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Proposal for President Obama

Here is a proposal for President Obama.

We very much need jobs to drive the recovery from the current recession. I suggest that a law be passed that:

1. Gives a bit of federal money directly to people who start a one or two person business. To qualify, these folks would have to either be laid-off, or recently discharged from the military with an honorable discharge.

2. Waives any federal income taxes for the first two or three years for each business. I would encourage States to follow the same policy.

It usually takes a while for a new small business to become self-supporting. A small amount of cash up front, and a tax break, would ensure that a significantly greater percentage of these small business starts survive. In the end, these small businesses would return far more to the economy than it will cost to help them get started.

I also encourage a larger federal bonus for sustainable and green business starts. I think a policy like this would help us become more sustainable even more quickly.

You can Reach Scott Brusaw at

http://solarroadways.com/main.html

He has a fantastic web site. Enjoy

Harvesting Energy from Roads

Harvesting electrical energy from our roads? That is an interesting idea. I read a story in Scientific American News (10/06/2009) about Scott Brusaw’s plan to build and install solar panels right into our roadways. He is working on making them tough enough to drive on. I sincerely hope he succeeds.

A Deeper Look at Harvesting Energy from Our Roads

Too often we approach problem solving on the basis of the tools we have in our toolbox, i.e., the old saying “To a man who has only a hammer, every problem is a nail.” The interesting thing is—some problems are indeed nails.

Let’s look at the basics:

The American Road & Transportation Builder’s Association says that there are 17,590 square miles of roads (not counting shoulders) in the United States. And that is not counting road shoulders and paved parking lots. Paved surfaces make up about 1 percent (more or less) of the land surface in the United States.

The total electricity use in the United States is about 3.9 trillion kilowatt hours.

If we assume that whatever system is put into place in our roads is capable of producing about 52 watt-hours per square foot, which is approximately the prediction for Scott Brusaw’s panels, then our entire roadway system should be capable of producing about 2.55 x 10¹³ watt-hours, or 2.55 x 10¹⁰ kilowatt-hours (25.5 trillion kilowatt hours), about 6.5 times more energy than we use.

So we see that we would not have to use all of our roads for electricity production to meet all of our current electricity needs, although, if we account for transmission loses and transform our transportation to electric, we might need to use more road area for electricity production.

Since we have so many square feet of paved road surface, we would not have to use rural roads as intensively for electricity production as urban roads.

However, we would have to transmit the electrical energy from diffuse points of origin to the points of use. We would also have to find a way to store energy for use when it is too dark, or the roads are too snow or dirt-covered for energy production, as well as transmit the electricity long distances to make up for local shortages and outages. Perhaps the best way would be to build the electrical transmission lines below or adjacent to the roadway, depending on local conditions.

Another question is, what volume of materials would we need to manufacture enough solar road panels? If we assume that the actual panels will have to be about one inch thick, at a minimum (of course, this may not be accurate), then we would need a volume of glass of about 6.25 trillion cubic feet to manufacture enough solar road panels (assuming no waste or excess electricity production capacity).

That begs the question, how much glass sand would be needed to make the glass that goes into the manufacture of the solar road panels? If we assume that the glass sand has a porosity of about 30 percent (which should be close enough) then we would need a minimum of a cube of high purity glass sand some 2,075 feet on a side, or about 446 million tons. Do we have that much glass sand? Well, since quartz is one of the most common minerals in sedimentary deposits, yes, I think we do. The bigger problem might be obtaining enough rare-earth elements for doping, if those are needed.

Researching and installing a system for recovering energy from roadways will probably take about 20 to 50 years. It will require essentially rebuilding the roadways almost from scratch. Considering how quickly our roads tend to break down and need repair, if the new road panels add longevity to our roads that will be a bonus which will greatly reduce overall system costs.

Will It Really Work?

I think this idea has strong potential and should be energetically pursued. There are many engineering barriers yet to be surmounted before harvesting energy from our roads is practical. However, what we learn along the way may prove very useful in many other applications as well. Such is ever the benefit of research.

I don’t think energy production from roads should be our only approach though. A number of different sources of alternative energy, including solar panels, spray-on solar paint, wind turbines, tidal generators, geothermal, and many others, will ultimately give our future society a resilience that it does not possess right now. Today, if the electrical grid goes down, or supplies of transportation fuel become limited, we have significant problems. Our movement toward sustainability must include adding societal resilience as well as removing our dependence on resources that damage our world, such as fossil fuels.