Use of Asphalt Paved Surfaces For Solar Heat 110
vg30e writes "It seems that a company in the Netherlands has found a way to use asphalt paved surfaces as solar heat collectors. Flexible tubes under the surface of the road collect heat from asphalt pavement using water as the working liquid. The heated water is stored underground for later use in defrosting the road, or heating buildings. With all the miles of highway in the continental US, this might be a viable way of collecting massive amounts of thermal energy."
Old idea from Universty of Chicago (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing new... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I thought of this before you... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Seasonal energy storage (Score:2, Informative)
Which is why you use the ground [wikipedia.org] instead. It spends all winter getting cool and remains cooler than the air in summer; it spends all summer getting warm and remains warmer than the air in winter.
Re:Seasonal energy storage (Score:1, Informative)
The idea of storing ice is that you have to pump much less water. You could do the thing in the other direction if you used a material with a phase change somewhere near eighty degrees
If you have a source of ground water, you don't even need a heat pump to air condition. Lacking that, you need a bunch of piping. In that case the idea of storing ice makes economic sense.