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How feasible is it to have all public roads in snow areas to be heated. I'm talking heated enough to never allow snow to melt. And I'm talking about all public roads (including neighborhood roads) in major cities.
Most snow cities budget millions each year for just snow removal. Do a one time major investment and it will pay for itself in a few years. No more road repairs from snow/ice freezing and thawing cycle. No more snow plows, sand, salt, etc.
Power could come from solar and/or wind.
If not all streets it would make sense for highways, major thoroughfares, and airport runways
How feasible is it to have all public roads in snow areas to be heated. I'm talking heated enough to never allow snow to melt. And I'm talking about all public roads (including neighborhood roads) in major cities.
Most snow cities budget millions each year for just snow removal. Do a one time major investment and it will pay for itself in a few years. No more road repairs from snow/ice freezing and thawing cycle. No more snow plows, sand, salt, etc.
Power could come from solar and/or wind.
If not all streets it would make sense for highways, major thoroughfares, and airport runways
Ok...you're crazy. That would never happen because the cost would be insanely high to tear up the roads, place in heating coils, repave the roads, and then maintain them. It would take decades, possibly centuries, for it to pay off. It is a lot cheaper to buy more plows and de-icer and hire more drivers than it is to do this.
A heated walkway is roughly ~35-50W per square foot. Your standard highway has 4 travel lanes, each 12ft wide. So 48ft wide. So to heat one mile of highway would be at least 8,870,400W of power consumption for as long as you need to run it to melt snow, which is likely many hours in a major storm. And that's ONE mile of ONE highway. Imagine the numbers you get trying to heat just the major roadways even in a heavily affected area like Buffalo.
It's completely infeasible and heating the roads in an area hit by a snowstorm would likely take more electricity than entire regions of the country use.
In addition, paving is cheap and this would be impossible to maintain. Considering the amount of electricity flowing through something like this, it'd also raise huge safety concerns in addition to the obvious impossibility of needing to rebuild the electric grid in the whole region to be able to supply the power.
A heated walkway is roughly ~35-50W per square foot. Your standard highway has 4 travel lanes, each 12ft wide. So 48ft wide. So to heat one mile of highway would be at least 8,870,400W of power consumption for as long as you need to run it to melt snow, which is likely many hours in a major storm. And that's ONE mile of ONE highway. Imagine the numbers you get trying to heat just the major roadways even in a heavily affected area like Buffalo.
It's completely infeasible and heating the roads in an area hit by a snowstorm would likely take more electricity than entire regions of the country use.
In addition, paving is cheap and this would be impossible to maintain. Considering the amount of electricity flowing through something like this, it'd also raise huge safety concerns in addition to the obvious impossibility of needing to rebuild the electric grid in the whole region to be able to supply the power.
and just for the heck of it....
8,870,400W = 8870kWh
8870 * $0.12 = $1,064 to run it for one hour.
That said you could do it for about 1/3 the fuel cost with coal or natural gas using pex however your capital investment skyrockets.
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