32 Replies to “Unexpectedly”

  1. i remember cbcpravda touting this, oh you stupid oil people , look at this, not a single consideration that we live in the snow and 3 months of spring mud, plus leaves . maybe 4 months of clear roads

    1. – And best of all, glass is SO SLIPPERY when it’s wet!

      There’s a couple down in the ‘States, been flogging the concept of solar-panelling all the U.S. Interstates (and as many other roads that’ll sign-up for it) for a decade now – https://solarroadways.com/ Some of the glaring flaws with the idea, pointed-out by anybody with more that a quarter-brain, are:

      – the expense. Even Hillary’s “half a billion solar panels” aren’t enough.

      – heavy vehicles like transport trucks; you say you want them to drive on glass?

      – the dirt; cars are not exactly clean, and road grime will cut-down on light transmission. The roads would have to be washed often, at great expense, with industrial-strength cleaners that are serious pollutants – shades of using helicopters to de-ice wind turbines.

      – the salt, for places that enjoy (?) Winter; that’ll be real good for everything, once it seeps through the “leak-proof” seals

      – the sunlight reflecting off the panels – and if they put a non-reflective coating on them, it cuts-down on the efficiency of the solar cells. Maybe paint them matte black?

      – the crashes and fires (a lot of the fires, being malfunctions in the roadbed itself)

      One of the detractors pointed-out that if you want to do this, it’d be better to erect the solar panels as a canopy over the highway – lighter, cheaper, a whole lot easier to build and maintain, and would even spare a lot of energy in the cars below for air conditioning.

  2. Theocracy driven rent seeking bounty defies all rational critical and economic thinking. Virtue signaling is the highest use of today’s political brain trust and it sells to the mindless mushy middle whose votes are sought at any cost.

  3. “The engineers also didn’t take into account the effects of leaves, which caused damage and limited the amount of electricity the panels could produce.”

    The effects of any kind are completely irrelevant, otherwise they would have not build the scheme.

    There was money to be spent and people that took advantage. The end result is of no consequence. It will be paved over so nobody gets a flat tire from the cracked glass surface.

    Nobody will ever know how could that be allowed to be built, such completely predictable failure.
    Could not have benn engineers to have done it. If there were some, wonder if they will ever get another job.
    The whole scam was easily calculable, no mystery, of course the fascist politicians don’t care as long as they can blow other peoples money.

    Those that know, know that it was not build to do anything else but the ceremony when it opened and complete silence when paved over.

    1. Could not have benn engineers to have done it.

      When I first started in chemical engineering, I thought I might want to specialize in environmental engineering. That lasted exactly one semester, until I realized that both the regulators and the engineers were incompetent and/or staggeringly unethical. Case in point: a nuclear power plant had strict emission/pollution controls for the concentration of contaminants in an effluent stream. Concentration, not mass per unit time or something more sensible. The engineers’ response was to combine the relatively low flow effluent stream with the high-volume cooling water outflow, driving the concentration down to barely detectable levels but ejecting no less contaminant into the local river system. The engineers thought this was a great joke on the regulators.

      No one is arrogant like an engineer. The two most corrupt, unethical, and just plain dangerous workplaces I ever worked in were both conventional engineering firms. I have no doubt that whatever engineering firm was contracted to design this thing, the only question they asked was “would you like it plated in gold or platinum?”

      1. The worst engineers I worked with were tended to be those who went into engineering in order to be managers, you know, the people who make things “happen”. The actual technical aspects didn’t particularly interest them and they distanced themselves from the nuts and bolts aspect as soon as possible.

        Then there were those who thought they were the smartest people in the room and made sure everyone else knew that…. that they thought they were clever. They claimed they had “lots of experience” but were unable, or refused, to answer specific technical questions.

        That’s one reason I went off to work on my research alone. I encountered too many of my fellow practitioners who were in either category.

        1. I can add at least one more name to the list, but professional courtesy prohibits me from mentioning it. One of my relatives apparently either worked there, or with it under contract, and his comment to me was that the company was interested only in increasing its billable hours.

          Another firm I know of became as large as it is now not because of its own expertise and the quality of its work but by buying up competitors or outfits that were involved in a market that it was interested in participating in.

          1. Engineers – got a couple of relatives who went down that path. “There are two sides to every story, and I don’t have time to listen to yours!” I always replied that an engineer’s world is a perfect cube, with exact 90-degree corners; they didn’t get it.

  4. That’s $510 million that the makers of those solar panels got to turn around and use against the ignoramus’

  5. Hide it before some Alberta municipal government finds out. They too, will want to spend twice as much on identical projects.

    1. I’m sure the Liberals will ask SNC to install one somewhere.

      Perhaps they’ll run solar panels between the rails of Ottawa’s and Toronto’s rail transit systems.

      I might just send such a recommendation to Trudeau. I should be able to make millions. I just need to know who I have to pay off.

  6. As part of the “Reset”, henceforth Parliament, and all govermnet buildings shall only use “green energy”. This NRG ™ shall be derived from “local” green power stations (cough), i.e windmills, solar farms on or adjacent to said buildings.
    All connections to grid utilities shall be disconnected and removed.
    This directive shall include all Government owned official residences.
    All Hail Net Neutral,
    Exceptions only Armed Forces facilities.

  7. I’m sure Adolf and Building Barbie’s projects will be much better. After all, we need good roads to plant all those trees this summer.

  8. What would be the 4 word statement that relates to this? I TOLD YOU SO. I know I did.

  9. Didn’t they try something in California, where they were painting roads white or something,,, haven’t heard out that turned out, but I imagine it’s covered in either black tire burnouts, dirt, grass & leaves or graffiti.

  10. JD – yah – as if solar panels work. Especially north of the 49th where in 9 months of the year the sun projects very little candle power.
    There are little solar panels on the crosswalk in this small Alberta town where I live. Half the time – not working and the company that installed them – out if business. No one knows how to “fix” them.
    Of course the all knowing, all intelligent City Council went and put huge amounts solar panels on the Rec Center. Never a report on how much $$$ that saves us taxpayer. Probably too low to count.
    Come to think of it – there was a Tv Ad not long ago about some stretch on the Trans Cda in the mountains that had the solar road. Again – no more news on that, must have worked fine. Cough!!

  11. In 2019 NV Energy terminated its power purchase agreement, so now Crescent Dunes doesn’t have a buyer for its power, which is far more expensive than what other renewable-energy plants in Nevada charge.

    Not to worry … Gavin Newsom will simply order the CA PUC to FORCE PG&E to purchase the expensive power, err GREEN, “renewable” power. Because CA’frnians are willing to pay $$ ANYTHING! to … save the planet. Right?

    Oh?! And all the poor, welfare cases will get their expensive green power for FREE!! The regular ratepayers will subsidize them. Hint: Your HIGH $$$ eco-rates are a TAX

  12. There are lots and lots of failures with developing new technology. From before and after Edison and countless others… The difference in these cases? They were failing using someone else’s – the taxpayer’s – money. And that makes ALL the difference.

  13. To be fair it is a French road, which makes it about as good as French cars. I bet Japanese or Koreans could make one that works, not that it would be worth it, but it would work.

      1. Yes of course it is worthless, like I said, not worth the expense. But I bet the Japanese roads at least function like a Toyota and not break down like a Renault.

  14. More magical thinking than applied science. It would be prudent to not turn off the oil flow until we have power to replace it with, but no doubt the green crowd won’t allow it. We have to do this now because earth hangs in the balance and other hysterical BS.
    Just thinking about how warm the weather on the prairies has been the last while and who the hell decided this is a bad thing. The seventies were all citrus crop failures among other cold weather related mayhem.

  15. I was thinking I would like to see a snow plow clear this road (and then salt it for good measure). As for the Solyndra project, I’ve driven by it several times – it’s quite the sight. Too bad it’s taxpayers footing the bill.

    BTW – wasn’t this the project found to be incinerating birds?

  16. All well and good to bleat about it here.

    I’ve sent this to EVERY MP in Ottawa, with links…. not that it will do any good. They need to hear it from 100,000 taxpayers.

    Dear Prime Minister Trudeau;

    Please do not have the hubris to believe you’re just so much smarter than these guys. You’ve already spent nearly a trillion dollars. Canadian taxpayers deserve better.

    $510,000,000 in gov’t subsidies produces massive failure. Another Green Subsidy Bust – WSJ
    “The Crescent Dunes failure shows again what happens when government invests in commercial ventures beyond its expertise for political purposes. Scarce resources are misallocated and taxpayers lose.”

    Or these guys. $5.2 million gov’t financed project produces $13,000 of energy. Amos Cline’s answer to What if we covered roads with solar panels? – Quora

    Respectfully

  17. I have a completely different take on this. I don’t mind government funding relatively small-scale experiments (this was $6 million US) on a one-off basis. It provides real answers, instead of endless argument from a bunch of assumptions.

    As an engineer, I find the “let’s test it” approach it far more efficient, practical, and expedient than the endless arguments. We now *know* what some of the unforeseen issues were: leaves, dirt, excess weight. We now *know* what the working lifespan of current technology is, and how quickly it degrades from ‘rated’ output to its much lower actual output. This information lets us focus on what needs to be gotten right in the next version.

    This is how things get built. Make a model, see what the flaws were, and try to fix them next go-round. It may well be that it’s technically and/or financially stupid, but now we have real world data to base that conclusion on, instead of pie-in-the-sky assumptions.

    Consider the first trans-Atlantic undersea telegraph cable. There were many attempts to make one, and information was gathered from all the *failures*. (I highly recommend Neil Stephenson’s article for those who are interested: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/) Finally, knowing what obstacles had to be overcome, William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) was able to solve them, and our world was shrunken considerably. A stupendous amount of money went into the failures, but the eventual success eclipsed them all.

    Do I ever expect solar roadways to be a real thing? Nope. I can’t believe the economics would ever work, and now I have some real world ammunition to support that belief. But things can change. If you had told me when I was at Expo 67 that in 50 years, I’d be able to hold all my music, thousands of TV shows and movies in high-definition colour, and have access to all my friends, knowledge, and entertainment, all with this little thing I hold in my hand, I’d have thought you were nuts.

    Every entrepeneur knows you learn more from failure than you do from success. This is another example.

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