’ve seen carbon fibre talked about as a potential replacement for a number of different structural purposes that we usually use metal for, and we’ve only recently started investigating all the uses for graphene (as well as cheaper ways to make it), but it’s conductive and if made right has a high amount of tensile strength.
        
        That said, I was asking if there WERE other materials that would be better or as good as steel, and I threw out two options that seemed possible to me.
        
        And YES, I’m trying to think of ways to make this possible, because it’s something that hasn’t been deeply investigated before, and global climate change is a problem we haven’t dealt with before, so yeah – I want as wide an array of options as possible.
        
        I like the panels OVER roads notion, except that that leaves them much more vulnerable to extreme weather.
        
        So how about you take five minutes and think about how you, with your apparently superior knowledge, could improve the design to make something like this work?
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 3:12 pm
        I said I wasn’t going to waste any more time with you , but this comment makes me think you definitely ARE a troll or a junior high school student that is just here on Crock to play. You’re not very good at it, though, because you apparently don[‘t even bother to really view and try to understand the video you’re attacking, and leave us HUGE clues attesting to that failure.
        
        “I don’t know what the material they’re using actually consists of. You can be sure that it’s not the same glass in your window”, you say?. IF you had watched the video, you would have seen the scam artist and his wife shoveling ground up recyled bottles into wheelbarrows for use in Solar Roadways—-that “glass” is inferior to window glass (and is colored to boot).
        
        “Thunderfoot….was making a rhetorical argument more than a scientific one”, you say?. Do you even know what “rhetorical” means? He presents science and logic based arguments against Solar Roadway, and what you say isn’t even intelligent enough to be called “rhetoric”—-you babble..
        
        “That said, I was asking if there WERE other materials that would be better or as good as steel, and I threw out two options that seemed possible to me”, you say?. And again I say that STEEL is no good, and CF and graphene are even worse—-your ignorance of materials science is appalling.
        
        “I like the panels OVER roads notion, except that that leaves them much more vulnerable to extreme weather”, you say mindlessly?. How can they be MUCH MORE vulnerable when they’re raised only 15 feet above the road?
        
        I don’t need five minutes to come up with ways to “improve the design to make something like this work”. Since it simply won’t work for the many reasons T-Foot, me, and others have cited, the only way to “improve” it is to prosecute the inventors for taking “investor’s” money under false pretenses and send them to jail.
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 4:55 pm
        Though I would counsel you not to base your perception of reality on what you see through the lens of hollywood.
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 6:49 am
        Not even when the movie is a dramatization based on a true story? And the “hero” later wrote a book about his misdeeds? And he and ~20 others went to jail? To say nothing of the fact that anyone who has followed the machinations of Wall Street knows that it is basically a casino, a scam, and a mechanism for bleeding wealth off into the pockets of the rich. Another area where your education is lacking, apparently.
  - dumboldguy Says:
    
    June 12, 2014 at 10:26 pm
    Your two lengthy comments show that you really don’t understand the science, engineering, or economics involved in Solar Roadways, and your cognitive dissonance makes it a waste of time for us to try to educate you. I think you should back up your belief in this concept by investing heavily in it, and use money that you can spare, because you will never see any return on it.
    
    To look at just one small part of your illogic:
    
    “(2) Says that burying power lines can’t possibly work because it’s expensive (even though this isn’t burying them, it’s including them in the setup of the roads)”.
    
    “including them in the setup of the roads” means running them in nicely constructed concrete conduits-cableways-tunnels under the road according to the video. Do you have any idea of how much more expensive that would be compared to the usual method of simply digging a ditch and burying them in the dirt, which can cost anywhere from 4 to 14 times as much as running wires on poles?
    
    Reply
    - John Christian Lønningdal Says:
      
      June 13, 2014 at 3:38 am
      As a side note on power lines – I do believe the majority of power lines in Norway are buried and follow the roads these days here. It’s been a long time since I see new wire-poles being set up anywhere here at least. Its also common now for the pipes to have warm water pipes for central heating from a power station close by also which is more energy efficient than electric heating per home.
      
      Personally I find the idea a bit intriguing, although I can be perfectly realistic about the cost that would be just too high for any serious change. Whenever I see ideas like this I always think: “Why do all this insanely costly infrastructure change to fit old and soon obsolete combustion cars for transport?”
      
      So I generally expand my ideas for future transport to be fully automatic (as in you don’t drive it anymore) and “rail” based (rail doesn’t have to be physical guide). The transportation device doesn’t even carry its own power source (besides a tiny backup) so the electricity comes from outside like a tram. That power could be from a big grid or local solar/wind/hydro. If so it makes a bit sense to e.g. make roofs above the “rails” with solar panels as the “roads” themselves would have to be contained so that people and other living things cant get into them and hence greatly increase the simplicity of safety. Best bet would be to have the whole thing raised on adjustable pillars so that ground level will not ruin the road like traditional asphalt is plagued with. Each transport device can then be made exceptionally light for maximum energy efficiency and reduce stress on the actual road/pillars.
      
      Ofc for any of these things to work it would have to be built in parallel to existing roads for a while until they are good enough to replace all manually driven devices.
      
      So why stop at solar roadways? 🙂
      
      Reply
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 8:10 am
        More pie-in-the-sky dreaming from a resident of one of the most highly developed countries in the world (and one with much hydropower as well).
        
        Although your dreams are perhaps more practical than the Solar Roadway, you have forgotten that a significant portion of the world’s people have NO centralized power generation (and therefore NO power grid of any kind), NO paved roads, and are lucky if they have beasts of burden and wheeled carts so they don’t have to WALK and carry everything on their backs.
        
        I’ll say it yet another time—-look at human demographics—-1/3 of the world’s humans live in India and China, nearly 1/6 in Africa—-a lot of them WALK everywhere, and many are not literate enough to even READ about “self-driving” vehicles.
        
        (and don’t forget COAL-COAL-COAL)
      - John Christian Lønningdal Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 10:32 am
        In the middle of all despair and insane inequality in the world its still possible to dream away some time of a future with equality, good resource management and smarter systems in both government and how we do business. And with this some decent technology. It might very well be that there will be reduced need for long treks on roads to get ends to meet for the average person, and that any longer travel will be like trains between city centers.
        
        No matter how I look at the resources we have available I think we will need some serious regulation and smart use. Building systems to still be able to trek for miles a day surely sounds like folly in this regard. This is why I generally dont understand the discussions here about shortening work hours to 6 hour days – while it would be better to work e.g. 10 hour days for 3 days and stay at home for 2 days instead. The environmental savings would be immense from just reduced transportation need. The world is getting overcrowded, but do we really need everyone working 9-5 to feed the world? I thought technology was supposed to simplify our lives and allow us to lower our shoulders… its definitely not the way things have turned out – especially when the moment we have some spare time we want to trek all over the place with planes and whatnot to snap a “selfie” on the top of a pyramid. Somewhere we took the wrong turn…
    - Alteredstory Says:
      
      June 13, 2014 at 2:46 pm
      Nope, I don’t know anything about this area of science/engineering. MY point was that I don’t find Thunderfoot’s assertions to be entirely convincing, and a number of them seem entirely Unconvincing.
      
      Nor was I arguing that it would be cheap to do this, just that the work that they would have to do ANYWAY in order to make this project a reality, would necessitate a lot of digging up of the roads ALREADY, as has been mentioned. That means that the labor cost involved in laying the cables would be almost nonexistent compared to the effort required to replace pole-carried cables with buried ones. It’s not like that cost would be simply added on to the project dollar for dollar.
      
      As to the cost of running wires on poles, obviously it’s cheaper, but do you have figures for maintenance over time, and money lost due to weather-related outages?
      
      Reply
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 4:19 pm
        Another bit of illogical and circular reasoning on your part. How can you make ANY comments about T-foots “assertions” when you admit that you possess no scientific knowledge that would allow you to evaluate what he says? You find them “unconvincing” because you WANT to find them so—we’re not looking for your OPINION here, but for scientific truth. T-foot’s science is good, and his video is an excellent expose of the boondoggle of SolarFreakinRoadways FOR ANYONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THE SCIENCE. You, by your own admission, do not.
        
        You obviously haven’t even viewed all the info on Solar Roadways on this and other threads and on their website, or you would understand that “the work that they would have to do ANYWAY in order to make this project a reality, would necessitate a lot of digging up of the roads ALREADY” does not reflect the reality of how Solar Roadways are built or how either overhead or underground power lines are constructed.
        
        I live in a 40+ year old house with all utilities underground. After 30 years, there were so many outages that the power company came in and dug a 4-foot deep and 2-foot wide trench in all the easements to replace the power lines. They WERE smart enough to put them in conduit this time, so maybe they’ll last longer. I have the great good fortune to have had easements down one side and across the front of my 1/3 acre lot, and they were on my property for THREE weeks because it is underlain with rock. The phone and cable companies are always digging up and repairing/replacing their lines also. It would have been far cheaper to give us overhead lines.
        
        As to the cost of running wires on poles, obviously it’s cheaper, but do you have figures for maintenance over time, and money lost due to weather-related outages?
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 4:40 pm
        “How can you make ANY comments about T-foots “assertions” when you admit that you possess no scientific knowledge that would allow you to evaluate what he says?”
        
        Because a number of the things he says aren’t based on any scientific evidence or knowledge that he cited or claimed expertise in, they were based on his own incredulity, and his assumption that that would be enough to persuade us.
        
        At the same time, he’s making the argument that because a particular technology is expensive now, it will keep BEING expensive. That’s an argument that has been proven useless many, MANY times, and he offers nothing to support it THIS time.
        
        I’m referring to the rhetorical strategies, and the lack of actual information in his “rebuttal”.
        
        As to your underground lines, you may have a point, but it’s not like nobody has ever done underground lines WELL, and again, the video made no mention of the fact that the ground ALREADY has to be dug up to lay the roads.
        
        Again, the anecdote about your house is convincing-sounding, but it’s just an anecdote about your house, and you say IN it that they basically did it wrong to begin with.
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 7:20 am
        We’re developing a serious echo on this thread—-this is my final comment on alteredstory’s foolishness.
        
        Again AStory makes a circular argument—-he says that T-foot’s piece is “not based on any scientific evidence or knowledge“ when AS does not possess the science knowledge needed to make that judgment. Your OPINIONS are just that, AS, and they are unsupportable. T-foot got it right, and I know enough science to make that an informed and supportable opinion (and have offered it on Crock threads about Solar Roadways)
        
        As to the endless repetition of the idea that “the video made no mention of the fact that the ground ALREADY has to be dug up to lay the roads”, I can only ask why AStory does not yet understand that installation of Solar Roadway is far different than just “digging up the ground”
      - Alteredstory Says:
        
        June 14, 2014 at 2:33 pm
        Nope, I said he didn’t present anything backing up a number of his assertions. Get the difference?
      - dumboldguy Says:
        
        June 13, 2014 at 4:29 pm
        PS The last paragraph is altered’s. I had copied his message to reply to it and forgot to delete it. Obviously the question us basically unanswerable, because some places have tornados and hurricanes while others do not. One only has to look at how hard power companies fight when they are pressured to put lines underground, because they’d have to raise their rates so much to pay for it and customers wouldn’t stand for it. The customers only complain about overhead lines when they have weather-caused outages. All are complicit. Look up Pepco in the MD suburbs of DC for a classic example.
Jon White Says:

June 13, 2014 at 2:06 pm
Aww!! But it was SO MUCH FUN!! I am still laughing. Love the comment battle, too. My view is, if you think this could work, “Have at it, Hoss!”

Reply