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If I knew you could raise 1.4 million dollars on Kickstart with crap like this, I'd have started a business to recruit extraterrestrial hookers a long, long time ago.

I understand what they're trying to do. And if you can keep the snow melted before it piles up, it might even be possible. But not this way. $#@!, and decent precipitation risks creating an ice-coat on the panels, which would necessitate maintenance - probably very large-scale maintenance. The basic idea has potential (assuming infinite free energy, of course, which is risky to do when it's the sun you're counting on), but the implementation would be $#@!ing ridiculous.

If they end up actually doing this, I'll be watching for when they call the army in to bail them out one winter.



Hell, I doubt it would make it off the ground, ever. Murphy's Law dictates that someone starts a petition against it for fear of electromagnetic waves or something, or big lawsuits the first time someone trips on one of these panels and scrapes their knee and has to miss two hours of work while they recover.

peet wrote:QUOTE (peet @ May 26 2014, 03:08 AM) In our little country we have something like this. A similar type has been used to renew asphalt on a road during the winter. I doubt it's environment friendly tho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCwky4RHstA


For Mr C, 7m³ hot air at 550 degrees Celsius a second machine below (company info)

http://www.libertygasturbine.nl/pagina.14....-holland-bv.htm

I would love to see that thing going down a dense street holes in windows everywhere (I know I know, not the intended use case (I hope not)).

annexedbyBlake420 wrote:QUOTE (annexedbyBlake420 @ May 26 2014, 04:33 AM) Fuzz

Why tear up the roads when there are 10,000s of square miles of desert and more efficient thermal systems using solar energy.

Btw the noodling bit was how to model it correctly. I spent an hour or so coming up with my version of a realistic 3D heat transfer circuit, considering view factors from the sun and road, thinking about how to introduce the cloud cover, effects of road grime, traffic patterns, realistic weather, storage/transmission losses, effects of deeping snow (all with varying degrees of success and accuracy and levels of having even a little clue ) and went *meh* if you saved all the energy up for the whole $#@!ing year it would be hard pressed to melt 3" of snow in the middle of a Michigan/Minnesota.

While I enjoyed the thought exercise the hippies are scam artists or such true believers it is scary.

I completely agree, MrC.

They raised a bunch of money with good intentions. I sincereley hope they get told they are doing it wrong and listen. They could put the money to much better use and be more effective at the same time. It's not too late, is it? Let's see some more stuff like those solar... ball things -- I haven't done much reasearch on them but the basic premise makes sense, collect more light with a lens etc etc; even if it's not right they have an ability to help improve technology or do something else useful with the money.

I mean really, parking lots? What parking lots, in Detroit? Oops, the snow wont melt there <-- Sorry Detroit I tried

I think the concept is viable but not for public roads. It's viable for private residences of rich people who have a lot of money to waste on frivolous and impractical things. There are lots of companies that make their living on things like this - Rolex, Ferrari, Tesla, Apple... you get the picture.

But the youtube pitch is ridiculous to anyone with any kind of real engineering experience.

edit: wow someone just posted this to facebook and it came up on my feed. There are lots of people who are saying things like, "wow what a great idea!" The lack of basic science/engineering literacy among people, even otherwise intelligent people, is alarming. I guess that's why this guy was able to raise so much money for such an impractical idea.

The idea is plain stupid. Black coloured roads have a 100% efficiency to transfer light to heat, (new) roads of tar do have ~90%. And it doesn't work.

solar ball thingies?

Watts/m^2 is watts/m^2 is watts/m^2. The way you use the sunlight to do stuff is what seperates one project from another project. Burning ants for fun doesn't use some magic process that multiples watts/^2 it just focuses watss/m^2 into a really tiny area. The hippies are scammers is my bet project is abysmal in even capturing watts/m^2 to use for other purposes when compared to the burning ants for fun project

There is so much open land in Detroit it could be used as one great big parking lot

Yeah, but would you risk leaving your car unattended in it?

Raveen wrote:QUOTE (Raveen @ May 29 2014, 08:05 AM) Yeah, but would you risk leaving your car unattended in it?

Every day

OK I give.

I am prepared to argue that the earth is flat (which it is). But I am struggling with this one.

Why have they decided that they need to take something as easily damaged as a solar panel and then redesign it to be rugged enough to be driven over by Americans in cars & trucks?

Also have they considered the effect that the stray bullet strikes generated as a by-product of your constant drive-by shootings, and the public holiday, firing of guns in the air type celebrations that you people are so keen on will have on these things?

There is no logic to it. It's like saying that everybody's refrigerator should be hung from the light pole outside of their house because it will save electricity when it gets cold in the wintertime. There is already an electrical supply there, all we have to do is to reinforce the poles to take the weight, design a bracket to mount them on and then simply weatherproof them. Then if we just add a lock to keep hobos and varmits out of the comestibles and put in a little ladder there to reach those mounted higher up, we simply have to beef-up their construction, so they are able to take a bullet, for the American market and bingo! No more fridges in hot kitchens.

You do realise that idea is now copyright to me since it has been published in a public arena. You do know that is how it works right? Somebody link me to Kickstarter please.

[quote name='annexedbyBlake420' date='May 26 2014, 05:33 AM' post='677807']

Raum

The water from a nuclear plant cooling tower is nowhere near hot enough to travel miles underground and melt snow is my shooting from the hip guess. The amount of effort necessary to build pumping stations, tear up roads, lay pipes, etc is so distruptive, intensive, cost prohibitive, and a maintence nightmare (read Raveen and Gandalf's comments and remember how god awful Michigan roads are (we are on the freeze/thaw zone and allow ridiculous weights on our roads (car companies are powerful ) ) already it would not be worth it. I get you want to use all that lovely heat for something other than heating a lake. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/current-...g-power-plants/

Me:
"Grant you, nuke reactors are a ways away from civilization (not so much in the future). But still, cooling water has no contaminants so piping a long way will just melt more road surface. This will free up resources for roads that are too distant for this method to work."

Like I said..just do it locally to the roads around the nuke plant. Heat up a cooling tower is wasted. When the water gets far enough from the plant that it is cooled enough...return it and start the cycle over.

righto Raum we aren't trying to melt the entire world now are we