Have you heard of Electric Roadways?

Scott Brusaw had a childhood dream of an “electric road” on which children could drive their toy cars. Today, he is an Electrical Engineer by profession and has launched a company called “Solar Roadways” in Sagle, Idaho with his wife and childhood friend Julie. Over the years, he and Julie spent countless hours discussing their concept of a Solar Roadway System. Their idea is to replace all existing and new asphalt roads, parking lots, driveways and other flat surfaces with Solar Road Panels that collect and store solar energy. His company holds a provisional patent for the technology he has envisioned to accomplish this.

According to Scott, enough Solar energy falls on earth every hour to power the entire world for an entire year.

Imagine being able to harness this energy!

At the core of his idea is the Solar Road Panel which consists of three layers:

The Solar Roadway itself would be an interconnection of these Solar Road Panels.

During weather events such as a snow storm, the road could use its stored energy to heat up the surface thereby melting the snow or ice and making the roads safe. Street lamps could be powered by directly plugging into the Solar Roadway.

Though his idea is in concept phase, Brusaw contends that many of the components needed to build a Solar Road Panel already exist in one form or another today. The only component that does not exist is the top road surface layer that is transparent enough to let light pass through, yet strong enough to support the load of an 18-wheeler locking its brakes at 90 mph. This surface would need to provide sufficient traction, be shatter proof, water proof, fire proof and must always be able to let light through.

Scott is looking for funding to make his concept a reality. He has already presented his concept to the Department of Energy and is working with MIT and Penn State.

To demonstrate the potential of his idea, Scott has come up with some numbers assuming that 25,000 square miles of our roads are covered with 200W solar panels rated at 15% efficiency. If we get only 4 hours of sunlight per day, the solar panels would collect 13,424 Billion Kilowatt-hours of electricity in one year. The US used roughly 4700 Billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003, according to the Energy Information Administration. He points to the fact that with his calculations, the SOlar Roadways can generate over 3 times the energy required by the US while cutting greenhouse gases.

According to Scott, the benefits of realizing the goal of Solar Roadways are:

To learn more about Solar Roadways, or learn how to support his effort, visit Scott’s website at Solar Roadways