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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

This is directly addresses in the company's FAQ:

> The total electricity consumption in the Netherlands lays around 110,000 GWh and increases annually by about 3% (according to CBS Netherlands). This means that if all suitable roofs in the Netherlands would be equipped with solar panels, they could only supply approximately 25% of the Dutch electricity demand.

Even though not every rooftop has one yet due to the cost of it (and some people find it ugly, like my father, he absolutely does not want us or our neighbors to have it :/), in the long run there is also not enough space. At least, that's what the company who makes this material is saying. Even if they are biased and we assume it's only half as bad as they tell us, we're still at only 50% of the demand.

Source: http://www.solaroad.nl/en/faq/ (under "Why would you include solar cells in the road and not next to it or on rooftops?")

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So are those 25% suitable roofs already filled with solar cells? If not, why do you waste money on somthing that is roughly 30-50 times more expensive? And once the suitable roofs are filled are there really no other more suitable surfaces than roads?

Putting it more directly: would YC think that this is a good investment of money? I think you wouldn't even get an interview.

Putting it more directly: would YC think that this is a good investment of money?

Well, if that would be the criterium, a lot of great investments would never have happened. E.g. many railroad routes that were constructed in the late 19th century took decades to be profitable. However, in the very long term they were good investments. Luckily, we had/have governments that are bold enough to invest in stuff that doesn't lead to an IPO the next 5 or 10 years.

And at a certain point you hit decreasing returns and should use another source of power. Once you are supplying 25% of the energy grid from solar, which has vagaries of its own, why would you pay extra for even more, er, exposure to that?

Be happy with 25% from solar, if you can sustain that. After that, work on wind or thermal solar or natural gas or nuclear or tidal or something.

> why do you waste money on somthing that is roughly 30-50 times more expensive?

This is called research and development. They're not replacing all the roads and cyclepaths with this stuff, they are testing and developing it because we will need it in the future.

Also, I do not appreciate the "you" in that sentence.

First of all my apologies for "you" I guess it should read "one" - English is not my native tongue.

I am just very sensitive about public funded projects.

To give you an example:

"XYZ is a project co-founded by the European Union that aims to validate how to approach Open & User Driven Innovation methodologies to the Public Sector in a scenario of Future Internet Services for Smart Cities. It will do so, by leveraging existing tools, trials and platforms in Crowdsourcing, Open Data, Fiber to the Home and Open Sensor Networks in seven major European cities: Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Bologna."

Would YC fund that? Would they get an interview?

The EU gave 3M€ for that. The outcome is three websites that nobody uses.

There are companies in the EU specialised for grant grabbing. They will get 10% of the funding if the application succeeds.

The EU funds 50% and the expected outcome is that the funded companies will create a viable product out of it. Now tell me, why do the same companies funded over and over again?

Just google for "Wetab". The same company of that miserable disaster was on plenty of EU funded projects.

> First of all my apologies for "you" I guess it should read "one" - English is not my native tongue.

Thanks. It can be used both ways but being a Dutchman I wasn't sure. Not my native tongue either :)

I understand your issues with publicly funded projects, and where there is money there will always be abuse. I've interned at a company that did research because they could get it subsidized and I know they wouldn't if they didn't get that money; it was simply too expensive (they didn't have a lot to spend). However that is also the goal of the grant/subsidy: stimulating companies to do that very research (if I remember correctly it was something about VoIP, not sure).

So yeah people make money with it, but it also helps development. I too think that €3 mil is a bit much for 70m of cyclepath, but if it's the first in the world... gotta start somewhere when you have huge R&D costs. If you read their FAQ, they are testing for a lot of things like slickness, reflection, strength, etc. I always just hope they know more about it than I do.

Friends help friends get rich and buy yachts.

This is called research and development. They're not replacing all the roads and cyclepaths with this stuff, they are testing and developing it because we will need it in the future.

Sometime the idea is just outright stupid, like flying cars.

road-worthy airplanes have their uses -- for people who have to travel to a lot of remote locations (say, if you own/maintain several radio transmitters spread throughout the rural parts of Kansas, you can cut down significantly on travel time by flying from local airfield to local airfield and then driving to the tower.) They're not a mass-market technology; they're a specialized product for people with very specific travel needs.

Solar roadways, though? I don't see any need that actually meets.

If equipping every roof in the Netherlands with solar panels would only supply 25% of demand, then (theoretically) wasting massive sums of money on very inefficient bike path panels is that much worse - such path panels won't make a dent at all.

According to the company's FAQ, there is more usable surface in roads than on roofs. Even if it's less power per square meter, it certainly makes a dent.

> The approximately 140,000 km of roads in the Netherlands cover a total area of about 400-500 km2, which is significantly larger than the total (suitable) roof surface area.

The FAQ: http://www.solaroad.nl/en/faq/

(Btw, I wasn't the one who downvoted you.)

I have yet to see a company that gets 3M€ for what could be done with 10k€ and writing a FAQ where they state they are overpaid ;)

To me this is very questionable marketing non-sense. You take the excellent bicycling culture of the Netherlands, you combine it with solar energy and the result is profit.

Just exchange Wcycling track" with "landfill" and tell everybody you'd cover them for 300 times the normal price with solar panels and you'd be kicked in the balls.

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