Politically Correct

You would think that an innovation that would want to help both the environment and the user would be an idea that would sell right off the shelves. But Scott Brusaw, the owner and co-creator of Solar Roadways, is having a very difficult time getting his idea off the ground. All over you can read articles that question and doubt the effectiveness these solar panels would have on our society. Stephen Lacey, a writer for the Greentech Solar website, wrote an article about Brusaw's idea titled 'Would Solar Roadways Work? A Government Engineer Discusses the Controversial Technology.' In this article, Lacey first starts off with the grants that Solar Roadways received. They first got a a $100,000 grant from the Department of Transportation in 2009, but that was just for research. Brusaw then asked if instead they could build a prototype of his idea with the money, which of course came back with positive confirmation (Lacey, 2014). 

With an award from GE that granted them another $50,000 in 2010 the company would soon be on its way to being able to produce more advanced prototypes for them to be able to put on showcases and develop their ideas into reality. But more of these nay saying articles came out. Lacey continues to say how Eric Weaver, an engineer at the Federal Highway Administration's research team, thinks the idea is "not very realistic to cover the entire highway system with these panels (Lacey, 2014)." I completely agree, but what I want people to take away from a man trying new ideas is what Weaver later said which is, "If you don't reach for something, you'll never get there. Just the effort of doing something new creates byproducts." If the big companies keep putting down big ideas are probably not fully developed yet, then we would never have come up with some of the products we use today. For instance, when Alexander Graham Bell was in the process of creating the telephone, he had many investors but not that many people and scientist supported his idea because they thought it was impractical. Well wouldn't  you know it, we all now have wireless cellphones that evolved from Bell's original idea. He never gave up and then created one of the greatest innovations of the 19 century (Lacey, 2014). 

Many engineers start out with a small idea that they then get to build and add on to. The final product will never be what they prototype was simply because you can always make something better. I believe that the politics in the engineering world by the use of these articles are holding back a lot of people from believing in what these solar roadways can really do. If we all want to help better our environment and better ourselves, then we need to take chances in some cases. These panels could be the way of the future, but there hasn't been enough time, money, or effort put into it yet to be able to be implemented all over the country. That's why I believe big time companies, businesses, and college institutions should help in the research and funding, because who knows what could happen if we all work together.

Resources:

Would Solar Roadways Work? A Government Engineer Discusses the Controversial Technology:
Greentech Media. (2014, August 29). Retrieved November 26, 2014, from http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Department-of-Transportation-Official-Discusses-Solar-Roadways