Going green is one of the ways that can go about to help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but it is a seemingly slow effort. We have seen attempts to make going green more widespread, like glow in the dark highways that can help reduce the need for street lights, but what about installing solar panels into the road itself?
The project is called Solar Roadways and was actually concocted back in 2010 by a husband-and-wife team, Scott and Julie Brusaw, but four years later, it looks like their somewhat outlandish plan back then is starting to become a reality. The couple has since managed to raise more than $1 million via its Indiegogo campaign and has even received two phases of funding from the US Federal Highway Administration.
Before you get too excited, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. According to the Solar Roadways team, the next step is to build a prototype parking lot to test it out on a larger scale. Before that, prototyping was limited to driveways, which we guess proved to be pretty successful as well. Now for those who are hearing about the Solar Roadways for the first time, it’s basically a network of solar panels that are built into roads.
This allows for the system to collect energy from the sun in the day, and use it to power lights on the highways and whatnot. It also serves to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels by replacing asphalt with the Solar Roadways, which are apparently sturdy enough to withstand as much as 250,000 pounds. It’s an interesting idea and sounds extremely promising, so if you’d like to learn more, check out the video above, or hit up its Indiegogo page for the details.
There is still about 6 more days left in the project, so if you’d like to contribute to help take things further, you can still do so.
Filed in . Read more about Crowdfunding, Indiegogo and Solar.