Nation of Earth

From the newsletter:

Hi Folks,

Great news: we’ve been awarded an SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation! God has been very generous and we couldn’t feel more honored or be more excited!

The Dover Bridge (near our home) was listed as number 7 on Popular Mechanics magazine's 10 pieces of infrastructure most needing immediate repair. It has been a part of our PowerPoint presentation for the past couple of years. President Obama’s stimulus package gave Idaho’s Governor Otter enough money to finally repair (actually replace) the 1937 Dover Bridge. During the groundbreaking ceremony, our Bonner County Economic Development Corporation’s Executive Director, Karl Dye, gave a wonderful speech about our Solar Roadways project getting the DOT grant in front of the governor, several local politicians, newspapers, and TV stations.

Our phone started ringing off the hook. Our local newspaper ran another story on us and KREM2 out of Spokane came out and interviewed Scott at the lab. It aired on TV that very night. You can see the broadcast at: http://www.krem.com/news/local/stories/krem2-073009-solarroads.91bb7c1a.html

The City of Tacoma, WA invited us out to do our presentation. We weren’t even sure what they had in mind, but we decided to go anyway. We met with some of the city managers for the first presentation. They made it very clear that they wanted us to set up headquarters and our first manufacturing plants in Tacoma. There is a $400M DOE competitive grant somewhere out there for cities to apply for. The City of Tacoma wants to apply for it with the Solar Roadways project. We’ve also been in talks with the cities of Sandpoint (ID) and Ponderay (ID) and the City of Merridian (ID) wants to talk also.

Scott’s in the process of setting up parts orders and getting the circuitry designed. And we are making decisions about which subcontractors to use. So many people to contact and so little time… Fortunately, this is exactly what we’ve been praying for!

We want to thank everyone who has prayed for our project, encouraged us or offered help. It really does make a difference, knowing there are so many who share our vision for putting America back to work while powering the nation and lighting the roads!

Scott & Julie Brusaw

Scott and I have decided to conduct the interview via e-mail.  I'll piece it together and post it when it seems to be done.  Meanwhile, feel free to ask your own questions here (I'll forward them)...

The first question has been rephrased, but is essentially the same:

• How did the idea for Solar Roadways first come to you?

Actually, it was my wife's idea. Julie and I have known each other since we were three and four respectively. Her mother used to babysit my brother and I while my parents worked. We attended preschool together along with Sunday School and we were even in the same first grade class.

I was an artist is those early days and loved to draw cars. I had a slot car track and thought that it would be cool (probably "neat-o" back then) to have electric slots in the real roads so that kids could drive too. It was my earliest vision of an electric road. I still have a drawing of an electric road from my childhood.

When we started hearing new phrases on the news such as "global warming" and "climate change", I kind of ignored it. After all, I wasn't a climatologist, so what could I do? The gloomy reports continued to come in. Al Gore was sounding the alarm, but I wasn't sure how to take his predictions. Being an engineer, I kept wondering, "Why doesn't someone just fix this mess?"

Julie and I decided to educate ourselves on global warming. Turns out it wasn't just a bunch of alarmists in panic mode: we are facing a very real, very large problem. Julie asked me one day if I could build my electric road out of solar panels. At first I laughed and told her that you'd crush solar panels if you tried to drive on them.

We continued to bat the idea back and forth until we came up with the idea of protecting the delicate solar cells in a structurally engineered case that could withstand the static and dynamic forces of an 80,000 pound semi locking up its brakes at 80mph. Hence the Solar Road Panel was born: the key building block of the Solar Roadways.

• Where are we likely to see the first application of Solar Road Panels?

For Phase I of our contract with the DOT we're building our first prototype to prove feasibility. If we receive the Phase II award, then we'll have two years to prepare for commercialization. At the end of the two years, we should be ready to go into parking lots: slow-moving, light-weight vehicles. This is where we'll work the bugs out and perfect our product before moving out onto the nation's highways.

The biggest drawback to owning an all-electric vehicle is that you can't take it very far from home, where you typically recharge it. Let me share some optimism with you. Say we contract with one of the major fast food chains that you find all along the highways. If they "pave" their parking lot with Solar Road Panels, then customers would be able to recharge their electric vehicles in the parking lot. If this were done on a national scale, you could then drive your all-electric vehicle form coast to coast, recharging at the restaurant when needed.

This particular restaurant either goes completely off-grid or at least puts a big dent in its electric bill (depending on how many cars are "using up the juice"). In addition, they get the PR of going green and they draw business away from their competitors. People who drive electric vehicles and people who are environmentally conscious will be more likely to frequent this restaurant. Since the other fast food competitors are losing business to their green counterpart, they too may see the wisdom of installing Solar Road Panels in their parking lots.

So now we have restaurants/businesses turning to solar power. We can anticipate a spike in the sales of all-electric vehicles, now that they've become more practical. What happens when businesses switch from coal to solar power and car owners switch from internal combustion to electric motors (charged by solar)? Our carbon footprint and dependency on oil begins to decline dramatically.

The answer (albeit a long one) to your question is it that the first application you'll see will be in parking lots. The very first parking lot will be our electronics lab here in northern Idaho. We're about an hour from the Canadian border and we get a lot of snow (130" two years ago!) so it will be a good first test of the snow/ice melting capability.

Just for the record, we haven't approached any of the fast food chains yet.