Lately I've been doing some maths since I've been seeing a lot more info about the solar road tiles project and their recent use on Route 66. I watched a bunch of Thunderf00t's critiques as well and it got me to thinking about the future of America's power and solar:
This is just based on the information from the solar roads people and Thunderf00t.
There are 3.9 million miles of paved roads in America. Converted to feet that's a distance of 20,592,000,000 feet.
The average American street is 18 feet across.
For surface area, that's 20.5 billion feet times 18=370.656 billion square feet of road surface in the USA.
Solar panels are 10 bucks per square foot retail (with installation) according to Google so that's an expense of 3.7 trillion dollars to solar panel the USA.
The figures that the solar road people use are EVERY bit of road in America to create TRIPLE the amount of electricity America uses. This means that to create just enough for the USA, only 1/3rd of the roads need to be solar paved and thus it cuts the cost to 1/3rd.
The new costs are 1.23 trillion dollars. Remember that's for retail pricing of the panels though, INCLUDING installation. Wholesale it's about a 3rd the price including installation.
This cuts the price to 1/3rd again and that puts America's new green figure at $411 billion, give or take.
Since a project like this can't be done all at once since it's not technically feasible due to labor shortages, manufacturing times etc, stretch it out 10 or 20 years and it becomes a $41 billion dollar a year project for 10 years or $20.5 billion for 20 years.
Both of which are pretty realistic timelines to accomplish this.
So what say you peeps? Is there enough money in the energy budget to spare 20 billion bucks a year for 20 years to turn America almost completely green? Not to mention all the other benefits that will come with that?
This makes it definitely worth it environmentally, fiscally, and morally.
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