What would it be like to drive down a highway paved with LED-lit photovalic solar panels? Thanks to GE's $200 million Ecomagination challenge, we might soon find out.

The massive open-innovation Challenge, powered by Brightidea software, offers world engineers (and anyone else) the chance to submit innovative energy solutions that do one of three things: make power, move power or use power. Headlining GE's billion-dollar effort to create cleaner technologies, and with a $200 million investment at stake, the Challenge is changing the way companies innovate while shaping the future of renewable energy resources.

After the challenge's ten-week submission period closes, which opened on July 13 and ends September 30, an independent panel of judges will whittle down the thousands of applicants (using Brightidea's Switchboard tool for effective idea prioritization and decision-making) to five winners who will each be awarded a $100,000 prize come October.

With eight weeks down and only one to go, the best ideas are already rising to the top. Using Brightidea's API, GE created an interactive data visualization that clearly shows the difference between the thousands of pedestrian ideas and the few large outliers. The spinnable wheel displays the ideas as color-coded spheres, which when clicked display an overview of the idea and a link to its full page. The bigger the sphere the more votes the idea has, and the bigger the 'halo' around it the more comments it's gotten. Not only is the wheel a fun way to pick through ideas, but its intuitive timeline and stratification make it an astutely easy way to visually sort the endless information.

The idea currently standing at number one with over 3,500 votes is an idea posted by Jing Wang. Wang's idea calls for the creation of an "intelligent E-station" that swaps drained batteries from electric vehicles for a new one, fully charged. The focus of the initiative is to bypass lengthy EV recharge times and eliminate current inefficiencies in technology and cost.

Another idea, posted by husband and wife Scott and Julie Brusaw combines the element of transportation with another hot item: solar power. Perhaps the most ingenious and innovate on the list, the couple has come up with the idea to repave America's roads and parking lots with photovalic solar panels, an effort that could annually produce three times the amount of energy used each year in the U.S. The high-tech panels will be fully equipped with LED lights to display warning signals, heating devices to dissolve ice and snow (and thereby increasing its visibility to the sun) and multilayered glass to keep out moisture. Scott, the electric engineer of the team, explains that the glass panels will need to be strong enough to hold a fully loaded semi-truck and have enough traction to mimic current asphalt roads. They need to be shatterproof and fireproof and be transparent enough to let the sunlight in without glaring back into drivers' eyes.

But what seems like an out of the box, merely conceptual idea is already more than just that. Utilizing a $100,000 grant won from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Brusaws have already built a 12x12, full-sized prototype that (mostly) meets all specifications. And going even greener, Scott explains that they can use trash gathered from landfills to make the internal support structure for each panel.

'Solar Roadways' is currently ranked at number three with over 2,700 votes, but with one week remaining it's still anyone's game. No matter which ideas are ultimately chosen, environmental safety and innovation are clearly underway at GE. Time and cost aside, the Ecomagination challenge is making the future seem that much closer.

Check out the Ecomagination Challenge website to find out more.