The US Department of Transportation recently awarded a $100,000 research contract to Idaho based Solar Roadways to prototype the first ever Solar Road Panel.

The notion behind the company founded by Electrical Engineer Scott Brusaw, is to build Solar roadways all across the United States constructed from structurally-engineered solar panels, which could double as both an energy source and a roadway.

The Solar panels would be 12ft X 12ft in size and would consist of three layers sandwiched together; the road surface layer, the electronics layer and the base plate layer. Each 12 x 12 panel would be embedded with dozens of LED lighting elements that would electronically 'bring the road alive' by painting the road lines from below and displaying large messages on the roadway itself, to warn drivers of any upcoming road conditions or potential hazards. The panels would further be embedded with heating elements to prevent surface snow and ice from building up during winter months.

The Panels would then be joined together forming large arrays, which would then be used to replace the asphalt road surfaces all across the country to form the new Solar Roadways. The replacement would serve two ends at one cost; it would replace the crumbling infrastructure of America with a new intelligent road surface and it would form a new gargantuan emissions free decentralized energy producing grid used to power homes and businesses. A third potenially tremendous benefit of the Solar roadway, is that would allow for electric vehicles to be recharged anywhere: rest stops, parking lots etc.

Using a conservative 15% efficiency rating, Engineers at Solar Roadway estimate that if we replaced most of America's 25,000 miles of roads with their 12 X 12 Solar panel concept, the energy produced from 48 contiguous states alone, would effectively be enough to power not just the entire United States but the entire world; What a mind boggling concept.

We look forward to seeing the prototype in the near future.