I Know all my viewers in the Netherlands and nether regions. I'm open carefully contains a facepalm material apparently. so open carefully. Open very very carefully.

I'm being careful. Yes, what a way to cap off the year. Thank you very much. This is a piece of.

this is a peat holiday. This is the piece of the solar. Road in the Netherlands Yes I have a piece of soul. Well, it's not solar freaking roadways, but it's solar roads in the Netherlands and this is the top glass material.

I think he I think I retweeted his a video of it and like you know, it was just peeling off and this was what covers this is like the resin material that covers it with it's got the gritty surface. You know because it was like a road slash it was a road. Was it. Is this a road? Was a road or a bike park? I Remember there's so many bloody solar roadways.

Unbelievable. Thank you very much. Bet you have to batch after batch. It's not the bloody son of roadway.

it's a bloody patch. Way great. You can look through this, get some energy through the Sun yes or no. So real success.

They call this a success the day. No, it's a scientific organization. They call this a success. I Can now finally make some real energy because now you can see the solar panels.

So I'm actually helping the sorrowed. so thank you very much for sending this in. And also I Get in that video of this boondoggle and here it is Now this is actually a strip from the cremini if I'm pronouncing that correctly, the Cremini installation in the Netherlands They've got like half a dozen different installations, but this is the original installation of the solar bike path at Cremini that I did a video on like way back and I did like the test results from that's a 90 meter strip by 1.7 meters and that was in 2014 believe it or not and I think it was redone in 2016 because it just got buggered up. But anyway, yeah, this is like come on.

so it looks like it has like a base thickness of just under three millimeters there and it's got the you know extra rough surface. like over five millimeters with this extra rough surface on top. Yeah, it looks like it's actually done in like two separate layers there so that sort of looks on side on. You can see that extra layer being put on top there and it's I don't know what material it is, some sort of Polly put the kettle on polymer type thing.

But to think that this is going to like do the business to protect a solar panel and also like transmit good transmissive properties. Are you just kidding yourself? This is joke and this is the sort of transmissive property you can expect from this. It's not good. well it's just it's terrible.

Muriel I Mean come on. Seriously, this you want to put this on top of your solar panels I Know it's been out there for a while but even new it's it's a joke. So we have it like that much brighter and a come on come on that one down in the bottom corner. that's better.

Look at that little chunk down if it doesn't have the rough stuff on top. that's interesting. Look, the rough stuff is is really like. You know you don't know until you do the actual measurement on it but that looks are much more transmissive than the than the roughed up part of it.

So yeah but you'd expect that see the difference in the two layers there. Anyway, let's put this puppy over a solar cell and it just gets them. I Have some fun, just get some basic measurements to see how much it drops the hour. Put all right.

I'm gonna try to different types of solar cell because these are the only ones I have that actually match the size of this so that I can fully cover the silks. you don't want it like partially covered. So this one I have full data on. this is actually a Panasonic Am 1454 and this is an indoor amorphous solar cell and we got the full datasheet and graph and everything for it.

But I don't necessarily expect this one to perform very well because it's designed for indoor use like for a couple of hundred Lux and things like that I think it says like a maximum of a thousand lux or something. but I thought we'd give it a go anyway, even though we expect like tens of thousands of Lux outside. So anyway, and this one I had in my drawer got a bunch of these I and that website doesn't exist anymore I Can't find any info on this I have no idea what it is. it doesn't look like it's an amorphous one.

So let's just say it's a crappy one. hung low brand. you know, popular silicon solar cell, you know? I'm not hugely efficient, but anyway, that'll give us a representation. So let's try measure the short-circuit current of both of these under various lighting conditions including outdoors with and without this and the short.

So I'm not going to try and find the maximum power point and all that sort of stuff. The short-circuit current should give us just a good relative measurement when we actually cover it and not covered. or and I'm gonna use my M around Six Seven to a studio light here. I've got two of these I usually use these for shooting the video there we go.

we just put them either side as well as our my above head studio lights. So I'll use this and we're currently get in about 80 800 Lux here because we're in Times 10 mode on here. So going to multiply that by 10 and there's our short circuit current, we're getting about one point. One Six Five milliamps.

Now let's put our fabulous solar road surface on top. and Wow Look at that, that's dropped by about half. I Expect better outdoors. I say I suspect.

But yeah, cuz it shouldn't be that bad. but doesn't that's really bad. Wow, that's like it. or you know, roughly a 50% drop.

Okay, same conditions for this random brand. Solve a cell here. Five Point Eight, Five millionths. Let's see.

Oh oh, there we go. gets more as I put my hand under. There you go. it must be It must be reflecting off my hand.

So Five Point Eight Five Milliamps and it jumped back to one Point Five Two. Wow, that's a huge drop that's more than the other one. So let's go outside and try the same test again in the full midday. Sun Oh goody! I Get to leave the lab.

Okay, here we are: out in the midday. Sun Or what's left of it because of the fires well up in the mountains. Actually, if you don't know, Sydney is like a 50 kilometer diameter basin and it's collecting all the smoke from all the fires up and down the coast and up in the mountains. So yeah, it's everything up there is totally rooted.

It's not good anyway. So we're getting about eighty nine thousand lux here because you've gotta wear on Times 100 mode now. So you know roughly like nine times what we were getting in the lab. and we've got the short-circuit current there 123 Milliamps.

So let's go cover this with our magical. Maybe we've got some. You know, the sun's got some magical, you know, insulation that's not insulation. That's insulation insulation that's a radiation for the sun.

Anyway, let's have a look. Put my head over at 122 Milliamps. What? What? What? Wha? foot? Whoa. That was my head.

Thirty Nine Point Eight Milliamps. That is a massive massive drop. 40 milliamps Wow Didn't expect that bad now. I As I suspected I Don't think our amorphous solar cell is.

it's not designed for outdoors. You can see it's only 1.5 odd milliamps and that's just like 50% more than what will get in the lab. even though we're getting nine times the insulation out here, so it's kind of like saturated or whatever. I do IB and I Don't know the details of amorphous solar cells outside, but it's clearly it's short-circuit current is just yeah.

it's not doing the business. So let's put that over and there we go that didn't drop much, did it? But because it's saturated or whatever, it's not the correct term I'm sure. But yeah, that hasn't dropped up that hasn't dropped much at all. S Drop Bugger.

Also, ya know, that's not really a good test. the other ones that go. So there you have it. We measured roughly a 33% output or a 66% drop due to put anything on top of our solar cell and well, is that very surprising? No, it's not.

and if we take a look at, it's much worse than I expected. Though let's take a look at their official test results document for the Cremini experiment. This pathway here now and this is translated from the Dutch So I don't know how accurate the translation is here Now though talking about. there's two versions of this.

The first one was 70 kilowatt hours or an output. We expected energy between 50 and 70 kilowatt hours per year, but they provided 73. so it was better than they expected. kilowatt hours per square meter per year.

That's just like averaged over the year of operation. And the second version, they claimed that they got 93 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. But down here, the operating efficiency of the flexible cells is still. It was also evident that the measured yield of about 41 kilowatt hours per square meter per year.

However, this will still rise in the coming years. So what is it for? Is it 93 or is it 41? 41 kilowatt hours is matches our results here. So like, as in a a 66% drop roughly like wait only a 1/3 output. It can't be that bad, can it really? I Actually I think I figured it out they're talking about They apparently I think they must have fitted in a couple of test panels or something.

The thin film ones were fitted. They were. They were better suited to roads than the brittle silicon cells which have been applied in the rest of the cycle path. So I assume they must have like upgraded a couple and did a test, but the output of those was 41 kilowatt hours per square meter per year.

But yeah anyway. so I'm yeah, I'm not sure at the Daley's obviously like this has been degraded over time and stuff like that. so probably the performance was better when it was our first install, but it has been there for several years presumably and it's yeah, maybe it just really grossly deteriorates, but and of course it depends on the insulation and the type of cell and it lots of variable. So our simple test here with our polycrystalline cell with this yeah, it could be way off, but that's what we got.

This is what happens when you put something on top of a solar panel. It's ridiculous. The whole concept is totally I've said this a dozen times now. to take an already existing marginal payback technology and put it in the most unappreciative is stuff on top of it in order to protect it.

That just attenuates it even further. And then you drive bikes and cars on top of it gets grimed up and banged up and I like grit and all sorts of crap in here. It's just ridiculous. Not to mention that they're like embedded in the ground, they probably just gotta heat up to buggery.

whereas at least like angled solar panels. at least get some if flow underneath and stuff, it's just Dharma It's a dumbest idea in history. How many times do we have to say it? Oh, but they laughed at the Wright brothers. Yeah, they also laughed at Bozo the Clown and if you have a look at my old video here 743 where I looked at the initial test results for solar Road NL and and I compared them to like three different nearby in rooftop installations that I've got real data from rooftop installations and then I have reached everything out per square meter and the rooftop solar was twice the output.

It's just no way to spend it twice the output. So that's a combination of both this ridiculous stuff on top, attenuating the light and also the fact that they're non optimum flat as well. There's just no getting around that and it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. It doesn't work.

Anyway, it was very cool to actually get a piece of this and actually do a few simple tests and what's the night expected. But yeah, don't take those results. We're just doing this for a bit of fun. But like even looking at the real results here, it's like yet how many installations have they got in the Netherlands Like five or something and they've all failed every single one of them.

Unbelievable. When will they learn? So hopefully 2020 or the 20s can finally see the end of the Solar Roadways concept because it's just an absolute joke. It's come on, please. But it wouldn't surprise me if they keep bugging this dead horse and riding this donkey all the way to into town because there's always you know greeny political points to be had by doing this sort of.

BS But anyway, let us know what you think in the comments down below. As always, if you liked the video, please give it a big thumbs up. and remember, if you're after a decentralized alternative to YouTube that everyone's been talking about for the last couple of years, then it exists over on library. TV I'll link in my channel down below.

it's growing as of making this I've got like almost 90 hundred, nineteen hundred subscribers. something like that. so it's going Gangbusters I'll link it into it down below. It really does work.

It's pretty cool. Catch you next time.