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THE Solar Road Thread (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 05 Sep 2009, 06:26:16

fletch_961 wrote:
With the current costs of HMA per lane mile of ~$3000 are only a few precent of costs (~48 tons of HMA per lane mile, at $60/ton)

Let me help you w/ the math:
One foot thick asphalt road, 5280 ft per mile, 12 ft wide = 63,360 cu ft
~100pounds per cubic ft = 6,336,000 pounds
2000 pounds per ton = 3,168 tons
$60/ton = $190,080.
Now what is the price of this yet to be invented glass per ton delivered? ....

fletch_961
Not to nit pick.... But ....HMA is about 145 lbs./cubic foot. And new construction is normaly four to eight inches thick. Maintenance overlays build up the thickness later. Complete in place it's going for around $90/ton on large jobs this year. I don't know if we will ever see much at $60/ again. 8) Carry on.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby fletch_961 » Sat 05 Sep 2009, 17:01:16

Complete in place it's going for around $90/ton on large jobs this year.

I wasn't trying to get the in place price. Only the material costs.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 06 Sep 2009, 07:17:03

fletch_961 wrote:
Complete in place it's going for around $90/ton on large jobs this year.

I wasn't trying to get the in place price. Only the material costs.

Well then use $40 or $50 per ton as round number estimates.
The stuff is time sensitve in that you have to have a place to put it as soon as you make it. It can only be stored in insulated silos for about a day. It's not cost effective to haul it more then fifty miles or so and you need dry weather to pave. A typical crew set up would include thirty people, fifteen trucks, one or two pavers, three rollers ,a loader and a bobcat.and half a dozen pick up trucks for foremen, inspectors, and lab techs. If you have to sit and wait for any reason it is costing about $600 an hour while you wait for traffic to clear or what ever.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby fletch_961 » Sun 06 Sep 2009, 13:09:26

The stuff is time sensitive in that you have to have a place to put it as soon as you make it. It can only be stored in insulated silos for about a day. It's not cost effective to haul it more then fifty miles or so and you need dry weather to pave.

I worked w/ the stuff for one summer, hence the reason why I find it ridiculous to try and do the same thing w/ molten glass.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby yesplease » Mon 07 Sep 2009, 06:00:33

fletch_961 wrote:Let me help you w/ the math:
One foot thick asphalt road, 5280 ft per mile, 12 ft wide = 63,360 cu ft
~100pounds per cubic ft = 6,336,000 pounds
2000 pounds per ton = 3,168 tons
$60/ton = $190,080.
Let me help you help me (The result I used was in ton per lanemile per year, but I didn't notice the year part, doh!) with the math. Asphalt tends to be ~150pcf. We've already pointed out that using the construction/reconstruction costs for brand new roads isn't accurate when looking at road costs as a whole, and I've never heard of putting down a solid foot of HMA even on a new road. Most overlays tends to be ~1.5-3" thick, maybe up to 4", depending on the road and type of asphalt used. RAC for instance tends to be thinner all things being equal. 2" of RAC can replace 4" of conventional asphalt. Anyhoo, odds are, for most work (~2" of HMA), the math goes like...
1/6th of a foot deep, 5280ft long, and 12 ft wide = 10560 ft^3/lanemile
(10560ft^3/lanemile)*(~150lbs/ft^3) =~1584000lbs/lanemile
(~1584000lbs/lanemile)/(2000lbs/ton) = ~792 tons/lanemile
($60/ton)*(~792 tons/lanemile) = ~$47520/lanemile
fletch_961 wrote:Now what is the price of this yet to be invented glass per ton delivered? Add what $50 per ton to that just to heat it. How thick will it have to be?
Whatever it ends up at, hopefully it'll be cheaper than asphalt roads where the HMA thickness is measured in feet! ;)
fletch_961 wrote:Really?
Show me the math. What does an asphalt paving crew cost per mile? What does a glass paving crew cost per mile (hypothetically speaking, of course)? Links to the cost of the guys who drive around and patch potholes all day is not exactly a fair gauge of labor costs per square foot, wouldn't you agree?
From the above link, resurfacing is ~$1.50-2/ft^2. A lane mile has 5280ft*12ft=63360ft^2/lanemile, so asphalt at $47520/lanemile is
($47520/lanemile)/(63360ft^2/lanemile) = $.75/ft^2. There isn't much besides asphalt used for materials, so all we have left are labor/machinery at $.75-1+/ft^2. The hot-in-place project I linked to earlier saved about $38000 via less new HMA, and up to $38000 via reduced labor/machinery costs. Assuming the materials/application work out (<-Disclaimer), do you think it's going to take more money with fewer machines/labor or less money w/ fewer machines/labor? $600/hour isn't exactly cheap, even when a crew isn't sitting idle.
fletch_961 wrote:Really? I ask where you are going to find the guys to work in high temperature conditions and all you can show me is a puny little blow-torch that puts off a measly 1MMbtu/hour?
Do I really need to explain the difference between temperature and energy? You could compare it to something at 100MMbtu/hour, but if the temperature of that substance is only 200F, then it's still not going to be high temperature. Something that can heat asphalt to 1000+F is quite hot.
fletch_961 wrote:I've already posted a link for you that shows that it takes up to 7.5x that just to heat one ton of glass (in a controlled facility-designed to minimize input) and you want to lay thousands of tons per mile? I would be worried about trees catching fire, wouldn't you. Imagine molten glass cooling right next a forest.
First, wood is dried as water is vaporized at a temperature of 100 °C (212 °F). Next, the pyrolysis of wood at 230 °C (450 °F) releases flammable gases. Finally, wood can smolder at 380 °C (720 °F) or, when heated sufficiently, ignite at 590 °C (1,100 °F).
First off, lava doesn't even ignite trees and we're looking at way more energy, probably with a higher temperature, rolling right on the poor things. Don't get me wrong, I don't think pouring molten glass, or even hot asphalt, on trees or brush of any sort is a good idea, but you should look to similar phenomenon before jumping to any conclusions.
Adventurers poking around the Big Island will find the spirit of trees past in the form of lava trees and tree molds. These volcanic features are created when fluid lava surrounds a tree and a coating of solid lava forms around the trunk. It might seem that 2,000°F lava would cause a tree to burst into flame and burn away. But when hot lava touches the moist, cool tree, the layer of lava next to the trunk chills and solidifies, insulating the tree from the heat of the oncoming flow. Eventually, the tree does burn to ash or, if the temperature and airflow are right, "bakes" into charcoal. But if the lava flow that encased the tree drains away through a nearby crack or to a lower area, a pillar of lava, or lava tree, remains, rising above the ground's surface where the tree once stood.


If you really want to figure out how much the glass would raise the temperature of the surrounding air, just take the energy needed to heat however much asphalt is needed for a 12x12x2 patch of road, multiply that by ~5-10, depending on what the specific heat/temperature of the glass is, to get the rough amount of energy used to heat whatever glass, then determine how much that energy would heat up the air in a half-sphere with a 10ft radius, keeping in mind the proportion of heat transmitted between the Earth/base (thermal conductivity of 1.5W/mK or similar) and the air (thermal conductivity of .024W/mK), and then calculate how much that half-sphere of air at whatever temperature would heat up stuff in it given the specific heat of the stuff, assuming we can somehow instantaneously dump out all the heat from the glass into the air/ground, then keep the air in a half-sphere.
fletch_961 wrote:I worked w/ the stuff for one summer, hence the reason why I find it ridiculou to try and do the same thing w/ molten glass.
What kinda base did you lay a foot of HMA on? For that matter, why would you even work with it in the same way? It's not like you'll have a lute person out behind the glass. If the application by machine doesn't cut it then the idea won't fly and that's that. if it (application/materials) managed to pan out (hint- It needs lower labor/machine costs to offset the (likely) higher materials costs, except if they can get away with using a lot less material ala RAC), then the application process would be very different.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Mon 07 Sep 2009, 06:23:20

yesplease wrote:[.html]past in the form of lava trees and tree molds. These volcanic features are created when fluid lava surrounds a tree and a coating of solid lava forms around the trunk. It might seem that 2,000°F lava would cause a tree to burst into flame and burn away. But when hot lava touches the moist, cool tree, the layer of lava next to the trunk chills and solidifies, insulating the tree from the heat of the oncoming flow. Eventually, the tree does burn to ash or, if the temperature and airflow are right, "bakes" into charcoal. But if the lava flow that encased the tree drains away through a nearby crack or to a lower area, a pillar of lava, or lava tree, remains, rising above the ground's surface where the tree once stood.


.[/quote]
So we will have pillars of glass where the workers once stood?
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby fletch_961 » Mon 07 Sep 2009, 16:59:38

First off, lava doesn't even ignite trees and we're looking at way more energy, probably with a higher temperature, rolling right on the poor things. Don't get me wrong, I don't think pouring molten glass, or even hot asphalt, on trees or brush of any sort is a good idea, but you should look to similar phenomenon before jumping to any conclusions.

"There are few things not made of rock that can resist the progress of flowing lava; trees, houses, everything yields to its massive assault. Trees take fire from the heat of its approach, and when the lava reaches them they emit a hissing noise, almost amounting to a shriek. The trees then plunge into the molten flood and are seen no more. Even the sea cannot stop the lava-stream, but retires on its approach; promontories stretching a considerable distance from the shore are formed in this manner as the molten lava hardens into stone."
I don't believe you
Let me help you help me (The result I used was in ton per lanemile per year, but I didn't notice the year part, doh!) with the math. Asphalt tends to be ~150pcf. We've already pointed out that using the construction/reconstruction costs for brand new roads isn't accurate when looking at road costs as a whole, and I've never heard of putting down a solid foot of HMA even on a new road. Most overlays tends to be ~1.5-3" thick, maybe up to 4", depending on the road and type of asphalt used. RAC for instance tends to be thinner all things being equal. 2" of RAC can replace 4" of conventional asphalt. Anyhoo, odds are, for most work (~2" of HMA), the math goes like...
1/6th of a foot deep, 5280ft long, and 12 ft wide = 10560 ft^3/lanemile
(10560ft^3/lanemile)*(~150lbs/ft^3) =~1584000lbs/lanemile
(~1584000lbs/lanemile)/(2000lbs/ton) = ~792 tons/lanemile
($60/ton)*(~792 tons/lanemile) = ~$47520/lanemile

Who is the "we" that has pointed this out?
Even if we use only 8" (unless you are suggesting doing this on residential streets w/ little children running around then we can use 4"), the ton figure comes out to 3,168. Decrease volume by 33%, increase density by 50% = same result. In order to repave something, it has to have been paved one already. Now, how much of your hypothetical glass are we going to need to pave 1 lane mile? Let me know when they get the price of this frit below $1000 per ton delivered.
If you really want to figure out how much the glass would raise the temperature of the surrounding air, just take the energy needed to heat however much asphalt is needed for a 12x12x2 patch of road,

What? Are planning on only doing a 12x12 area a day? Where are those great labor savings doing it that way?

As an aside, why don't you look into what it takes to make glass in a controlled environment and then tell me if you think that could be done on site. I'll give you a hint-it includes clay brick lined furnaces operating at 2700F, the output being poured onto molten tin, it is carefully brought down in temp, and lets not forget the vapors given off as the material is brought up to temp that have to be captured. Got a machine that can do that?
What kinda base did you lay a foot of HMA on?

None, but that is because I worked on crew that put in driveways.
Maybe this will help you out
$600/hour isn't exactly cheap, even when a crew isn't sitting idle.

Considering you said that labor costs were considerably higher than material costs and that is where most your supposed cost saving were going to come from, I would say it is cheap compared to the cost of your glass.
Most of the cost savings in terms of paving, provided the materials/application are worked out in a cost effective way, is from a reduction in labor costs, which are significantly greater than the materials costs.

In case you forgot what you typed. You still have not told me where any of these labor reductions are going to come from.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby yesplease » Mon 07 Sep 2009, 23:27:20

vtsnowedin wrote:So we will have pillars of glass where the workers once stood?
Do you know any workers dumb enough to stand in molten glass?
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 08 Sep 2009, 05:56:33

pstarr wrote:Someone bring me up to date on this crap.

Do we have yesplease suggesting that, somehow, molten glass can be formed on site, and, somehow, poured onto a road surface thus forming PV panels.

Is he serious?


Hard to say. He also claims that it will be more cost effective then conventional paving but mostly this is a contest to see how absurd a thread can be and still get a response. Must be a slow week down at the lab. :razz:
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby yesplease » Tue 08 Sep 2009, 20:05:19

pstarr wrote:Someone bring me up to date on this crap.

Do we have yesplease suggesting that, somehow, molten glass can be formed on site, and, somehow, poured onto a road surface thus forming PV panels.

vtsowedin wrote:Hard to say. He also claims that it will be more cost effective then conventional paving but mostly this is a contest to see how absurd a thread can be and still get a response.

Where did I post this stuff you crazy (possibly murderous) guys you?
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 08 Sep 2009, 20:41:27

[quote="yesplease"]They should make about half a million per mile per year in electricity so that helps defray costs. I'm pretty sure that most road paving costs in 2006 don't have land acquisition costs, or grading and surveying costs comparable to new road construction. Hauling the panels should be a pretty insignificant cost, but I found this indicating that the total cost should actually be about $16 million, since we'll need to pave with glass in a way similar to paving with asphalt (Which btw has several patents related to the same microwave idea).

In terms of the total cost, the group that proposed the plan wants to incorporate power generation, transmission, and data all in one road that will (supposedly) last three times longer than a typical road. This avoids right of way problems with new transmission, but I can't really say whether or not it'll be cost effective, since it depends on developing equipment capable of heating and forming the glass over the panels. If they can pull it off, it'll be much easier to repair roads, since we can just do another run w/ the equipment as opposed to pulling up all the old stuff and taking it back to be processed, which was the motivation for similar patents regarding asphalt paving.

I don't think large trucks in particular represent a large impediment. It really on whether or not they can pull off the application, and if so, what the savings from integrating services, along w/ lower maintenance costs, will be compared to asphalt or concrete based roads at the time.[/quote]
Thats where.
Murderous? Me ? Well if your standing between me : and a beautiful woman with a come and get it smile, or a hot meal, or a case of cold beer then you might have a problem but I can't imagine it not being easier to just go around you. :twisted:
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby yesplease » Tue 08 Sep 2009, 22:50:29

vtsnowedin wrote:
yesplease wrote:They should make about half a million per mile per year in electricity so that helps defray costs. I'm pretty sure that most road paving costs in 2006 don't have land acquisition costs, or grading and surveying costs comparable to new road construction. Hauling the panels should be a pretty insignificant cost, but I found this indicating that the total cost should actually be about $16 million, since we'll need to pave with glass in a way similar to paving with asphalt (Which btw has several patents related to the same microwave idea).

In terms of the total cost, the group that proposed the plan wants to incorporate power generation, transmission, and data all in one road that will (supposedly) last three times longer than a typical road. This avoids right of way problems with new transmission, but I can't really say whether or not it'll be cost effective, since it depends on developing equipment capable of heating and forming the glass over the panels. If they can pull it off, it'll be much easier to repair roads, since we can just do another run w/ the equipment as opposed to pulling up all the old stuff and taking it back to be processed, which was the motivation for similar patents regarding asphalt paving.

I don't think large trucks in particular represent a large impediment. It really on whether or not they can pull off the application, and if so, what the savings from integrating services, along w/ lower maintenance costs, will be compared to asphalt or concrete based roads at the time.
Thats where.
How do you read something stating it may be cost effective at some point in the indefinite future if the application (and materials) can be pulled off as something stating it will be cost effective in the future? Do you understand the difference between a statement that something is certain, and a statement that something may be possible?
vtsnowedin wrote:Murderous? Me ? Well if your standing between me : and a beautiful woman with a come and get it smile, or a hot meal, or a case of cold beer then you might have a problem but I can't imagine it not being easier to just go around you. :twisted:
Nah, that possible label is reserved for psdiddy and his crazy, possibly (hopefully not) murderous approach to other forum members.
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If you can't respond constructively, and discuss this in a mature manner than I will be forced to send you to your room without computer privileges. And without dinner. And then I will lock the door and gas you inside with Zyklon-B cyanide gas. Okay?
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby Gerben » Thu 24 Sep 2009, 04:38:08

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to try this out on bicycle roads? Bicycle roads have much lower requirements.
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Re: Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

Unread postby yesplease » Thu 24 Sep 2009, 14:46:34

Probably. I imagine that foot/bike paths in temperate climates would make for a good proof of concept.
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Solar Roadways: Crackpot Idea or Ingenious Concept? (video)

Unread postby Carlhole » Sun 08 Aug 2010, 17:59:52

SH
Scott and Julie Brusaw have a way of solving the energy crisis, it just involves you driving on glass. The Brusaws are the founders of Solar Roadways, an Idaho based startup looking to reinvent the US highway system by replacing asphalt roads with solar cells. Using photo-voltaic technology available today, Scott Brusaw calculates that a single mile of highway, if converted to solar cells, would provide enough power to run 428 homes in the US. And that’s on just four hours of sunlight a day. Solar Roadways has garnered the attention of think tanks, documentary film makers, and politicians. They even took home a grant from the Department of Transportation and created a prototype panel (12′ x 12′) that also functions as an intelligent roadway with sensors and dynamic lighting. The Solar Roadways project is remarkable for its vision, but there are many questions about costs, administration, and driving on glass surfaces that have yet to be answered. Check out videos of the prototype panel below and judge for yourself about whether solar panel roads are the ticket to living on easy street, or a just another highway to hell.


Scott Brusaw has a whole section on their website dealing with those numbers. If you’re interested in this project I greatly urge you to read that webpage (along with the FAQ) because it covers the idea in a detail I don’t have time for here. Instead, I have to summarize:

Commercial solar panels are available at 18.5% efficiency, if we replaced all the highways in the lower 48 states with solar panels of the same surface area then we’d get about 14 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. That’s roughly three times what the US uses each year, and about equal to what the world consumes each year. The cost? Brusaw is aiming for each road 12′ by 12′ panel to cost around $10,000 and for the average lifespan of the panel to be about 20 years. There is roughly 29,000 square miles (~800 billion square feet) of road surface to cover. We need roughly 5.6 billion panels to cover that area. That’s a price tag of $56 trillion! Brusaw points out, however, that at current retail electricity prices the road would pay for itself in about 22 years. Quicker if we used panels with greater efficiency.


This will probably be another idea that the Chinese will adopt and develop.
Last edited by Ferretlover on Tue 27 Dec 2011, 21:29:57, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Merged thread.
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Re: Solar Roadways: Crackpot Idea or Ingenious Concept? (vid

Unread postby eXpat » Sun 08 Aug 2010, 18:42:39

I’m also concerned with how much this project depends on the undeveloped technology of the glass surface. We haven’t seen a single panel of this magic substance which will be able to handle all the requirements that Brusaw has laid out for it. Nor have we really seen any numbers on what that substance will actually cost. And how will it stay clean? The Solar Roadways FAQ proposes that the roadway could use self-cleaning glass, or that we could simply clean it with a street sweeper. I sense some more hand-waving here.

But maybe we’ll have clearer answers to these concerns in the years ahead. Solar Roadways seems bent on raising funds and developing future prototypes. You can vote for their concept in the GE Ecomagination competition where $200 million in funding (in total) is at stake, and you can personally donate to the cause through their website. Hopefully additional funds would allow Solar Roadways to build a prototype that actually generates usable amounts of electricity and stores it for later use.

Until they do produce such a prototype, I’m not sure I’ll believe in the Solar Roadways concept.

http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/08/solar-roadways-crackpot-idea-or-ingenious-concept-video/
And this comment comes from a writer at Singularity Hub!!! :shock: Not even they believe in the factibility of this. :lol:
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Re: Solar Roadways: Crackpot Idea or Ingenious Concept? (vid

Unread postby Carlhole » Sun 08 Aug 2010, 18:51:03

eXpat wrote:
I’m also concerned with how much this project depends on the undeveloped technology of the glass surface. We haven’t seen a single panel of this magic substance which will be able to handle all the requirements that Brusaw has laid out for it. Nor have we really seen any numbers on what that substance will actually cost. And how will it stay clean? The Solar Roadways FAQ proposes that the roadway could use self-cleaning glass, or that we could simply clean it with a street sweeper. I sense some more hand-waving here.

But maybe we’ll have clearer answers to these concerns in the years ahead. Solar Roadways seems bent on raising funds and developing future prototypes. You can vote for their concept in the GE Ecomagination competition where $200 million in funding (in total) is at stake, and you can personally donate to the cause through their website. Hopefully additional funds would allow Solar Roadways to build a prototype that actually generates usable amounts of electricity and stores it for later use.

Until they do produce such a prototype, I’m not sure I’ll believe in the Solar Roadways concept.

http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/08/solar-roadways-crackpot-idea-or-ingenious-concept-video/
And this comment comes from a writer at Singularity Hub!!! :shock: Not even they believe in the factibility of this. :lol:


This is the doomer stock reponse to any new science or new idea: if it isn't available right now and Wal-Mart, then it isn't technically feasible. What stulted intelligence! I mean, that's really stupid logic.

Obviously, in science some ideas can be made workable and others will be proven infeasible. You can't know the outcome ahead of time. You have to experiment, fail, re-try, develop, improve, etc. - or drop the idea altogether. After all, there are millions of ideas worth pursuing,
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Re: Solar Roadways: Crackpot Idea or Ingenious Concept? (vid

Unread postby eXpat » Sun 08 Aug 2010, 19:41:09

Those roads are going to be real funny when it rains or drizzle!, then again, it may help with the overpopulation problem. 8)
I thought that as the singularity approaches, we would have flying cars!, why bother with roads then? :|
(Hint to Carlhole : YES! is sarcasm again :razz: )
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Re: Solar Roadways: Crackpot Idea or Ingenious Concept? (vid

Unread postby Carlhole » Sun 08 Aug 2010, 22:45:22

eXpat wrote:YES! is sarcasm again :razz: )


...and it's old dude, predictable and not worth anything.
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