Brusaw drives away with $100K grant
SAGLE — Local engineer, inventor and entrepreneur Scott Brusaw has highly ambitious goals, and thanks to a $100,000 federal grant, he’s inching ever closer to accomplishing them.
Brusaw and his wife, Julie, own Sagle’s Solar Roadways, a company that a growing number of people believe has the potential to revolutionize America’s vast grid of highways.
Instead of driving on asphalt roads, the idea of Solar Roadways is to cover roads, parking lots and driveways with solar panels that collect and store energy from the sun, which could then be used to power homes and businesses.
It sounds like a concept straight out of a science fiction movie, but Brusaw is confident that once people evaluate the company and do a little research, they’ll see that the science behind Solar Roadways is solid. For the past several years, Brusaw has traveled the country giving speeches and presentations about the company, and he’s picked up some influential fans. Local aviation legend and Inventor’s Hall of Fame member Dr. Forrest Bird now sits on the company’s advisory board and recently nominated Brusaw for the prestigious Lemelson-MIT prize for inventors.
After delivering a well-received speech at the Turner-Fairbanks Highway Research Center in McLean, Va., Brusaw was encouraged to apply for a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for self-sustaining, intelligent pavement systems. Set in two phases — each requiring a separate application process — the grant offers $100,000 for its first phase and $750,000 for its second phase.
Brusaw learned early this month that Solar Roadways had been chosen as the grant’s phase one recipient.
Prior to hearing the good news, Brusaw endured a few agonizing days of waiting when the grant’s announcement day was pushed back three weeks. Brusaw wasn’t even able to breath easy after seeing the official results on the DOT Web site, which only said Solar Roadways was the grant’s “recommended recipient.” He eventually got a DOT official on the phone to find out if the company actually won the grant.
“He explained what was going on and I finally interrupted him after about 10 minutes and said ‘Bottom line, should my wife and I be celebrating?’ and he said ‘Yeah, go ahead and celebrate,” Brusaw said.
With the initial $100,000, which he’ll receive later this year, Brusaw hopes to build a small prototype of the system, and he’s already ordered some of the parts and materials to go into it. If all goes well in phase one, Brusaw in confident he’ll also receive funding for phase two.
It’s undoubtedly a lot of money, but Brusaw said $750,000 would not go very far toward building a fully functioning solar highway, so he will instead use the money to construct a solar parking lot. He’s been in talks with corporate officials from Wal-Mart, and said the company might be interested in using the product at some or all of its locations.
“They don’t invest in early development, but they said, ‘When you get this thing ready, we’re interested,’ because this could take them completely off the grid,” he said.
Brusaw’s original goal was to build a functioning prototype on U.S. 95 from Sandpoint to Coeur d’Alene, but that plan might be preempted by a move to Tacoma, Wash., where Brusaw is in talks with the city’s public works director and city manager to move the company’s headquarters to the city.
For more information, visit www.solarroadways.com.