Energy Plan

Smart Highway

The "Smart Highway" and "Smart Road" are technologies that incorporate solar energy into the roadways to assist in autonomous cars, lighting, and road condition. The technology used is photo voltaic pavement that generates electricity through solar power. A photovoltaic system uses solar panels comprised of many solar cells to produce solar power. The photovoltaic effect is when photons of light excite electron into higher energy levels, which then act as carriers for an electric current. There solar cells can be useful to recharge a battery or power equipment.  The conversion of sunlight into electricity this way does not require any other equipment or parts. Solar energy storage is done through thermal mass systems, rechargeable batteries, and molten salt. Thermal mass systems and molten salts can store solar energy in the form of heat, while the rechargeable batteries store the solar energy as electricity. The batteries are useful in off-grid endeavors though extra electricity can be pumped into the grid.

A start up in Idaho, Solar Roadways, has designed a solar powered roadway that would eventually, in their hopes, form a smart highway. They have a prototype that they built as a parking lot and have ideas to change all sidewalks and parking lots to these solar roads. The parking lots would have parking spots that are able to move because of the LED lights, These roads, sidewalks, and parking lots could heat themselves with stored solar energy to melt snow and ice and also light up with LED lights to display messages and road signs. Other companies have developed photo-luminescent paint that would glow if temperatures fell below freezing, warning drivers of icy conditions. A downfall of this paint though, is that the paint would need to be repainted after two weeks. 

Smart highways could feature interactive lights, wind lights, electric priority lanes, glowing lines, and dynamic lines. The interactive lights would save energy by only turning on when cars are approaching. Wind lights would use energy generating from passing cars turning a windmill turbine to keep lights on for the safety of vehicles and their passengers. Electric priority lanes would have the ability to charge electric cars as they drove on them, a way to promote sustainable travel. Glowing lines would be charged throughout the day with solar energy to help light dark roads at night. The dynamic lines feature of a smart highway would be the ability to change the road deck markings to help with traffic flow and control depending on the traffic situation. All of these feature would and could be used with solar energy, when necessary, as a clean and efficient source of energy for a technologically advanced road system. 

The solar power collected during the day can also be used at night to power the LED lights and melt ice and snow. There are some issues though, on what would happen on days where there is no sunlight on cloudy days. Solar Roadways has a vision to have all pavement transformed into solar roadways pavement to help reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. 

This type of complete reworking of the road system would take a lot of money and time to complete. These companies hope to start small with parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks to work out all of the bugs that come with a system so vast and off the grid. Businesses and companies have the incentive to begin this work with a dent in their electricity bills from the solar energy they are collecting out in their parking lot. This clean, and renewable energy source, if made into a large highway would supposedly create three times as much electricity as Americans already use, therefore paying for itself. More research needs to be done on how to store all of the extra electricity for days when no solar energy is being generated and also on how expensive it would really be to update all of the US's roads and highways.