It just never ends!
Two days after I posted my last solar roadways video, details and photos emerge of another two recent epic failures of the new SolaRoad installations in the Netherlands.
A trial with buses and trucks results in failures within a week and cancellation of the project.
Now the company wants to focus on smaller panels for solar powered bike chargers, bus shelters and CCTV cameras, another complete boondoggle.
This madness has to STOP!
Plus an update on Colas Wattway.
Forum: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1234-more-epic-solar-roadways-fail!/
#SolarRoadways #FAIL #AGAIN
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Hi I Thought I was done and dusted on solar roadways after all these years debunking this rubbish I Thought that was it. but unfortunately I've had to do another video now just like the next one. I just did one on the the French one the epic fail that is the French was the French solo road thing. As if like the French failure wasn't bad enough.

of course the solar freakin' roadways. the Brew Shores that's just that's a laugh a minute that is and the China one that failed and the Netherlands one there cycle our pathway. but I think I mentioned in the previous video that Solar Road Solar when s Ola they were doing other projects I would go in here with these other projects and we've got results from these ones too of what happened and I got to share it because there's so many people. I Know a lot of people don't like the solar roadways and why do you keep doing them? Dave It's because there's a lot of people interested in following this story.

People asked for this stuff. Yeah, I've got to keep people updated with what's happening. So look Solar Road in the Netherlands Here it is. They installed on 7th of March officially opened in the province of yep a hundred metres for a heavy traffic pilot program where you can see that there's actually buses on this thing and they built another one as well.

There it is after the installation is a big truck on it, no workers. Ok let's test this thing thing out. What? What? What? Wha? Thank you very much. 2 extra small whack and see Fire! new users on the Eevblog forum.

they're from the Netherlands and they've just joined to keep us updated Here we go outsi fires post because see Fire lives nearby and went and visited and actually took photos of this new heavy vehicle traffic. one I Found out that I live a 15 minute drive for one of the newest solo projects the one in Harlem Meah So I went to see what kind of condition and take a few photos. Spoiler alert it's not doing great This article over here. yeah now let's let's just jump over.

They've terminated it, they just started to March and they've donated the trial already actually. so what? Sorry, We'll go back to the photos later because here we go let's read the report. The Soul Road Pilot on the bus lane opened on 7th of March. Sure they have to open.

He rode inspector shortly after what days or a week later discovered that some damage to the road surface as a result of which the test section was temporary closed off for further investigation. The result of this study indicates that Aa repair the Solar Road Elements is not possible I can't even repair these things when something goes wrong with them. Oh and that it is not useful for the province of South Holland to continue the current pilot, they have discontinued this thing just like it failed within short order. And once you drive buses and trucks on these things and these are massive big concrete slab thing like you know, huge big concrete sections.

They have to lower in with a crane and everything driving on solar panels is not a good idea. Stop doing it, please. The research finds that the solar panel and the top layer release from the underlying concrete of the road element. This detached from the solar panel leads to distortion which causes further damage.
So I Guess what? It lifts up, water gets under, then it lifts up and then you start. I Guess when the trucks and the buses go over, it starts flexing. You've got a bulge, maybe and it flexes it, then it cracks or does whatever. I Don't know.

I'm just guessing this detachment the solar panel is distortion is caused further damage under physical stress because the damage is in the middle of the solar. Road Elements cannot be reached so a pair has not been possible, right? So they can't get in from the edge and repair it. How does water get right into they say no, no, no, it actually release. Okay, so the gluing they're holding it down is gone or something.

Yeah, the problem says don't Decided to end the pilot and purpose of the pilot projects has been successful test over the last four years. it has not been successful. We tested, we showed the photos of that. It was a debacle.

It was just tested with bikes. Unbelievable. And it still failed. The application of solar array surfaces on the road is a logical continuation of this.

No, it's not. It's a dumb idea. when a fail with bikes, you want to put buses and trucks on it. Unbelievable.

Anyway, technical, commercial feasibility in particular. There's a lot of people out there who have the opinion. Dave What's the problem? They tested it. It failed.

Okay, like surely they have to do this test and to make sure that and to see if it that was the idea, to see if it passed or failed or not the test. Why do you have a problem with it? It's because the fundamental concept of driving on solar panels is this stupid road technology has evolved for hundreds of hundreds of years. Go speak to any road construction engineer who knows how roads are developed. And there's there's massive science that goes into building roads, and now they want to put solar panels under and try and make them transparent enough that you can get enough solar insulation through and then keep them clean enough that it's just dumb.

It's some ideas are just fundamentally stupid and should not even need to be tested anyway. This is a necessary step. No, no. both pilots performed in essential.

Anyway, they failed, right. They regrets the premature termination of the pilot at the same time as it is inherent to innovate promising technologies such as solar. Road No, it's not promising Unexpected problems may arise have not been revealed during previous processes it was. There's photos of the bike path failing.

Unbelievable in DB is for further development. Oh God, No further. just stop. Stop.
with this madness. that's that's the council's website. The Council regrets that we wasted our money on this stupid concept, but we're going to continue the recent. pump money into order.

Yes. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Anyway, you want to see the photos of what it looks like see file is 15 minutes taken from the rough, the same vantage point as they photos this show.

On their website, you can see the solar panels are currently covered by the kind of heavy steel plates they used to meet temporary construction roads. They couldn't even just leave them there to rot because the trucks and the buses would and it all bust up their tires or something or as dangerous or so they had to cover it. This is the Solar Road website started in the first place. No, they took noise and rolling resistance measurements.

They reckon they were favorable. Okay, fair enough. They're much larger slabs, Huge slabs, unlike the much smaller stick on sheets that the French Solar Road thing was using. In addition, Debbie's the road service was observed a week after opening of both pilot projects, both of them.

The investigation in the record shows that the solar panel and top layer separates at the site Detachment: A solar panel deformation occurs over time under the influence of temperature variations. You think? Yeah, that's what hundreds of years of road development has got into. To ensure that thermal problems don't ruin roads whereby further damage occurs out of the physical stress of heavy traffic, the developed solutions will be first tested in new sections with light traffic and come. No.

Ok, anyway, it's a completely epic fail. You want to see the photos? Of course you do. Here It is. Here it is.

They've got all the big steel plates on there now covering up. This was in within a week. It just failed. Believe it or not, See Fire assures us.

Just to be clear, the close-up photos are actually of the solar. Road There's so much dirt and sand on there it took me a minute to realize that wasn't just normal concrete. Look at this. Look at that.

What the it? You can see it a bit better in further photos. That's where they other big dog-and-pony show. The other day they cut, come out and cut the ribbon and I assume these are the pits for the wiring and the inverters and stuff. What the heck is this? Anyway, you can see this one look you can see I can see a line going across there.

so is that the solar element under there? You can see it. You can kinda see that this is what the panel looks like. Unbelievable. Now what? how not even like what? look and you can see? can you see? is that part of the solar and like the actual the cells in there or whatever.

I can kind of see little strips guy. It's hard to tell. that's just it's just that words cannot express how bad that is. That is.

Just like what the like that is one of the panels. It's just the dumbest idea ever. Why are they doing this? Why? Why look at this? These are the panels you can see. That's that's part of the cell structure inside.
and what is all this stuff on the top? Unbelievable. As if that's gonna get anything through. Well yeah, they look like yeah, they're there. The panel is looking instead of lines going across there.

Surely they didn't know they didn't look like that because we could see the photos at the start of this thing. Yeah, you can see the lines going across there. They look reasonably clean ish. So it went from that to that.

Like all this sand and grit has been taken off what the other roads and then just ground into it. Wow, that is. Just don't drive on solar panels. Okay you getting the idea.

Getting the hint from Extra Small Whack who translated in one of the articles. There are two areas where water has gotten under the transparent top surface. About 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters are separated from service. Because the precise calls, the damage is unknown.

Bus lane was closed as a precaution so it looks like Dave doesn't have to worry about his future income from. D Frankie Solar Projects. Yeah, I'll make like you know, 30 bucks from this video or something. So thank you very much for the new forum users for posting those photos.

It's just and that look sounds like they're still gonna continue with this rubbish. Like why look look on the side of the road. Here you see these cars. You see these cars.

It's probably like a bus or a train stop or something. There is there all these cars parked here. How about you just put a roof over them with the solar panels angled like that? They would last 20 years if you'd protect the cars and you get optimal efficiency. And it cost bugger-all using existing technology.

and as I and I always get the every time. I do a solo roads video so they just keep coming in year after year. But Dave you can't stay. This is new innovative technology and it needs to be investigated and tested.

That's you know what? are you anti innovation? This is not new innovative technology. It's taken an existing solution existing solar panel technology and putting it in the worst possible. Valle Nura Belen Vironment under the worst conditions with the worst efficiency possible. It's just madness.

It's madness. It is not new innovative technology. Just put them on poles, put them on the side of the road over car parking lots when every single and believe it or not, I'm not actually entirely against the concept of solar roadways. it's just don't come and talk to me about this concept until every single roof available roof space if cut is covered with solar panels.

Every car parking lot is covered with panels over the cars. Once you've done all that, then we'll talk. Then we'll investigate solar roadways. Until then, it's just fundamentally stupid.
Stop it. Oh, by the way, just a quick update on the French one. I Missed this one. Thank you for somebody on Twitter who pointed out it's a this is an article from the Global Construction Review I New I Guess there are you know, a journal or whatever.

Anyway, Frances Solar Road Dream may be over. After tests failed. this pulls no punches. The French government's bold plan to pay 4000 kilometres of highway is over over five years seems unlikely to go ahead.

Following the fire of the trial, the panel's deteriorated quickly and failed to generate the amount of electricity. Hope for this. I Didn't know. Now the roads 2800 square metres of panels have degraded, peeled away and splintered, and a hundred of hundred metres of them had to be removed after being declared too damaged to repair.

so they had to remove a hundred metre strip of them I didn't We didn't see this in previous reports and we know about the 70 kilometer an hour noise limit and we know that it only produced half the amount but got some extra data here as a council by the or a statement by the own Council said the money made from the sale of electricity was expected to be ten thousand five hundred Euros a year. but in 2017 or the first year it was open, it received I only like less than half that for 4,500 euros 2018 adopter 3100 in the first quarter 1450. So it just kept as the these things just kept them dirty or dirtier, keep failing and it's just it's just epic fail. Anyway, we've got some numbers there, that's that's the payback.

Go flap, but this is damming mark I Won't try and pronounce. A Vice President of the Network for Energy Transition commented the technical and economic elements of the project were not sufficiently understood. It is a total absurdity to innovate at the expense of solutions that already exist and are much more profitable such as photovoltaics on roof. Thank you very much.

That's what I and everyone else, any engineer with any common sense at all has been saying since the original solar roadways concept. but hey, Coal s got there Five million dollar funding. Yeah, and this is from the comment from the chief executive of what Way won. The trial they did is not the one we are going to market.

You think with our system is not mature on long distance traffic? You think we are now focusing on small modules of three, six or nine square meters enough to provide enough electricity for a CCTV camera but shorter lighting or an electric bicycle charging station. Calm down. Dave If I go into this thing called Google and I Google search for solar-powered bus shelter. It'll be a bus shoulder with solar panels on the top of it.

Not in the freaking ground. There we go. Solar-powered bus shelter? look-look-look You don't put them. You notice how they're not in the ground where people bikes, cars and things drive over them.
Just put them on the top. and CCTV Solar power. You see them everywhere. Solar-powered Electric bike charging station.

Anyone look at these. Perfect. It's exactly what you want. Yet these idiots are so obsessed with this concept that they get like the solutions already exist.

They're cheap, they're reliable, they're simple, and they want to go ahead trying to put these things in the ground. Give up.

Avatar photo

By YTB

25 thoughts on “Eevblog #1234 – more epic solar roadways fail!”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars General Jack Ripper says:

    IN ONE WEEK

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars General Jack Ripper says:

    There's a reason we don't test gravity by throwing ourselves off buildings.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Skylancer727 says:

    I'd say this more shows it's terrible for the environment. If they can't be repaired they are basically e-waste when they are retired. They just need to stop with the solar roads.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Peter Hausen says:

    Lots of people getting rich so they will not stop testing and doing this..

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars nullptr says:

    i remember when in 2014 saying this is stupid would result in a bunch of delusional people calling you a shill for big oil companies

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jessica Carter says:

    I wish they'd just made the panels on roof tops or over car parks… All that money wasted on all this could have made a big difference in putting more panels in better places.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Sergeant says:

    Local councils and government administrators are extremely innovative and efficient at wasting public funds on projects that provide zero benefit to the ratepayers who fund them.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Demef says:

    This latest failure of solar roads begs the question: how many PROFESSIONAL engineers signed off on these absurdities?

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars benriful says:

    There's a reason you do not mix certain materials in layers when there's heavy traffic going over it. "Lick-n-stick" is not something which will last too long.
    Even worse, that same reasons are amplified when those surfaces get changes in temperature as different materials expand at different rates. No need for water ingress, just normal sunlight would be enough … OH WAIT!

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Oneironaut says:

    Wasting all this money, that could be much better spent on existing technology that works is the problem. Common sense and logic should be all a person needs to realize that Solar Roads will not work. Rather then wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on the next shiny object, we should be spending it to address other problems and building existing Solar and wind technologies that actually work and would make a difference now.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Lykantopia says:

    Let's invite solar railways =)

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars artistjoh says:

    Trees could put their leaves on the ground, if it had any benefit, and ground dwellers like grass still try to get leaves as high off the ground as they can. The crazy thing is that if people are so intent on covering roads with solar panels why not do the logical thing and make a roof of solar panels? The panels would be able to be given an appropriate angle to optimise electricity production. I tend to agree it would be better to do it over parking lots, but if they must be on the roads, then we can put them overhead. Easy to do, probably cheaper than these ground installations, and we already know it works. No testing needed.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Riccardo Z says:

    Sola Road.. in italian SOLA it means scam … perfect name. and still there are people that have to spend citizien's money on this planned failures? cmoooon !!!

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Nothing\ says:

    I'm still waiting for Solar Freaking Rockets.

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DAVID GREGORY KERR says:

    It was a really stupid idea from the start.

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Cesar ramos says:

    Since when can a manufacturer charge a city to test there product, am i dumb? i must be dumb.

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dr fred dave says:

    if only some one had told them befor hand :-))

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars mathis8210 says:

    It just keeps going and going and going and going

  19. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars gn02020202 says:

    It is being attempted by the same people that are trying to replace 100 year old oil and 100 year old hydro power generations with solar or wind and expect it to cost the same. FYI, for those who don't know, oil and hydro don't need much extra money for R&D (research and development) so they cost less. It is probably going to take 100 years and lots of money to get the technology to be the same. (But then they would need to catch up with the improvements in the cheaper technology as well….)

  20. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Enkidu1701 says:

    This is some psychological madness going on. It can not be explained by normal stupidity that the same BS with solar roadways is going on in several countries around the globe. USA, China, France, Neatherlands, Germany etc. The criticism of the concept was explained early enough by David, by Thunderfoot and others. And it was easy enough to understand. Why would anyone put a solar cell on a road as long there is space left on roofs that are even tilted towards south? It doesn´t make any logical sense, right?
    Now here is what I think is the mechanism behind the madness:
    The pro solar roadway people deep inside think as follows:
    "For centuries we humans did so much damage to the environment by our consumption of fossile fuels. We ride trains and cars.
    The cars and roads are our biggest sin. What if we could create roads that would turn it all around?
    Roads that would produce energy. We make up for our sins very similar to how we committed our sins! That´s how we can turn it all around. Now our biggest sins we turn into something positive. Now our NEW SOLAR roads help to save the planet instead of destroying it."
    Those were made up quotes or fake quotes. But something similar to that thinking is going on, I bet.
    I mean seriously: this solar roadways BS is going on for years in several countries. If it was just a little bit reasonable this could not happen. You know how fast we can get information through the internet on the entire globe. But this does not help. They still get funded. It just doesn´t stop. That´s a big sign that there are other things going on, psychological and unreasonable things.

  21. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Kew Akl says:

    solar roadways == MAJOR ASSPALM

  22. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rolf says:

    It HAS been succesfully tested! They ignore the outcome, but if you test something for 4 years then you have succesfully tested for 4 years.
    "The solar roads have been sucessfully tested for four years….. the result of the test is that it makes no sense to use solarpanels for roads"
    This is the same marketing crap as "tested dermatologically" without mentioning the results of the test.

  23. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars FullFledged2010 says:

    There is one positive: they can't be stolen or vandalized. 😅

  24. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ergin Demir says:

    It's not totally useless, some people got very rich in the process.

  25. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Robert Lundkvist says:

    They probably need to make the surface rugged, as it would be dangerously slippery elsewise. A road surface also needs pores to take care of sound and water. That's why the structure looks like that of concrete or asphalt.

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