"Every time there is a problem brought up you just heap some other advanced technology on top as"

None of this is advanced by any stretch of the imagination. That you think it is advanced only betrays your ignorance of the subject entirely.

"If I mention how much soot builds up on roads what is your solution to that?"

Wind, vehicle friction, and precipitation. The solution was already built into your problem by its very nature. Do you even engineer?

" LEDs are just not that visible in sunlight-"

Which is why I can see the LED traffic signals perfectly fine despite the sun being right in my face for my morning and afternoon drives to/from work? Which is why despite blinding glare from idiots with chrome-painted vehicles I can still see their LED headlights and brake lights in BROAD DAYLIGHT?

Sun - 93 lux/w.

LED - 200+ lux/w.

You are not paying attention, listening, or even thinking critically.

" It has a few niche applications in engineering that need tiny quantities as a corrosion-resistant coating or ultra-thin foil, but that's all. It's not even a very good electrical conductor - copper is better."

There's plenty other reasons gold gets used in place of copper or silver in electronics work. For example, you're not going to have much luck putting copper bonding wires on an LED die. Gold is almost exclusively used in this case.

Gold is also used in medicine, such as corrosion-resistant fillings for dentistry. Particles of a radioactive gold isotope are implanted in tissues to serve as a radiation source in the treatment of certain cancers. Injections of sodium aurothiomalate or aurothioglucose are sometimes used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

In aerospace, many things are covered with a gold-coated polyester film. This is to block IR. Gold is also used as a lubricant between mechanical parts. In the vacuum of space, organic lubricants would volatilize and they would be broken down by the intense radiation beyond Earth's atmosphere. Gold has a very low shear strength and thin films of gold between critical moving parts serves as a lubricant - the gold molecules slip past one another under the forces of friction and that provides a lubricant action.

Tons, tons, tons of uses for gold. It is one of the most versatile metals on the entire planet.

"So now your solution is to use a magic type of glass that you assert exists that will stand up to the wear and tear of traffic and also make it into a state of the art, finely tuned lens?"

You keep using state of the art. I don't think it means what you think it means, especially in context of date of invention of these things (some over 30 years ago.)

That magic glass? Easy. Transparent aluminum. We've been able to manufacture it in bulk for at least half a decade with ease.

"Even if you crank up the power in the LEDs to overpower the sun"

You failed to read the part where I mentioned that LEDs are far and above efficiency of the sun, didn't you? You also failed to think about the color choice of yellow-green, which our eyes are most sensitive to.

"You are trying to overpower the light-source that you are using to power your light-source. "

Given the purpose of a solar panel would be to ABSORB the light, overpowering it would not be a problem, as much light shouldn't be reflecting off for the most part.

You are certainly not paying attention to what people are writing and saying. Perhaps you should step back and, oh I dunno, actually obtain a degree in this kind of field so you might be able to understand what we're talking about?

"Let's use state of the art optics technology"

Try 35 years old, at minimum. Not even state of the art.

"Those LEDs are directly aimed at the cars so that they are visible! Directly aimed and shielded from direct sunlight! Now lay them under glass under the road- how are they going to be visible from all directions? "

Are you even aware of this thing called viewing angle? Most SMD LEDs have 160+ degrees of viewing angle, meaning you could be lying on the ground, and still see it when it illuminates.

"They won't."

I've been working on LED designs since 2008, they most certainly can.

"LEDs have to be aimed to be visible"

Not even close.

"They also don't like to get hot "

Depends on the LED type. Smaller half-watt ones won't really give two shits about typical road temps (we're talking Mojave desert, here) and they can operate at roughly three times that temperature in the junction and still be visible.

" If the light is already hitting the solar panel why would you redirect the light through more glass"

Because angle of incidence to ensure proper exposure to photons, duh. Problem with most solar panels is - wait for it - they're reflective. By using a focusing waveguide optic, you can eliminate that reflectance and guide MORE LIGHT to the panel - thus increasing the efficiency overall.

"So I looked these "Smart Crosswalks" up and as far as I can see they are shrouds that stick out of the road to direct the light toward the car"

No, the shrouds do not direct light. The LEDs are mounted facing outwards and protected with a plastic cover to keep them from getting wet - that's it. It's an IP rating thing, not a stop sunlight thing. Sunlight efficiency is ~93 lumens per watt, LEDs can hit well the fuck over that, thus they can easily be seen in daytime.

And by the same principle, a properly-angled LED inside the panel would be perfectly fucking visible in broad daylight. If they weren't, we'd not be using LEDs in DAYTIME RUNNING LIGHTS and BRAKE SIGNALS.

"Optics don't magically direct more sunlight! "

Do you know how a focusing or waveguide optic works? It would seem not.

"Are you saying your LED-lit crosswalks are inset into the ground?"

Yes. You press a button, and the crosswalk starts flashing, which tells vehicles in broad daylight to slow the fuck down. It uses a green-yellow LED (since our eyes are fairly sensitive around that range.)

http://honolulu.legalexaminer....

Now then, you were saying?

" Once the glass breaks, it's stays broken"

Modular construction. Been around for ages for PV.

"Debris will scratch the glass making it more translucent rather than transparent reducing its effectiveness"

A simple lesson from Moh's Hardness scale might change your mind on that, assuming you even know what that is. We've got transparent glass harder than anything used in nearby construction or even car construction.

"Roadways don't track the sun making solar cells much less efficient"

We've got optics that can focus from any angle, no need to track the sun.

" LEDs aren't visible in direct sunlight especially at shallow angles"

Absolutely wrong. We've got LED-lit crosswalks here in Riverside that flash very brightly, covering roughly half a sphere of incidence, and can be seen several blocks away in broad daylight. Bear in mind this is practically the southern side of the MOJAVE, not many more places get as much sun as we do.

" The glare from any reflected light will blind drivers."

As if that doesn't already happen with heat-mirrors made on the road surfaces.

" As he rightly points out, putting the solar cells NEXT TO the road works much better. There's simply no reason to put them IN THE road even if it did work. "

He's very obviously not an engineer.

"And the idea of putting it in parking lots is even dumber. Yeah, parking lots where cars are parked on it during the day"

And now you're taking his same and stupid assumption that cars would be there all the time.

Protip: Most parking lots usually run about 1/2 capacity, excepting holidays. Oh, and you forgot incidental reflection of sunlight from car bodies. There's still a MINIMUM umol of 400 even under the shadow of a vehicle in a parking lot (I've measured this with a quantum meter at high noon) which is still plenty of harvestable energy.

Quit listening to someone that doesn't even have the proper equipment to test out his nonsense, and obviously hasn't even been out in the actual field to conduct real on-site research.

Uh, yea, his assumption is that there are cars on it every single freaking moment.

Traffic doesn't work that way and any basic civil engineer can poke holes in that nonsense all day.

Uh. We built a solar walkway in my old warehouse project back in Memphis. It worked just fine. This was like 2004, a decade ago. It generated about 95kWh every hour of full sunlight in a total 7,000 square foot area using 15% efficient PV, and after conversion losses, roughly 80kWh every hour.

So what youtube nonsense are you posting about? Youtube is not a reliable scientific source.

"people who are familiar with miniaturization and physics"

Familiar but not experts.

Someone forgets about ATi, which technically makes up more of the company, now. So, no, really it's ATi, and thus Canadian.

The list of editors you want to see stories from. You should already know about this.

The smaller the lens the greater the magnification, typically.

This will also depend upon the location of the light source. Overhead? No burn, most likely. 45 or 135 degrees? It's possible, depending upon the level of photon flux being concentrated onto a small spot, assuming the water droplet is even the correct size to project a clean focused on the surface of the leaf, given distance.

This site has gone to complete shit. Timothy, you're fucking fired and off my list.

" instead of plummeting to the group of those countries that mostly serve as factories for the more advanced."

Uh, have you seen our outsourcing numbers recently?