GLASS HIGHWAY:

Driving on Glass? Inventor Hopes to Lay Down Solar Roads: U.S. roads paved with glass panels encasing photovoltaics and LEDs would double as national grid (David Biello, 10/06/09, Scientific American)

A truck tire supporting a 36,300-kilogram load repeatedly traverses an 18-meter stretch of road, day in and day out, rolling up 483,000 kilometers on the odometer at the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DoT) testing facility in Virginia. The goal is to thoroughly challenge any new paving techniques and see how the road surface holds up. Now imagine putting a solar panel under there.

That's exactly what Scott Brusaw of Sagle, Idaho–based Solar Roadways hopes to do next February. The electrical engineer is currently at work building a prototype of his so-called "Solar Road Panel" with the help of a $100,000 small business grant from the DoT.

"We're building solar panels that you can drive on," Brusaw says. "The fact that it's generating power means it pays for itself over time, as opposed to asphalt."