Solar Roadways Wins $50,000 Prize For The Most Popular Votes In GE'S Ecomagination Challenge

10/12/2010
From the GE Ecomagination Blog (http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ct/ct_blog_list.bix?c=ideas):
“The Challenge community has spoken, and today we’re excited to announce that Sagle, Idaho-based Solar Roadways received the highest number of Challenge community votes and will receive the $50,000 award.”

The GE Ecomagination Challenge is a $200 million innovation experiment where businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students share their best ideas on how to build the next-generation power grid – and just might get funded. GE has teamed up with some of the best-known venture capital firms, including Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, KPCB and Rockport Capital, to help back the most promising ideas.

In November, GE will announce the winners of five additional prizes of $100,000 each, along with the ideas/projects that they plan to fund with up to $200 million. Solar Roadways remains eligible for both.

“This is wonderful – this is like the "People's Choice" award and we’re honored that so many people from all over the world took the time to vote for us. This will give us the funding needed to continue bringing together a team of the best and brightest engineers, scientists, companies, and universities on board for the project that may very well become the New Deal of the 21st century”, said Scott Brusaw who, with this wife Julie, created the Solar Roadways project and founded Solar Roadways Incorporated.

Solar Roadways is a company with a single purpose: to replace our nation’s deteriorating highway infrastructure and crumbling power grid with an intelligent highway system that pays for itself through the generation of electricity and doubles as an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized power grid. The Solar Roadway is made of structurally engineered solar panels that are driven upon. These Solar Road Panels contain LEDs for painting the road lines from beneath the surface, a heating element to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates, and a microprocessor board for control and communications.

In addition to roadways, other possible applications include driveways, parking lots, sidewalks, patios, sport's courts, playgrounds, bike paths, amusement parks, airports, racetracks- really any surface that vehicles or people use. More information about Solar Roadways can be found at their website www.solarroadways.com.

News tag(s): Solar_Roadways Sagle Technology