Scott and Julie Brusaws’ idea was to pave American roadways with solar panels, completely altering not only our transportation infrastructure but also our electrical grid.

“Looking at our web site and our materials, your imagination can definitely just run away with you,” Scott said.

The crazy thing is that it just might be possible.

The idea won an online popular vote in GE’s Ecomaginations Challenge, where thousands of people and businesses submitted ideas for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and our overall energy consumption.

GE announced that the Brusaws’ business, Solar Roadways, won the online competition and $50,000 on Thursday.

The $50,000 is mere pennies compared to the money GE has yet to dole out to winners. The Challenge judges have narrowed the ideas they’re considering down to just 100 and will give $100,000 to five finalists before entering conversations with one or a few other companies about partnering up. GE has $200 million to invest in some of these eco-ideas, according to the Challenge’s web site.

Scott said he believes people voted for the idea because they came to the same realization he did.

“There is no simple solution,” he said.

Global warming is just too big of an issue. Scott said he remembered a speaker coming to his little town of Sandpoint, Idaho, and telling those in attendance that if every American would just change one light bulb it would fix the problem. Scott laughed at that idea and imagined driving a big yellow Hummer to the Wal-Mart, leaving it idling in the parking lot while he mosied in to get a light bulb.

Global warming is a big problem that begs for a big fix, he said.

He read about our highway infrastructure being fatally flawed and our electrical grid being on the verge of ruin, and he thought, just maybe, we could combine those two to create a new and better system.

“If all that has to be rebuilt anyway,” Scott said, “why not do it with something that provides multiple purposes?”

While the idea is huge and mind-boggling, you get a different idea when you watch the video. AS Scott says, this is using existing technology and simply bringing it all together with the exception of the glass cover that will have to protect the panels while being durable enough and with enough traction to be a functional road surface.

The Federal Highway Administration has actually already given grant money to Solar Roadways to work on engineering a glass covering that could replace asphalt.

Now the Brusaws are simply waiting until the end of October, hoping to hear that GE has as much faith in their big idea as the public does.

“It is big,” Scott said. “But the overall concept is very simple.”

Pictured: Scott Brusaws stand atop a prototype for his and his wife's Solar Roadway. Photo: Mark Dixon, Yert.com