Friday, July 31, 2009
Tom Swift and his Electric Road
An Idaho inventor has a federal grant to develop ... are you ready? ELECTRIC ROADS. He proposes to turn all the roads in America into drivable solar panels, tied together into a grid. This is unspeakably silly. You can immediately list dozens of intractable problems with the idea.
Needless to say, we don't need any new energy inventions, silly or serious. We just need to build 100 more nuclear plants. That's all.
I suspect the Feds are supporting this idea mainly to see if it leads to a spin-off. DOE isn't dumb enough to believe the Electric Road could be practical. If this yields a more durable solar panel design, or an advance in manufacturing photovoltaic cells, then it would be worth the money.
= = = = =
Polistra decided to stroll down Electric Street to visit a neighbor.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! This is a criminal invention", she charged painfully.
¶ 7:28 AM
Needless to say, we don't need any new energy inventions, silly or serious. We just need to build 100 more nuclear plants. That's all.
I suspect the Feds are supporting this idea mainly to see if it leads to a spin-off. DOE isn't dumb enough to believe the Electric Road could be practical. If this yields a more durable solar panel design, or an advance in manufacturing photovoltaic cells, then it would be worth the money.
= = = = =
Polistra decided to stroll down Electric Street to visit a neighbor.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! This is a criminal invention", she charged painfully.
¶ 7:28 AM
