Demonstration project raises many questions

Having first heard about the Solar Roads “demo project” at Sandpoint Jeff Jones Town Square last spring, I attended the “grand opening” on Sept. 30 hoping to see something positive. To everyone’s shock the tent opening revealed just a hole in the ground and not single panel in sight. The event should have been canceled well in advance and not lead us on like that. Their excuse was they didn’t even start final assembly of the panels until the day before and not having any idea how long it would take. It was the first time they made that many panels. They said please come back tomorrow at 1 p.m. and it will be done and operational for sure. I didn’t believe a word of it and had no plans to go back.

A friend and I happened to be driving around town at 1 p.m. the next day so we decided to see if anything had changed. “Grand opening 2” was a much bigger fiasco than the original one. The panels where in place but not working. They said they were engineering how to install the panels as they were putting them in. It was never done before. It was pure guess work on their part. They guessed wrong on how much sand to use under the panels and did not use enough or tamp the sand down. All of the panels had to be removed. Now they finally stated the truth and said “we have no idea when this will be completed.” This is incompetence to the max and a very shocking way to introduce a new company to the public. Hopefully no public funds where used for this project.

This project is not a road, or even a parking area so it does not demo anything having to do with Solar Roads. I see it as merely as a very expensive, exotic, sandbox, play area for the kids. By profession I am a CAD mechanical designer. I don’t think the panels are going to melt snow during the day and will be impossible at night. Because the panels have bumps on top snow plows will not be able to clean the road down to the surface like normal. A layer of ice will form on the panels at least the thickness of the bumps. And if the snow plow blades hit the bumps they will shatter the panels. I see many more problems than these.

The area of a one-mile section of a typical two-lane road is about 160,00 square feet. Each panel is about five square feet so it would require 32,000 panels for each mile of road. They had six full months to make just 30 panels on time and could not do that. Having seen this in person I don’t see a solar road ever being made.

A better idea would be to have cheaper conventional solar panels on poles along the sides of roads that face the sun at the proper angle at all times. I’m not sure how good that would look but we sure need to stop using oil and nuclear power ASAP.

ALAN MIKOLETI

Sandpoint