And the first ever solar panel roadway was set to unveil today in Sand Point Kxly-four's Ariana Cohen was in Sand Point To get a sneak peek this afternoon, you'll imagine driving or walking on glass. Well, that's all about to become a reality in Sand Point Tomorrow, the inventors Julie and Scott Brew Saw plan to unveil the solar panel roadway. Hey, and we're just excited to show it to the world. And we're really happy to have the support here in our hometown of standpoint and really happy that the first one in the world is going in, right? What Are they? Their solar freakin' roadways? It's technology that replaces all roadways, parking lots, sidewalks, driveways, tarmacs, bike paths, and outdoor recreation services with solar panels.

And not just lifeless, boring solar panels. smart microprocessing, interlocking hexagonal solar units. I'm excited! After six and a half years and 3.9 million dollars in both private and government funding, Solar Freaking Roadways are finally here. They've finally done the first installation.

Let's check it out. So it's all happening in Sandpoint Idaho which is, of course, the hometown of Solar freakin' Roadways. And they installed a hundred and fifty square feet, the 30 of their brand-spanking-new Sr3 panels and ah, look, we've got a fantastic PowerPoint presentation spending stored in the Jeff Jones our Town Square the and look at all the benefits. A Solar freakin' Robbaz compared to crappy concrete Nashville Who wants that? This thing's the Ducks guts.

It's fantastic. So it's the future. Let's check out the future. And if you actually have a look at the latest Sand Point Council budget here, they've actually already spent 36 thousand dollars on this because their council paid to for the labor and other stuff to install this stuff.

And curiously, in the budget here, it's actually got budgeted five hundred thousand dollars for a solar Roadways grant. So I'm not sure whether or not that's the local Sand Point council doing that. Not sure what the deal is there. Anyway, some money already been spent.

This is going to be brilliant. So here's the Jeff Jones Town Square And surely they've installed it on the roads or the parking lot or something where they can test drive cars over the top of this thing just to prove all the critics wrong That yes, all African roadways is completely following. Look at all the parking space and roads around there. Surely it's in there somewhere.

Oh, it's out the front of a public block of Donny's Ah, well. Ok, that's pretty disappointed. But surely they generate power. I'm in their solar panels.

What could go wrong with that? Oh, they're not generating any power at all. none zip zilch so all it does is provides a light show. Oh well. Ok, let's have a look at the light show.

Surely other lenses light up right and do fancy patterns with their line, the road markings, and all that sort of stuff. it. Let's check out the live webcam that they've set up to watch this thing 24/7 Oh, how many panels are working? 2, 4, 6, 7 panels working? But this line? No Ah, there's no line markings, but surely they're talking to each other. Not.

Oh no, they're not even talking or doing anything. Ah, so it turns out, even the working ones. I Just fail the lids on. These things just get stuck on the pattern.

Stop. They have to actually come and do what midnight hacking sessions to actually try and fix these things. But surely here's some people trying to stomp on a stuck lid that's been stuck on for hours. Surely, that's not gonna do anything.

These things are super duper rugged after all. Hey, listen to Scott These are on your driveway. They're bolted together. They weigh 70 pounds each.

They're not going anywhere tornado hurting and can pass right over. The top of this is tempered glass so it's really, really strong. It's happening that gets textured on top. We had traction tested so it can stop a vehicle going 80 miles an hour on a wet surface.

Scott's not kidding I did everything I Could put a dent in the solar panel. It only gave myself sore feet. so it's absolutely no way these idiots try to stomp another. Gonna turn this lid off.

Not a chance. Look, this is wasting their time. haha Oh oh they did it. Hey hey, way to go because if maintenance works.

but surely you can see the LEDs in direct sunlight right? That's what they've been claiming forever. Oh oh trust me, they are on even when it's shady sunny. Nah, it's just not showing up on an ideal angle on the webcam. Oh As it turns out, you can't start seeing them until around about 6:00 p.m.

or so. and then you start seeing the stuck ones early because they're presumably I'd not be in pulse width modulated, just stuck full-on And then here we can start to see the Des Lis pattern. but surely these things aren't reflective, right? I mean I'm sure they've solved that problem. She don't want reflections when you driving along the roadway.

it's bad enough on um, you know, regular asphalt stuff when the Sun setting and things like Oh hmm hmm yeah, um, looks like we might have a few reflection issues, but surely they have good drainage on this system. I mean look at their excellent looking the system they installed a couple of years back in that drainage down the side. it's a couple years later I'm sure you know it's really advanced a lot since in the installation techniques to get rid of the water and stuff like that. Surely other potential benefits include powering fiber-optic cable lines and Wi-Fi hotspots through a cable corridor just below the roads shoulder.

This corridor could also collect and recycle runoff from rain or snow coming off the solar panel surface areas. So have a look at the actual installation and here's the big reveal. It looks like they got some black tarp under this thing. just sand on the bottom and just black sheet in.

There's nowhere for the water to go except sit under them and pool and possibly go down the wire drainage thing. Hmm. But surely these things are all like sealed in place very nicely there. They must have this down pat after all these years.

I Mean oh, look at that. Just dodgy like metal strips? How you mean Iam? strips? are they or whatever and they can't even look kind of install them properly. They're just like are they just screwed in any little count, dodgy countersunk holes and oh, what's with the bubbles? Oh I think we've got a problem. Sandpoint And surely dirt and crap isn't going to be a problem cuz these are solar panels you don't want them to get OH dirty.

Hmm. So after six years of research and development in almost 4 million dollars in funding, let's go through the checklist. Is it being used as a road surface? Why does it generate any power? Why, let alone net power? Does it generate road markings? Moi, are the leads visible in daylight? Why are the leads interconnected so that they can display all sorts of weird and wonderful things? Why does it have minimal reflections? Because that's important for a road surface? Moi, is it robust? Why does it have proper drainage? Moi is dirt and grime gonna be a problem? Ah, but hang on. It has disco.

Yes. Oh You know these will make one heck of a street dance party so you can't help but laugh at this epic fire of biblical proportions. But I To be fair, they do admit this on their blog here: I'll link it in down below. you can read the whole story.

There's also a local newspaper interview with them about what went wrong and I Love it. How it says the Solar Roadways project is still on track despite challenges you think. Anyway, it turns out that they left this thing to the last minute. Why they did this is I don't know is just ridiculous.

How long have they had to plan and execute this thing is just ridiculous. They left it to the night before to cure their boards. Apparently they tested them all and and they all work just fine at the bear board bear module-level and then they put them in the oven to laminate them, cure them or whatever the process is they actually used for this thing and apparently they try to put them all in at once because they were rushing and it completely screwed it up and they all melted and delaminated and did whatever. and yeah, well, it's Saoirse right.

And it goes to show why you don't put electronics and LEDs and everything else inside these panels. Ah, but the thing is, they actually knew this would be an epic fail before they install them. They actually invited the city officials into showing all the problems they were having and how the manufacturing lamination process all screwed up and everything else. And together with these city officials, they decided to continue with the installation, knowing full well that they wouldn't generate any power.

Hello, the Solar Roadways. The LEDs Most of the LEDs would be non-functional the heaters don't work. Although they do actually say here that they had five panels that could still produce power. So you would think that because in the whole six and a half years they've done this, they haven't released any public data at all on any of the panels they've ever produced.

In terms of our power generation, do you think they'd be keen as mustard to get these five at least working and producing some sort of power and have a net meter there that shows that it at least powers the lens right, let alone the dummy block? Gee. But note, they didn't even bother with that. They made the deliberate decision to install this thing, knowing full well it was a complete and epic failure. So yeah, they've just got it on themselves.

You cannot criticize them for that. It is ridiculous. But I Know the Solar Roadways fanboys will say Dave You're not giving them a go. Come on, they'll fix this.

They've promised to fix it By the end of November though, reinstall the proper panels. I manufacture them properly and everything will be right. Well, no, sorry, it won't be a they did not install this in the parking lot to drive cars on it. Why? Because they know they're not going to do the job and there's absolutely no excuse for not having those LEDs interconnected and actually doing some sort of road marking or animated display to show that they're connected together.

They've done this before. They've done it years ago. Why they couldn't do this. Why they didn't have the code available ready to go for this is just beyond me.

They mentioned although doing coding the night before to try and get it working, you know I believe they've been working on this for six and a half years, but there's some obvious results we can even take from this, even though it was an epic fail. Look at the dirt and grime on these things. These are uses roads getting scratched up all to hell. This is just like people walking on just in a public thoroughfare there and it's just ridiculous.

Anyone who had dirty solar panels like this gee, it'd have them cleaned every day or every week and the reflections from the panel's obvious total and epic fire. You can't use these for a road, let alone all the other issues with silicosis and and just general wear and tear and destroying these things with trucks and everything else which they have still have not proven because they still have not driven a car on these things. Only that's stupid. John Deere Tractor that weighs under a ton with the air pressure.

with the low pressure tires on the thing, they could have installed it in the car park here and obviously the LEDs are not visible in the daylight and they say in the article yeah, we just had time to quickly throw up some lead patterns and they are on a low setting, which is why it's hard to see them on the webcam in the daytime. The naysayers are really having a field day with that one, but we'll set things straight soon enough. Well, I Why are they on the low setting? Do you have some sort of power issue? It didn't look like it and B are the LEDs which was stuck on full brightness. They were a hell of a lot brighter than the other ones that were all dis going said.

They might fear the job and you still couldn't see those until like 5 or 6 p.m. at night. It's ridiculous. It's an epic fail.

LEDs will not work as road markings. Your entire paradigm of having the LEDs as Ro backings is a complete an epic fail. That's one of the key advantages of your solar freakin' roadways over the Netherlands one and the SATA and the French charcoal less what way one that just doesn't work. Give it up.

But I know what you're saying. What about the solar output? Once they get these solar cells working hard, will be home and hosed. Ok, let's do some math. so let's take a look at a data sheet for a typical consumer panel, the LG at Neon 2 and of course, Solar Roadways don't have never provided any data sheet at all in six and a half years and and three million bucks or whatever.

Anyway, we can get this Square area because we have the data sheet of this and it works out 1.5 as square meters for a typical 321 panel. The Sr3 panels solar Robos one is 27% of the area of that, so it should produce in theory 87 watts if it was equivalent, but it's only rated 244 watts, which it's already half as efficient per square meter of the consumer panel, but that's fairly typical. And the results we actually saw in the Netherlands our trial as well. And if we have a look at the data from my number 850 video which has the 12-month results from the Netherlands Solar Bikeway trial, you can see up the top there that's 82 kilowatt hours per square meter for The Oak for the whole year.

So we'll take 41 kilowatt hours for six months. But the Solar Roadways Sr3 panel, because it's that silly hexagon shape, is going to have a lot of wastage on there. How much? Based on this photo here, I Calculate about 30 percent wastage compared to the solar roads in the Netherlands. So in practice, the Solar Roadways this are three panels going to produce approximately 0.7 percent of the one in the Netherlands which demonstrably produces half the output of a rooftop commercial panel.

So that means our fantastic Solar Roadways Sr3 technology is going to produce 35 percent of the energy of commercial, our residential rooftop, let alone commercial one in bangs per buck. But hey, we can actually get some data on here. I Actually found on the Solar Roadways website? Believe it or not, I Actually found a figure F measured from the output of a micro inverter for for Solar Obeys panels over a six-month period. They don't give any other data.

there's no photos, no nothing time of year or anything else. There's no dial to go along with it. so hey, we can crunch the numbers on that for Sr3 panels at 0.40 eight square meters each is 1.6 3 square meters total. So we got 51 point Three Nine, seven kilowatt hours for the six months.

Divide that by the square area and we get a figure of 32 Point One two kilowatt hours for six months. And if you compare that with the solar Road in the Netherlands that we got for the six month figure, we got 41 kilowatt hours, so it is less. It's roughly the order of that noir point seven we got above. So that's a very nice confirmation that these things aren't as good as the sole arose in the Netherlands and you wouldn't expect them to be because of the hexagonal shape, but their conditions are very similar.

They're laying flat. They've got the thick glass protective glass on top. They got dirt and grime and ware and everything else, so hey confirmed. But of course these panels are going to produce how everyone knows that they're not angled.

they've got the thick last extra losses. everything else. but what is the bang per buck? ie. the power output per installed cost.

Aha, we can get data on that too. and we've got some data from the US government National Renewable Energy Laboratory I'll link it in down below 2015 figures, but they should still be good enough. Only a year out-of-date and you can see that the price break down the installation cost for residential. Their look at the first bar graph on the Left just over three dollars per watt installed.

and then it breaks down the cost of the installation, labor and everything else. But look at commercial. it's two dollars 15 per watt installed. Fantastically cheap and just as an independent our confirmation of that we've got the Solar Energy Industry Association.

Their figure is are just under $2 per watt for installed our commercial systems and I found an article which listed the current price of each Sr3 panel to produce, ship and install for the state and Scott said that it's about $2,000 per 44 watt panel. I'm surprised it's that low. Maybe there's not something you know. Extra government costs installed in that like this one here in San point where the government actually paid for the install.

So whether or not that figures included, it seems actually quite low to me considering the amount of effort required to install these compared to commercial systems. Anyway, its 22 times the cost of a commercial rooftop solar system, and that does not include the greatly increased maintenance. Because you're walking on it, you're driving on it. You're doing everything else you've got water issues you've got also drainage, all sorts of things.

Our goodness. Anyway, it's 22 times the cost at least. And the thing with this Sand Point installation is not even close to what it would be like when if you had to drive on these things. This is only a walkable, bikable surface by their own quote.

And here, look at the photos of what they have to do for a real one that can actually take the tractor and everything you the cars to drive it. A look at the infrastructure you've got to install, let alone the drainage and the pits and the wiring and everything else is is crazy. and this is all part of their claims that you can. You know you've got to Winston The benefits of this thing.

that you can install all these cable pits and you'd have all the infrastructure and tracer charge your EVs on the fly which they're now talking about and all sorts of BS like this. It's just ridiculous to go to this sort of trouble when you can just install simple commercial rooftop panels on the roof. Where the infrastructure it is this. You need none of these hassles and you want to do this for 22 times the price.

Five times the price. even if they magically got a down in volume, yet have to be nuts to even think this is a viable solution. Unbelievable. But I know what you're saying Dave This isn't fair.

Come on. Look, they say it themselves. in volume. What's mass production begins? The price will come down drastically.

Okay, let's say they can magically get this are priced down by an order of magnitude. A two hundred bucks per panel. Can you imagine it? Look at these panels. They've got the glass on there, the PCBs, the LEDs the everything.

But Okay, let's assume that they can drop it by an order of magnitude. It's still four and a half times the cost today of commercial rooftop systems. And once again, that's not including the increased maintenance. That's not including the extra infrastructure required.

Because rooftop commercial systems go on roofs of buildings that are already wired up, they're trivial to wire into the existing grid, and everything else you don't have to worry about. drainage, drainage is already handled there by the gutters of the roofs, and everything else it could be. Still, even if they dropped it by an order of magnitude, the installation cost could be. you know, quadruple five times more easily.

And if you don't believe me, take the figures from coal s What way the French company doing there are Solar Roadways installation. This is a huge multi-billion dollar road construction company. They know what they're doing, they know roads and their best case, Pie-in-the-sky I Figure for production costs down the track is three You are as per what installed. So the odds of solar freakin' roadways with a huge thick glass panels which had cost more than that alone and all their electronics and their lids and everything else a their concrete pits and everything else that goes along with it slabs and bolted down and to be anywhere near that price is just lunacy.

I Mean just look at the coal Last one. It's as simple as it gets. No glass, No LED rubbish, just a couple of millimeters thick solar sight soft that is just adhesive glued down to the road surface. There's absolute bare minimum as you can get and that as I showed in my video is six times the cost of rooftop solar for half the output.

and finally at the unveiling of solar roadways. After all is money and time and they're at the press conference they're ready to release the data a while the world on their research that they're doing. what are they show? Some did want to say to soar by solar panels when you lay one flat angle one Oh goodness, they're showing the data they're getting from the commercial solar panels. not even their own panels.

The commercial solar panels where they put one flat and one angled I Mentioned this in the previous Route 66 video. Oh no wonder MODOK is interested. its Transportation Management. Center is an informational hub monitoring Missouri's roadways and now they're keeping an eye on something else.

Solar Data: Bruce All is installing two conventional solar panels outside the center. While these can't bear the weight of a vehicle, the principles of photon absorption with solar roadways innovation remain the same by testing these rooftop solar panels and we've got one this angle toward the Sun and one is flat. With the information we gather here, we'd be able to accurately tell them how much energy this parking lot would produce at this particular location. These tests will help MoDOT determine if solar roadways are a viable option for their Road to Tomorrow initiative.

They're seeking new innovations and ideas on how to rebuild Interstate 70 to be a highway for the 21st century and now I Haven't forgotten the lids in the supporting circuitry. Using Solar Roadways own measurements and calculations, the LEDs and circuitry consumed at per Lane mile about a quarter of the energy produced of these tiles since pissing the energy down the drain. Are you kidding me? For What benefit? None, just extra bloody maintenance for LEDs that can't even be seen and useless circuitry. Unbelievable.

Welcome to Sandpoint, Idaho. The City of Tomorrow with solar freakin' roadways where there higher maintenance half the output piss away a quarter of the power on LEDs that can't be seen during the day I Shaded most of the time and have innumerable problems as a road surface, all at only 20 times the cost of rooftop solar. The City of Tomorrow I mean there's obviously no other solution where panels that are order of magnitude Qi angled optimally to the Sun have super high efficiency that require almost no maintenance. a super easy to install have existing wiring infrastructure to power the things that they're put on.

I Just don't see it here. I'm clearly solar roadways as it's got to be the solution. There's just there's just nothing else. It's it's the best possible choice.

you. Now, the other argument is, well, who cares about the efficiency and all that? Surely some energy output is better than none, right? The roads are just sit in there doing nothing. Oh no, you don't get it. There's a much bigger issue at stake here as a society.

One of the biggest problems we've got, if not the biggest problem for a future sustainability is energy, energy supply, energy consumption. And it's our responsibility as a society to produce renewable energy systems that are as efficient as possible. They get the most bang per buck.