In this post I am going to talk about a very heavily debated topic, solar roadways. Solar roadways were first invented by 
Scott and Julie Brusaw in their garage at home, and in 2009 the Department of Transportation gave them a 100,000 dollar grant, this grant was given in order to gather information from engineering experts from many fields, and for those experts to develop a paper on the concept itself. However Scott being an electrical engineer, said that he did not need 100,000 dollars to ask people to write a paper, so he asked the DOT if he could just build a prototype. With that the first solar roadway panel was created (Lacey).
After this first prototype was created the Brusaw’s got more funding in order to help build the product. Since then they have put solar roadway panels on their drive way and have done many test in order to prove their product in strength, durability and many other situations. While solar roadways are not yet open for public use, the panels that the Brusaw’s driveway have shown promise in their ability to achieve the goals that the couple set out to accomplish when they first created the idea.
Many years ago when global warming became a very popular subject to talk about, the Brusaw’s came up with 
the idea of trying to replace asphalt and concrete surfaces with solar panels that could be driven and walked on. These solar roads that they were thinking of could pay for themselves with the amount of energy that they created. After the original idea came to them, they kept adding on to it with ideas like what if they had LED lights on them in order to be able to light the ways on the roads during the day and the night, and other ideas like putting a heating element in them in order to prevent snow and ice accumulation in northern areas. Ideas like this and many more are just part of the original plan that the Brusaw’s had. Now the panels on the driveway are able to create energy, light up, take pressure and even melt the snow when it falls.
While there are working prototypes there are still many people who do not believe that solar roadways are a possibility. Eric Weaver a research engineer at the FHA said “I’d say it’s not very realistic to cover the entire highway systems with these panels.” (Lacey) however he quickly followed up that line with saying “if you don’t reach for new something, you’ll never get there. Just the effort of doing something new creates byproducts.”(Lacey). To this day the Brusaws are still trying to make the next best energy source for the whole world to use.
If you want to learn more about solar roadways here is a video of the TED talk that Scott gave about solar roadways.
Works Cited:
Lacey, Stephen. “Would Solar Roadways Work? A Government Engineer Discusses the Controversial Technology.” Greentechmedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
“Introduction.” Solar Roadways. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
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