[HN Gopher] Solar canopies on parking lots
___________________________________________________________________
Solar canopies on parking lots
Author : CharlesW
Score : 301 points
Date : 2022-08-07 02:18 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| analyzethis wrote:
| Why not go one step further and place solar panels over roads?
| All the space ever needed is already available!
| amelius wrote:
| I guess because it is a maintenance nightmare.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Space isn't the issue when it comes to power generation
| c54 wrote:
| What are the companies in this space doing the installations and
| system integration?
|
| What are the bottlenecks on rollout other than prohibitory
| regulations?
|
| What is the reasoning for the government prohibiting solar in
| "Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma,
| Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin"?
| ghouse wrote:
| re: "prohibiting solar" -- many utilities are able to convince
| their public utilities commission or legislature that it's in
| the best interest of the state to prevent competition to
| protect their natural monopoly.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Or to cover up the fact that they couldn't balance the load
| during peak solar production and don't want to make
| investments in the grid...
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| Very much this. We were in the middle of designing and
| installing a total solar array for our farm when the state
| ended every single subsidy and electricity buyback plan. We
| could install all the solar panels we want, but any
| electricity we pump into the grid is done for free (we don't
| get paid) and any power we take from the grid we pay 100% for
| with no credit for any power we pushed upstream.
|
| This forced us to increase the panel array size by another
| 25% to 30% to make sure we had more coverage, increase the
| battery storage we needed, and increased the breakeven point
| to more than 30 years.
|
| We decided to not do it. For a world that needs more
| renewable energy (I sort of hate that term) politicians work
| awful hard to make it not happen.
| ozzydave wrote:
| In this case it's really on the executives at the
| utilities, who have a lot of power over the local
| politicians. This podcast did a great explainer:
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/dvhz9ab
| zo1 wrote:
| It's not just in the US that this sort of thing happens.
| Sitting here in sunny South Africa, where we have regular
| rolling/controlled blackouts (load-shedding) because the
| utilities simply aren't able to generate enough electricity
| to cover all the demand. You'd think they'd incentivize
| people generating their own solar like crazy, but they
| don't. They actively punish people that push back to the
| grid with onerous requirements. The dirty little secret is
| that a lot of us have "old" "analog" electricity meters,
| which can literally go backwards when you push to the grid,
| which many do.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It will take a few years to fix that probably. But
| ultimately, politicians won't want to be in between companies
| and consumers and some very significant savings on their
| power bills. No public utility is that strong. It's
| interesting how solar panels stopped being a divisive topic
| between different political factions. Everybody likes saving
| money on power bills. And lots of people are waking up to the
| notion that 1) they are paying a lot for power and 2) a lot
| of other people they know are not because they have solar
| panels. It's irresistible for lots of people.
|
| As world + dog starts driving EVs, businesses will want to
| offer them power charging at their venues to provide a
| convenient way to top up. That requires cheap power and solar
| is a great way to get that. The collective power of lots of
| businesses and consumers demanding their right to access to
| solar will win ultimately. It's winning everywhere else. Of
| course there are some places where it is taking a bit longer
| than it should. But better late than never.
| zugi wrote:
| The article says these states "actively" discourage rooftop
| solar, but "actively" may differ from what most readers think:
|
| > They typically make it difficult for homeowners or property
| owners to install solar and connect it to the grid, or they
| prohibit a third party from paying for the installation.
|
| The "net metering" takes active work and costs by the utility
| to support, so some states never enacted it.
|
| The "pay a third party" prohibition stems from existing utility
| monopoly rules that allow only the utility companies to sell
| electricity. So what they "actively prohibit" is not just solar
| - they actively probihit anyone but approved utilities from
| selling electricity in the state.
| martijnvds wrote:
| > they actively probihit anyone but approved utilities from
| selling electricity in the state.
|
| What a great example of the free market!
| egypturnash wrote:
| The answer to your last question is basically "red state
| politicians are deep in the pockets of coal and oil interests".
|
| It's not exclusively a GOP thing, Manchin is theoretically a D
| but he sure is holding back a lot of stuff in the Senate due to
| him being massively invested in dirty energy, but it's more a
| Repub thing than a Dem thing.
| nikolay wrote:
| Orange County public schools all have these, but does it make any
| financial sense given the huge investment and the fact that the
| panels have less than 30 years of lifespan?
| jjeaff wrote:
| Many panels manufactured today are expected to last more than
| 30 years. The 30 year lifetime usually means 80% as effective
| at 30 years.
| onethought wrote:
| The panels easily pay for themselves over 30 years, so - yes.
|
| Also likely they improve the maintenance of whatever is under
| them, just from weather protection, even concrete maintenance.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > The panels easily pay for themselves over 30 years, so -
| yes.
|
| But do they cover their opportunity cost?
| onethought wrote:
| The opportunity cost of what?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Of whatever else one could choose to invest in instead of
| the solar installation.
| onethought wrote:
| You can basically rationalise against any investment,
| because there is no limit to your imagined opportunity.
| Just keep the cash always so you always have the
| opportunity!
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Does your opportunity cost computation cover the cost of
| _not_ producing power from renewable sources?
| downvotetruth wrote:
| The "inflation" bill that further supports the fossil fuel
| industry about to be passed will certainly make it more
| appealing in the U.S. at the expense on developing countries
| that get more sun. Solar is great, but subsidizing installs in
| Prudhoe Bay don't make a lot of sense atm.
| 0x53 wrote:
| Been thinking about this a lot recently, I guess the hurdle to
| clear is probably convincing Walmart to let you put solar panels
| over their parking lot. I wonder what the economics of it would
| be if Walmart did it themselves?
|
| Tangential, the reason that we have so much parking space (as the
| article mentions) is that it is dictated by law in most places
| how many spots are required based on the building size.
| https://www.strongtowns.org/parking
| CyanLite4 wrote:
| Net-energy metering is such a bad deal in most places that it
| wouldn't make economic sense to do it.
| taneq wrote:
| Do many places actually do net metering? Where I live, feed-
| in tariffs are 1/4 or less of the electricity supply cost.
| Net metering isn't sustainable if you amortise the
| infrastructure cost over the energy supplied. Even so we've
| seen the static connection fee portion of our bill rise much
| faster than supply costs.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Here in New Mexico, the power company has offered two
| choices for grid-tied solar. (1) "credits" for surplus
| power production. The return per kWh is much less than the
| cost to buy a kWh, but for some people, that's better. (2)
| no payment for surplus power production, but they "bank" it
| and you get an energy credit to be deployed when you need
| extra power.
|
| The main distinction between which of these two systems is
| better is whether you have a seasonal variation that
| toggles between over- and under-production. If you do not
| need (much) heat, or if you heat your home with something
| other than electricity, and your PV installation is
| appropriately sized, you will likely not have an under-
| production season, and then cash credits, even if they are
| below market rate, are the most desirable. If you heat your
| home with electricity, even with contemporary air-source
| heat pumps, you will likely have some under-production
| during heating season, and then the energy credits are a
| better deal (1 kWh out for every 1 kWh in).
|
| My home is in the second category. We produce 3x more than
| we need in summer, and only 1/3rd of what we need in
| winter.
| dangrossman wrote:
| Walmart seemingly let SolarCity put panels on top of 240 of its
| buildings, then they started catching fire.
|
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/walmart-settlem...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| AFAIK this is a Solar City problem, not a solar panel
| problem. It's too bad that the opportunity to do this was
| squandered thanks to quality/installation issues.
| ars wrote:
| Actually parking is dictated by the number of people they
| expect during peak shopping seasons.
|
| They don't want to lose a single shopper because they make most
| of their money on those days.
|
| If people couldn't park they would go elsewhere and that would
| be the end of that business.
|
| Strong towns has a very myopic view on the world and they
| should not be used as a source.
| ehnto wrote:
| Shopping centre owners in Australia have been completing lots
| of solar canopy projects lately. The incentive is to power
| their shopping centre and save on electricity. It makes sense
| here because electricity is pretty expensive, so you get ROI
| really quickly. You also get paid for any excess generation you
| put back into the grid.
| prawn wrote:
| Not sure if this applies to commercial buildings as well, but
| for homes, you get paid a pittance for feed-in tariffs. It
| used to be lucrative and early residential adopters got great
| rates locked in presumably for life but anyone since faces
| tariffs that get reduced and reduced.
|
| One hassle for those with the early tariffs is that they
| can't scale up their systems without revising the contract
| and losing their rates. Many early adopters were putting on
| 1-3kW systems (probably because panels were more expensive or
| they were not completely confident about the technology) when
| you'd probably put on 5-10kW now.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Tangential, the reason that we have so much parking space (as
| the article mentions) is that it is dictated by law in most
| places how many spots are required based on the building size.
|
| Why do you call that amount of parking "so much"? In general,
| places that only meet the legal minimum are a nightmare to park
| at because there aren't enough spaces in practice.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| These are really a great way to reclaim some power. Some times
| however you'll want 15' clearance so that you can drive delivery
| trucks to the stores under them. But overall it just makes a lot
| of sense. In California at least I've seen these projects get
| killed by squabbling between the person willing to fund the work,
| the management company/developer that currently has the lease
| rights to the location, and the underlying land owner who is
| leasing the land to the developer. I have suggested to my
| representatives that perhaps something like the "you must approve
| this sort of plan" laws that would facilitate California's
| commitment to becoming 100% renewable.
| [deleted]
| leereeves wrote:
| > Some times however you'll want 15' clearance so that you can
| drive delivery trucks to the stores under them.
|
| Not a problem. Solar canopies can be built 20' off the ground.
| (A grocery store near me has one.)
| Eleison23 wrote:
| They can be built 20' off the ground, but they will always be
| built 2' shorter than the most important truck that needs to
| park there 10 years after the ribbon-cutting.
| michaelt wrote:
| If that's really a concern, just build them with the
| clearance required of bridges over interstate highways,
| which is ~16 feet.
|
| Or provide a separate area for huge vehicles - even if
| people transporting 200-ton mining haul trucks want to stop
| off at Wal-Mart en route, it's not like they'll expect to
| pull into standard bays.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Build them so they can be extended upwards somewhat
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, I say build shorter trucks.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Sending 2 larger trucks to do the job if 3 smaller trucks
| is innately more efficient.
|
| The 18-wheeler format (even with 2x trailers or even 3x
| trailers) has built in efficiencies. We probably should
| think about how to support those kinds of efficiencies in
| grocery stores / Walmart centers.
|
| In fact, I'm pretty sure Walmart uses larger trucks like
| that on a consistent basis as a cornerstone of its
| logistic strategy.
| brazzy wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the areas those trucks drive through
| and park in can be easly determined and separated from
| the main customer parking lot. In the absolute worst
| case, you might have to dismantle _some_ of the solar
| canopies when a problem appears.
| paledot wrote:
| In the case of my local (urban) grocery store, it seems
| to be the reverse. Coke and beer arrive on their own 18
| wheelers that barely fit down the street. Produce is
| another 18 wheeler owned by the grocery company. Bread,
| fish, meat, dairy, and chips all have their own medium to
| large box trucks.
|
| And this is at a grocery store with only 2 loading dock
| bays directly off a fairly busy street, and a total of
| about 8 customer parking spaces. This is the absolute
| best case for unloading everything at a warehouse and
| shipping point to point with a few box trucks instead of
| making it a stop on everyone's literal or figurative milk
| run, yet they don't do it.
|
| I'm pretty sure reducing truck-miles barely registers
| when it comes to "efficiencies" in logistics.
| [deleted]
| samatman wrote:
| Unlike for a bridge, having an articulation which pulls the
| panels out of the way adds little expense. Solar panels are
| light enough that keeping them still in high winds is the
| main constraint.
| caymanjim wrote:
| US federal highway bridges are built with 16' clearance.
| You don't ever need to plan for trucks taller than that.
| Retric wrote:
| Plenty of oversized loads get sent around that don't fit
| under highway bridges.
|
| Not an issue for the vast majority of parking lots, but
| it is something to consider.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| As in the picture accompanying the article, the solar shades
| don't need to cover the entire area. You can leave open sky
| over corridors to allow trucks through.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I far prefer to pahk my cah in the shade. Putting solar panels
| on the top is just a nice bonus.
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Maybe all types of shelter covers will be replaced by solar
| panels once they're cheap and efficient enough. Canopies,
| roofs...
|
| My house is almost 100% covered by solar panels, they pretty
| much _are_ my roof. It 's really nice. I wonder how much
| energy we could generate if every house had solar panels
| instead of roofs. There probably aren't enough batteries in
| the world to store all that power.
| kolinko wrote:
| In Germany there is already an obligation to cover roofs of
| new storage spaces with solar. If I'm not mistaken.
| ianai wrote:
| It'll go a long way towards having sizable battery capacity
| with an electrified vehicle fleet. But there's also just
| building out electrical capacity. The industrial revolution
| and onward is also a story of humanity having much more
| access and usage for energy per capita than ever. If energy
| costs are low enough then direct air capture of carbon
| becomes a "sure, why not," for instance. Major power
| infrastructure was built solely to unlock aluminum when the
| uses for it were discovered. Energy production capacity
| never dreamt of before that point.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yes! What if we could have a post-scarcity energy
| society? If we generate so much energy it might as well
| be infinite, there is no need to economize at all. No
| need to worry about consumption. Direct carbon capture?
| Sure. Water desalinization? Absolutely. The efficiency of
| these processes stops mattering.
|
| Solar power with batteries for everything, nuclear energy
| as backup.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Getting past the second law of thermodynamics would be
| quite a feat.
| cedilla wrote:
| Earth isn't a closed system.
| zionic wrote:
| Pauli? That you?
| reaperducer wrote:
| I've seen a lot of these in the Southwest, but I'm surprised I
| don't see them more.
|
| One church I know did this to most of its parking lot, and has
| tons of spare energy to sell back to the grid.
| moffkalast wrote:
| With EVs becoming more common this plus chargers at every
| parking spot should be a complete no-brainer.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Putting solar on parking lots (and of course all kind of roofs)
| should be so obvious, that it shouln't need to be mentioned.
| Besides having the area already ready, they would even improve it
| (shade) and the grid is in place and the eletricticy can
| partially be used on-site (cooling, heating, and of course,
| charge electric cars[1] while they park). In more northern
| regions like here in Germany, panels are already efficient enough
| when mounted vertically, as on walls, especially fences.
|
| But it is worth stressing, that solar is even more efficient if
| you put it on fields rather then farming for energy production.
|
| Another interesting option is to mount solar panels higher up
| with some gaps and then do farming below them. For many crops,
| the yield is barely reduced due to the solar panels and with the
| global warming, the partial shade even might result in lower
| water consumption.
|
| With solar (and of course wind in suitable regions) we have all
| the energy production potential available, not only to fight
| climate change but overall have more and cheaper energy in the
| long term. Not to mention no environmental pollution.
|
| [1]: For the average German electric car the math works out that
| on average 10 solar panels would produce enough energy to operate
| the car - they would basically fit on a car port. The driving
| distances in the US are certainly longer, but then there is also
| more sun and the car ports might be larger, in consequence, the
| calculation wouldn't be far different.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Reduced water loss is one of the chief selling points for
| "agrivoltaics".
|
| The cheapest setup, in most fields, is to make fence-rows of
| bifacial panels, running north-south to pick up morning and
| afternoon sun, and particularly to block late afternoon sun
| that stresses plants most.
|
| But some crops (and livestock) benefit from protection against
| hail and storm rain. Then, again put up fence rows, but with
| the panels sticking out from both sides. Running them east-
| west, it is easy to tilt them to pick up the southern light
| better. (Northern, for you kiwis.)
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Another interesting option is to mount solar panels higher up
| with some gaps and then do farming below them.
|
| Or put them on grazing fields[1] and get the extras of i) shade
| for the lambs, ii) free plant management around the panels, and
| iii) maybe reduced water consumption.
|
| [1] https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/04/mixing-
| she...
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > The appeal of parking lots and rooftops, by contrast, is that
| they are abundant, close to customers, largely untapped for solar
| power generation, and on land that's already been stripped of
| much of its biological value.
|
| Also, the panels mitigate the parking lots from becoming heat
| storage batteries (so to speak).
|
| There's a reason summer temps fall further at night in rurals
| areas (e.g., Vermont) than they do in urban / suburban areas
| (e.g., New Jersey). Trees and such don't hold heat the way
| pavement does.
|
| Now obviously simply adding solar panels to parking lots in NJ
| isn't going to have a massive impact, but it's not going to hurt
| either.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| This is somewhat common to see in Arizona, since covered parking
| is very appreciated where it exists.
| rmason wrote:
| Michigan State University locally here did something very similar
| a few years back. They claim there's a thirty year payback but
| seeing as how we live in the second cloudiest city in America I
| am skeptical. However I cut them a little slack because
| universities are first adopters driving science forward even when
| the ROI isn't always there.
|
| But we get a lot of snow here and it is really nice to come out
| after it's snowed and not have to clear the snow off your car!
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| cloudiest city in America is almost certainly why it's a 30
| year payback instead of a 10 year payback in a better climate
| ncmncm wrote:
| More typical lately is three years. Panels are way cheaper than
| before.
| danans wrote:
| The approach of reutilizing existing parking lots is great, but
| some spots without solar panels should be reserved for the solar
| self-charging cars that are coming to market in the next few
| years:
|
| https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/
|
| https://www.aptera.us/
|
| https://lightyear.one/
| d4a wrote:
| Even with those solar cars, it would be better off for them to
| plug into a larger grid and set of solar panels compared to the
| small ones built in. The purpose of those small panels is to
| charge when no charging is available. In this case, if enough
| current and charge is available (via solar canopies and mains
| power) then the built in panel is useless.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is a great idea, but as the article says it's the kind of
| thing that doesn't happen because the incentives and expertise
| don't align. Moreover, big box development is usually designed on
| a mere 15-20 year lifespan, and very cheaply built, so a major
| capital project like a solar installation on the roof or parking
| conflicts with that model.
|
| It's also almost certainly illegal in many municipalities, most
| of which basically say "no" to everything by default and only
| allow development that follows strict land use and aesthetic
| rules; yes even for parking lots.
| rob74 wrote:
| Strange to see "aesthetic" and "parking lot" mentioned in the
| same sentence. Well, if there really are rules against it, then
| (as the article also says) citizens and businesses should
| pressure their politicians to change those rules.
| csours wrote:
| People like trees. I like trees. Solar panels don't like
| trees. If you put trees in parking lots (like some cities
| require), it's hard to get effective use of solar panels.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Do American parking lots have trees? Pictures I have seen
| are usually barren asphalt wastelands.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| I rarely see significant use of trees around my home.
| It's unsurprising that cities mandate them because they
| provide shade... so if PV arrays confer even more shade,
| you could stop relying on trees!
|
| With a mandate to build a parking lot of a certain size,
| a business is going to say no trees; they would reduce
| auto capacity, present a maintenance burden, attract
| wildlife, and continually drop organic stuff on your
| customers' cars. And so that's exactly why cities find
| the need to mandate them!
| youngtaff wrote:
| Trees also cool the air via evapotranspiration
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| N = 1, but looking on Google Maps, pretty much all major
| parking lots around my suburb have at least 2 (small)
| trees per 20 parking spaces. In most large lots, the
| trees occupy their own islands, but a few lots have a
| line of trees around the perimeter instead. IIRC, there's
| a county rule requiring a certain number of trees on a
| property relative to the land area. An least in some
| properties, the issue has arisen of developers placing
| trees too close to buildings and other structures for
| their size.
| panick21_ wrote:
| You know what would be 10x better for society? Not have a society
| where half of every city is compromised of parking lots.
|
| The car and parking lots problem is a huge part issue in the US
| in particular. Not only is the whole concept incredibly bad
| environmentally, in terms of CO2 of course, but also emissions
| and other problems like cities being hotter and causing water
| management issues.
|
| These parking lots are also a huge economic problem a symptom of
| the reason why so many towns are functionally broke. Encouraging
| cheap building for box stores or fast food restaurants with huge
| parking lots represents and incredibly uneconomic proposition and
| is losing cities money. Lots of infrastructure cost for very
| little in terms of property tax.
|
| Not to mention that such a development pattern makes city centers
| less attractive, and that is exactly the place where cities could
| be making actual money. Often is actually the poorer denser areas
| of the city that financially support the sprawl of the richer
| part of the city.
|
| So instead of plastering solar panels all over parking-lots ever
| effort should be made to eliminate the parking lots themselves.
| Infill development has to be done, and the city needs to support
| it with by relaxing their often borderline sociopathic zoning
| orders (along with a host of other harmful regulation).
|
| Changing the development pattern would save far more energy then
| plastering parking lots with solar panels will ever do.
|
| And not only will it help for the environment, things like the
| housing crisis in the Bay Area (and other places could be solved
| or at least massively impacted). Talking all the under utilized
| commercial zone property in the Bay Area and zoning it for mixed-
| use could potentially add 1000000s of housing units in the
| 'missing middle' segment.
|
| See this talk on the Bay Area by City designer Peter Calthorpe:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtdFbK4YG4
|
| The organization 'Strong Towns' has made this one of its central
| issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em7nqDqQ8oM
|
| For some more details on the economics Joe Minicozzi: The Cash
| Flow of Urbanism:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFC_Q4WQKVk
|
| So what I end up with is that inside of cities you shouldn't have
| parking lots hardly at all, and outside of the urban environment
| you might as well just put them onto some empty space. Putting
| solar panels on parking lots will just make those parking lots an
| even more persistent and harder to remove in the future.
|
| So remove the parking lot, don't buy the solar panels, invest
| that money in a trolley bus instead. It will be better for the
| environment and the city.
| euroderf wrote:
| "Parking lot operators, the choice is yours: build solar over
| it or build a building over it. Fill'er up."
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of parking lots in dense cities are just property in
| reserve to be redeveloped. They were built 30-40 years ago and
| redevelopment will surely go with a parking garage because the
| land is too valuable to be used that way. Developers then must
| make decisions to redevelop (which is often limited based on
| finite construction workers, planners, and so on, and they are
| also waiting for the best opportunity, alignment with other
| plans in the area, etc...). No, they aren't going to invest in
| solar covering for the parking lots because they won't be
| around for much longer.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Absolutely. This is also true for a lot of American blight
| like run down strip malls in otherwise economically healthy
| communities. One partial solution is to switch to a Land
| Value Tax so that the tax structure incentivizes using land
| for the best use as soon as possible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
| guerby wrote:
| Fun fact: a standard parking spot of 2.5x5 meter covered with
| regular PV panels will produce in a year (in my country) about
| 2.5 MWh which is enough to power an EV for 16000 km.
|
| Of course less than needed in winter and more in summer.
|
| Edit: fixed computations 2x2.5x1000 hours of sun of 20% efficient
| = 2.5 MWh then 2.5 MWh / 150 Wh/km = 16666 km.
| Faaak wrote:
| You're off by a factor of 10 :-). At ~20kWh/100km, 20MWh gives
| us 100000km !
| guerby wrote:
| I fixed the computations, the 15k km was about right but I
| messed up intermediate computations.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| happyopossum wrote:
| Some of the points in the article make sense at first blush, and
| may even be correct, but I lose hope when it starts out with a
| complete fabrication :
|
| "Undeveloped land is a rapidly dwindling resource"
|
| Note - roughly 6% of the US is developed space, less than 3% of
| that land is urban. [1]
|
| The author then compounds the mistrust by stating that by 2050,
| we might need up to 0.5% of land dedicated to generating solar
| power.
|
| ZERO POINT FIVE percent. And I'm supposed to think that's a
| problem? 10 million acres out of the nearly 2 billion we have in
| this country? Yeah - that doesn't concern me.
|
| It's a shame too, as I like solar canopied parking lots and think
| they make sense in some cases - making such weak justifications
| at the top of the article though, makes me think I may be wrong
| about it.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/the-
| real-...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| wnevets wrote:
| > Note - roughly 6% of the US is developed space, less than 3%
| of that land is urban.
|
| Undeveloped land that people actually want to live on/near is a
| dwindling resource. Sure Kansas is filled massive amounts of
| undeveloped land but you don't see Americans rushing to move
| there.
| creato wrote:
| Sounds like a good place to put solar panels then?
| wnevets wrote:
| Transmitting electricity from Kansas to either of the coast
| sounds incredibly impractical.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I tend to like the food that Kansas is currently using
| its land for, so lets just look for some other less
| useable land that doesn't also grow food and tends to get
| a lot of sun while also being at least close to the west
| cost. Obviously, I'm talking Nevada, Arizona, and eastern
| California. Seems a much more practical option
| ncmncm wrote:
| Modern transmission lines lose very little power, and
| anyway the marginal cost to produce is zero.
|
| So, no, there is no problem with shipping power around.
| kamilafsar wrote:
| I guess not all land is the same. Undeveloped land around NYC
| is scarce, and that's where you want to have solar panels for
| the city.
| ncmncm wrote:
| No, you don't. There is way, way more of pasture and farmland
| than will ever be needed to site solar on, as putting up
| solar does not interfere with the other uses.
| snake_doc wrote:
| > The author then compounds the mistrust by stating that by
| 2050, we might need up to 0.5% of land dedicated to generating
| solar power. ZERO POINT FIVE percent. And I'm supposed to think
| that's a problem? 10 million acres out of the nearly 2 billion
| we have
|
| This comment reminds me of the early naivete about carbon
| dioxide in the atmosphere.
|
| CO2 increased from 0.03% to 0.04% of atmosphere? ZERO POINT
| ZERO ONE percent. And I'm supposed to think that's a problem?
| [deleted]
| HyperSane wrote:
| That is actually a 33% increase. Which is very significant.
| And the rate we are emitting it is increasing.
| emj wrote:
| Isn't that the point: if 3% is used for urban development
| then another 0.5% is going to be very noticeable in cities.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Concern trolling.
|
| There is absolutely no need to site on undeveloped land
| or to take land out of production. Solar coexists well
| with most uses, as with parking and roofs.
| SllX wrote:
| I would be curious what the arguments _against_ solar canopied
| parking lots would be other than the cost of the installation
| (due to the obviousness of that one, sometimes something just
| costs more than it's worth).
|
| A parking lot on a hot day is one of my least favorite
| environments to walk through, and with solar cells or not, I'm
| surprised more parking lots aren't at least shaded. Stick an
| installation up there and you could be powering the store or
| mall with some of that saving on utilities, maybe charging some
| cars _and_ providing that all important shade. So I've always
| been curious what the arguments against it are, and the only
| one I can think of is the upfront cost of such an installation.
| rapsey wrote:
| The cost is pretty much it.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the main one is that having giant above ground parking lots
| is awful in the first place. they dramatically reduce
| walkability and efficiency of other transit forms (by
| pointlessly lowering density), are ugly, and are (other than
| cost) way worse than underground parking or multi-story
| parking garages. putting solar panels on the parking lots
| makes them incredibly expensive to remove.
| SllX wrote:
| > the main one is that having giant above ground parking
| lots is awful in the first place
|
| Sorry, I should have specified: I'm looking for reasons the
| property owner wouldn't want to install solar canopied
| parking lots besides just cost.
|
| E.g. Walmart is famous for their enormous parking lots and
| large corporate campuses in the suburbs often have large
| parking lots too, as do outdoor malls. It seems to me they
| would stand to benefit from installing canopies with solar
| panels seeing as how they've already dedicated vast swaths
| of their property to parking.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| You're ignoring the 47% of land (per that article) dedicated to
| agriculture.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There are waste amount of desert that is not used for agro or
| people.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| And they are extremely far away from population centers,
| requiring significant investment in (and energy loss from)
| long distance high voltage lines.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The $ per acre per year one would get from putting PV there
| is much larger than what you'd get from agriculture
| (especially pasture).
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Yeah, but humans need to eat?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Humans need to eat and farming is not very lucrative are
| consistent statements. Crop production is far beyond the
| bare minimum of what is needed; it's mostly to supply
| wants, not needs. As such, it's perfectly fine to trade
| it off against other things, like PV, that also supply
| wants.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You can have solar and crops on the same land, without
| hurting yield, but cutting water loss.
|
| So, "dedicated to agriculture" is no blocker for also putting
| solar there.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Food crops. Famously don't need the sun.
| extra88 wrote:
| Seems like a nitpick, maybe "undeveloped but readily
| developable" would have been more accurate but doesn't really
| change the story.
|
| .5 percent of U.S. land would be 12 percent of already
| developed U.S. land, which is a lot. It's doubtful that all
| generation will happen on top of that but as they point out,
| it's more efficient to generate close to where power is used;
| you lose less power in transmission and need less land for
| transmission lines.
| guerby wrote:
| According to https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3567050
| 78_Zero_air_...
|
| "Transitioning may create ~4.7 million more permanent jobs
| than lost and requires only ~0.29% and 0.55% of new U.S. land
| for footprint and spacing, respectively, less than the 1.3%
| occupied by the fossil industry today."
|
| So getting rid of fossil fuels infrastructure in the USA and
| replacing it by renewable would give back 0.45% of land.
| extra88 wrote:
| I am all for transitioning away from fossil fuels, the
| topic at hand is what's better, adding solar on top of
| developed land or having it more centralized on undeveloped
| land (or redeveloped land) dedicated to this one purpose.
|
| I wonder how they arrived at 1.3% of land for fossil fuels,
| my hunch is they included every gas station. Gas stations
| already make their profits from non-gas products and are
| even smaller than parking lots; many are more likely to
| remain a part of transportation infrastructure, as charging
| stations, though their size is a limiting factor due to the
| longer energy transfer times of electrics.
|
| Some oil derrick and storage sites might be redeveloped for
| solar, ones that are less remote.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yeah, I generally agree with the article but it's a weird kind
| of focus that makes it feel odd and a few claims rubbed me the
| wrong way too.
|
| One charitable interpretation is that when discussing renewable
| energy with the American public you need to start by validating
| some of their current beliefs before sneaking some truth in,
| because if you just said "solar is cheap and green and we
| should have been building lots of it for years" you'd hit up
| against talking points they've been pre-programmed with.
|
| Whereas if you start from "solar takes up lots of space and
| kills all biological life touched by its shadow" then they
| think you're one of them and you can subtly suggest that if
| you're already building canopies to keep the sun off of cars,
| then maybe solar panels would be good there?
|
| It's analogous to pretending to believe that Covid-19 was a
| Chinese Bioweapon intentionally leaked from a lab, just so you
| can suggest to people that are otherwise beyond help that "..
| and if that's true then maybe we should wear masks to prevent
| it spreading?".
|
| Might help. Probably worth a go.
| latchkey wrote:
| I was thinking a solar canopy over the California Aqueduct [1]
| would be neat. Keep the sun off from evaporating the water. Oh
| hey, just googled that, I'm not the only one. [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct
|
| [2] https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-
| engineering...
| DavidKarlas wrote:
| Also water cooling air under panels improves performance...
| fho wrote:
| Somebody watches Rosies videos? :-)
| milleramp wrote:
| Also as someone who is not allowed to install PV panels due to
| HOA restrictions, why can't I subsidize this and own my own
| piece over the aqueduct, the same as if they were on my roof?
| This seems so obvious, to allow people like me and others who
| live in apt complexes to have some skin in the game. Why do the
| solar panels need to be on my roof to benefit, why can't they
| be over the aqueduct or in Palm Springs?
| jjeaff wrote:
| If you are in California, a 2018 law (civil code 714) makes
| it illegal for your HOA to prohibit solar. You have a right
| to put up solar even if the roof is jointly owned and
| controlled by the HOA.
|
| According to the law, the HOA may make reasonable
| restrictions but they may not increase your cost by more than
| $1000 or decrease your solar efficiency by more than 20%.
|
| So tell your HOA to shove it.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I don't live in the US, but you guys post HOA horror
| stories frequently enough. How many times have we heard "I
| go the HOA that way, so they stuck it to me here, and here,
| and here". Maybe that's a bear not worth poking.
| lq9AJ8yrfs wrote:
| Here is a positive story.
|
| I live in an upper middle class neighborhood in the
| suburbs of a major US Midwestern city. The community is
| diverse and split evenly between families with young kids
| and retirees. We pay $500 / year in fees, which goes
| toward holiday decorations and minor block party events,
| and a management company that mainly enforces code such
| as keeping lawns weed and pest free.
|
| My neighbors on both sides each had major weed control
| issues that were spreading to my lawn and garden,
| resulting in about twice the weeding effort on my part,
| but eventually the HOA kicked in and they both developed
| a sudden interest in lawn care and hired local companies
| to do the basics. We also started sharing with our
| neighbors extra bulbs that our garden produces anyway,
| now that our neighbors and their gardens became
| receptive.
|
| We have had a couple notices from the HOA about code
| items ourselves, and it was stuff that we were going to
| fix anyway that the HOA noticed. They were cordial about
| it and thanked us for letting them know we were in front
| of it. There were no threats or fines, except what is
| implicit in the bylaws.
|
| The main bylaws are cosmetic, things like keeping paint,
| mailboxes, and trim in shape. We have made several
| requests, just a one page letter, for accommodations to
| the HOA and they have approved each one.
|
| The board of the HOA are just other neighbors down the
| street, and I am very grateful to them donating their
| time and effort unpaid to keep order in the neighborhood.
| Property sells very quickly and several of our friends
| have complimented us on our neighborhood when they visit.
|
| This was our first HOA experience, and I was skittish
| about entering into it but cannot think of any complaint.
| I find it very effective.
|
| There have been houses in the neighborhood that have been
| neglected to the point of becoming unlivable and it is
| great to have a framework to recover them and fill them
| with happy families that we can befriend, up to and
| including seizing the property if it ever came to that,
| but to my knowledge it never has and hopefully never
| will.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| $500/year! Most of the condos in my area are more then
| $500/month in HOA fees!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| HOA fees for detached homes and condos are not
| comparable. Condo owners are paying for building
| maintenance in the HOA fees, while detached home owners
| are only paying for common area amenities.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How many times have we heard "I go the HOA that way,
| so they stuck it to me here, and here, and here". Maybe
| that's a bear not worth poking._
|
| This varies HOA to HOA. Mine has one-page bylaws mostly
| dealing with outdoor parking rules and not putting
| explosives in places.
| latchkey wrote:
| I want to put a $100 keycode lock [1] on the front gate
| so that each owner can have a separate code (and I can
| give my code to Amazon so they can easily deliver my
| packages). Myself and one other person are the only full
| time people in the 14 unit building, the rest are all
| short term rentals.
|
| Right now, the other owners have lockboxes attached to an
| area on the gate and they give out the code to the short
| term rentals.
|
| The board of the HOA refuses to switch the lock. Reasons
| have been all over the map, but one of the dumbest ones
| was that they were afraid the codes would get leaked out
| and that the other full time persons stalker would get
| into the building.
|
| As an engineer, the simple logic baffles. I kindly
| pointed out that a code on the gate is no different than
| a code on the lockbox attached to the gate. Never mind
| that the building isn't secure at all... it is super easy
| to just climb the fence to get onto the property. Or her
| stalker could just wait till she opens the gate.
|
| I've now had two deliveries stolen because they were left
| at the front gate for 10 minutes. They still refuse.
|
| The 'horror' stories aren't really horror. It is just
| having to deal with people who you would never have to
| deal with under normal circumstances. I'd say this goes
| with owning any property in a city... you don't pick your
| neighbors.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Schlage-
| FE575-PLY-626-ELA/dp/B001COEZ...
| NoNotTheDuo wrote:
| I'm with you. Read way too many horror stories that I
| didn't want to deal with it. I'm in the US and when we
| were looking for a new house a few years ago, one of the
| hard requirements was no HOA. We compromised on other
| factors, but not on the HOA!
| wil421 wrote:
| You only hear the horror stories. My HOA is very
| reasonable and just wants to make sure no one doing
| anything stupid. They don't even enforce their own bylaws
| in most cases or fine people. People outside the US have
| HOAs they are just called something different in
| apartments/condos or even when the local city runs
| things.
|
| Not sure why people complain about HOAs when they bought
| the house knowing full well what they were in for. I had
| to agree to the HOA rules well before I bought the house.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >or fine people
|
| Only the law fines me (EU), not some randos making up
| their rules. As this part of hoa's is part of the horror
| stories, what happens if you do indeed tell them to shove
| it, and dont pay?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| People talk about the HOA "fining" them, but really it's
| just they signed up to a contract that has certain
| penalties in it for non-compliance. If you don't pay,
| they have to go to court to collect, at least in
| California.
|
| It's the same kind of "fine" that video rental stores
| used to have if you didn't return the movie on time.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| In the USA, most HOAs have the ability to place a lien on
| your house. When you try to sell your property, you have
| to pay that fine or your house can't be sold. They can
| also file a lawsuit against you in court which the court
| can force you to take down whatever objectionable
| material you have outside your own and/or require you to
| pay the fine and penalties.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _They don't even enforce their own bylaws in most cases_
|
| Ah, selective enforcement. We know why that's a bad idea
| when the cops do it, but when the HOA does it it's all
| good.
|
| _Not sure why people complain about HOAs when they
| bought the house knowing full well what they were in
| for._
|
| HOA's are like Wikipedia admins, perhaps well-meaning,
| definitely with an agenda, and 100 % unaware of best
| practice. Back then, we had civil servants upholding city
| code. Nowadays we have HOA's where they won't hesitate to
| fine you for the wrong shade of paint and will do jack
| shit about the neighbour who breeds mosquitoes in his
| flowerpot dishes. (For those who don't know, standing
| water rich in organic materials is mosquito paradise.)
| delecti wrote:
| I'm in the process of buying a house (closed last week)
| and couldn't realistically have accessed the HOA's bylaws
| before placing an offer. At least speaking from my
| experience, you don't really know _what_ you 're signing
| up for when you buy a house in an HOA, you just know
| _that_ you 're signing up for something.
| kleinsch wrote:
| They're a standard step in disclosures and if you don't
| like them you can walk away. If you didn't choose to read
| them or waived the right to walk away, that's your
| choice.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Any set of rules can seem reasonable on paper. It's the
| implementation of those rules that can vary greatly based
| on the HOA board. So that takes more investigation to
| figure out. And it is impossible to know who might be
| elected to the board next and who might become your
| neighbors next who may vote differently.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > Not sure why people complain about HOAs when they
| bought the house knowing full well what they were in for
|
| Ah, the old fallacy of choice, usually heard as "you can
| choose to work somewhere else". If most homes are under a
| HOA and they all have similar policies, complaining is
| well justified.
| zaphar wrote:
| Here in the US you have lots of non-HOA options. Even in
| the areas with lots of HOA options you can read the rules
| beforehand and choose the HOA ruleset you prefer.
|
| Myself I don't like any of the HOA rulesets so I avoid
| them It's never been a hindrance to me. It's largely not
| a fallacy of choice here.
| samatman wrote:
| It's about 28% of US homes which are under community
| associations, this includes condos and HOAs. My home is
| not; it's the city which gets interested in my lawn when
| it's looking wilder than statute dictates.
| IshKebab wrote:
| You effectively can by investing in solar funds. I'm planning
| on moving house so that's what I've done. It's not quite the
| same but it's pretty close.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Omg yes, I really want someone to open up a solar co-op where
| I can buy panels that get installed on a farm and get a cut
| of the money produced. For anyone who rents or moves a lot
| they effectively can't get the benefits of solar because
| something like this does exist.
| guerby wrote:
| Where I live I'm a member of a coop named "Enercoop Midi
| Pyrenees" that uses the coop capital to build PV arrays, in
| the past few years 10 250kW arrays have been built locally
| and a multi MW one is in the pipes.
|
| Here the one 2km from my home:
|
| https://www.enercoop.fr/blog/actualites/midi-
| pyrenees/pousse...
| alexvoda wrote:
| The HoAs in the US are crazy. Why are they against PV?
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Likely looks.
| devmor wrote:
| Yep. Uniformity and control. Most are against any "non
| standard" paint colors, flowers in your lawn, etc.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You can threaten to put up a ham radio antenna if they
| interfere with whatever else you are doing.
|
| They cannot block ham antennas because they contribute to
| public safety. But they would much rather live with
| flowers.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| That's not true at all - please cite your source.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| Bad installations make for ugly looks and can ruin the
| value of the entire neighborhood (who wants to live next to
| the guy with the odd-shaped panels on his roof?).
| dotancohen wrote:
| > why can't I subsidize this and own my own piece over the
| aqueduct, the same as if they were on my roof?
|
| How would that be insured? Suppose e.g. hail damage. Do you
| own a specific group of panels that you must fix if those
| panels get damaged?
| brnt wrote:
| in the Netherlands there are coops that are no more than a
| group that pool their money to build a 'sun meadow', and
| then have a share in the installation, and thus ongoing
| costs and returns.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I feel like you gave a perfectly good answer to your own
| question. A big program like this would buy insurance with
| some of the solar revenue and the investor wouldn't have to
| do anything.
| jedberg wrote:
| If you live in California your HOA can't legally block you
| from installing panels.
|
| I like your idea though. Let people who can't get solar for
| whatever reason invest in solar elsewhere and get some money
| back or a credit against their own usage.
| latchkey wrote:
| Interesting. Started to google things to see if I could find
| anything existing and came across this article...
|
| https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/295876008
| Solar development required private investment to supplement
| public spending, the researchers found. For the projects to
| be valuable investments, developers managed their financial
| risks by increasing the size of the projects and spreading
| the risks across multiple projects. Large solar developers
| seek to build or acquire new projects to spread their risks
| and generate more profits, which in turn makes it easier to
| get low-cost loans. ... The result is an energy
| system characterized by a few very large generating stations
| linked to consumers over long transmission lines, rather than
| a more distributed system serving communities closer in
| proximity. That makes consumers vulnerable to an extreme
| weather event 1,000 miles away, Kennedy said.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is a good idea, and it exists. Look for a community
| solar program that lets you buy a share, they are in most
| states now:
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/state-local-tribal/community-solar.html
| rr808 wrote:
| Yes I have this in NJ and is a great solution. It isn't
| very well explained how it works though, I'll have to write
| a post one day.
| milleramp wrote:
| Thanks for the link, I will look into this.
| sulam wrote:
| Not only has this been considered in California, it's actively
| done in India.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Previously on HN:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200803-the-solar-
| canals...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24046951 (70 comments
| 148 points)
| aaron695 wrote:
| mperham wrote:
| Oregon just passed new rules which require larger parking lots to
| have shade trees or solar canopy. No more giant hot asphalt
| wastelands.
| lttlrck wrote:
| This is interesting because (in CA at least) the benefit of
| residential solar is offsetting the electricity that you use. So
| use 1 kWh and generate 1 kWh, net cost is zero (Net Metering)
|
| But _overproduction_ is paid at NSCR (Net Surplus Compensation
| Rate) which is a couple of cents per kWh [1] - a small fraction
| of the cost you would pay (this detail is often masked by solar
| companies)
|
| So presumably there is a different framework for non-residential
| solar farms like these where it is, perhaps, predominately
| generation?
|
| https://www.sce.com/regulatory/tariff-books/rates-pricing-ch...
| motohagiography wrote:
| Is the precise reason there are not solar canopies everywhre
| because the cost of panels is not competitive with the value of
| the power they yield?
|
| Something seems economically broken in the solar business. It
| should be an arbitrage that so many people pile into that panel
| prices plummet as fast as compute processing and RAM has.
| Economically, Moore's law should also apply to solar panels, but
| the R&D isn't economical either.
|
| Sure, the hard problem isn't collection but transmission and
| storage, but again, what is the R&D bottleneck? We could say the
| subsidies on fossil fuels means the competitiveness of solar is
| suppressed, but maybe we need some breakaway regions that make it
| viable, like a hundred solar Las Vegas'es that run on
| cryptocurrency chips signed by solar power producers, and govts
| can tolerate our autonomy in exchange for taking the risk on tech
| to create newly sustainable economies.
|
| If you really want solar power, legalize gambling with a provably
| solar powered cryptocurrency. I could build the first low powered
| rig in an afternoon, as it would be a panel hookup, a raspi, and
| the secret sauce would be the HSM that signed the tokens it
| produced. If someone stole the keys, you just fork and
| grandfather tokens produced before the compromise. If someone
| swapped their panel for grid power instead of solar to produce
| them, the sun is the ultimate open random number generator and by
| encoding bursts from it into the token, you could see whether a
| miner was producing consistently based on volume relative to the
| random stream from the sun.
|
| I don't think it's the tech that is the problem, there's
| something fishy about the economics, as these are solvable
| problems.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| For one, very sunny places like California are getting very
| close to the "too much solar" on their energy production. Until
| microgrids take off, this is going to be a very serious problem
| in the next 12-24 months. California will probably have one of
| the lowest kWh/$ rates in the country during summer daylight
| hours. But off-peak hours will be much more expensive. Adding
| more solar would not help in these places because it would
| interfere with the economics of mass power production. The
| investment to build power plants (nuclear or gas-fired) is too
| high when you can only run that plant during night-time hours
| but sit idle during the day. Texas has been in a similar
| situation, before the Feb 2021 disaster, they were giving away
| free power at night because of too much wind production. All of
| that energy production has to go somewhere and grid-scale
| energy storage isn't feasible just yet. If it's not consumed,
| then it's just wasted.
|
| Two, the tech is just forming to help solve some things, such
| as "floatovoltaics". Covering Lake Mead will help, or the Great
| Salt Lake in Utah. But water is very corrosive. Engineers have
| also stayed away from putting power lines in water for good
| reason. The tech for floatovoltaics is just now emerging, and
| even the national electric code has just put something in it
| for 2023.
|
| Three, raw materials shortages. Solar requires a lot of
| silicon, aluminum, glass, and steel. Batteries require a lot of
| rare earth metals from harmful mining practices. You need
| billions of tons of copper just to handle the wiring and
| distribution side of things. Almost all lithium battery and
| solar manufacturing is overseas in China. There are some in the
| U.S., but not enough to make a serious dent in solving the
| overall problem. EV batteries have secured over 140% of the
| available lithium mines in the world. Alternative batteries
| like sodium-ion are exclusively produced at scale in China, but
| startups like Natron Energy are trying to change that (again,
| not enough to make a dent). But the main point is that there
| isn't enough lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, silicon in the
| world to go around without having some serious inflation and
| supply chain issues along the way. The tech doesn't yet exist
| for grid-scale energy storage that doesn't rely on lithium and
| its closest cousin sodium-ion doesn't have the manufacturing
| scale to produce the billions of cells annually needed to
| tackle this problem.
|
| Four, the U.S. lacks political will. Republican states are
| actively damaging companies who are reducing their carbon
| emissions. Fox News labels climate change as "woke politics".
| Thus, you have 40-50% of Americans believing solar panels and
| EVs as "bad" things. It then trickles down to local politics
| like where the article shows that Southern states should be
| accounting for 33% of solar production, but due to poor
| politics/laws they only account for 7%.
| motohagiography wrote:
| > All of that energy production has to go somewhere and grid-
| scale energy storage isn't feasible just yet. If it's not
| consumed, then it's just wasted.
|
| Imo, this is the economic case for proof-of-work in
| cryptocurrencies as instead of shedding load into the ground
| or burning off gas, it gets refined into tokens that both
| store and transmit value. It's the missing feedback cycle in
| the economy. I'm suggesting a verifiably solar currency used
| for gambling will drive innovation in areas like graphene
| solar panels and other new techs. We can convert an energy
| storage and transmission problem into a financial
| securitization and risk problem that feeds back into driving
| optimization of the energy production problem. The sun is a
| verifiable random number generator that with a clock signal,
| the whole network can use it for consensus.
|
| We may be talking past one another, but if macro grid
| economics and the politics around them are standing in the
| way of sustainable tech, we may need to route around them.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| That already exists. It's called SREC credits. Large
| corporations pay SREC credits to homeowners and others to
| reduce carbon. Those credits can be cashed out, and many
| just use the money to buy more solar panels and batteries.
| ec109685 wrote:
| I thought with higher voltage power lines, transmitting power
| over longer distance starts to be feasible.
|
| The environmental impact of building solar farms in the middle of
| the desert didn't seem very high compared to impact of global
| warming (or like they said growing grain for ethanol).
|
| Regardless, the answer should be yes to anything that will move
| us along towards more clean energy.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Why transport energy from far away via expensive cables when
| you can just put some cheap solar panels right next to where
| they are needed?
| CyanLite4 wrote:
| The dirty little secret is that there is little payback for
| retailers to do so.
|
| Walmart could do it at scale, but they already can put
| megawatts of solar on existing roofs for their stores.
| Article mentions several states where solar is discouraged to
| protect monopolies. Not to mention another article out saying
| Republican-led states are actively punishing corporations who
| reduce their emissions. Walmart isn't going to see a
| realistic payback from that investment, and could even face
| backlash. They also sometimes get tax credits and incentives
| from the power company to build a Supercenter in a certain
| area. They do however buy into solar farms to offset their
| carbon.
|
| Other retailers (Trader Joe's or Starbucks) it wouldn't make
| sense for, most lease their buildings and don't have enough
| expertise to take this on. Commercial property owners
| wouldn't care about this.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Walmart in fact has solar installations on many of its
| store roofs and has been putting them there for years.
| thephyber wrote:
| I think your point is very important. Stakeholders other
| than the owners (eg. Renters at apartments, condo owners
| within an HOA, companies that lease office space, etc) want
| at least some of the benefits of solar, but don't have
| enough clout to do it.
|
| Some states in the USA have a "community solar" project
| concept where you can invest in a solar project and the
| power it generates can directly credit your electric bill
| (basically decoupling location from solar ownership). I
| just wish it worked better and more people were investing
| in it.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Walmart has solar panels over its parking lot, here.
|
| If the parking lot and building belong to the developer,
| _they_ can put up the solar farm. Besides pocketing the
| extra revenue, they can attract better tenants or offer
| better prices than the competition.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Transmission losses might only be 5%. You can make up for
| that by putting panels in sunnier locations (Mojave desert vs
| SF) at better angles and with economies of scale. A homeowner
| with rooftop solar will spend more servicing panels than a
| large scale operator.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Desert is a dumb place for a solar farm. Far from users,
| damn hot, and collect dust.
|
| Farm fields, pastures, canals, lakes, and reservoirs are
| smart places for solar.
| adrianN wrote:
| Because the cost of the panels is a shrinking part of the
| cost of a solar installation, but the work of the contractors
| is cheaper when you don't have to install them at a height
| where cars can fit under them.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Smarter greener move is to not have surface-level parking in the
| first place.
|
| We know how to build green. We know what it looks like. It looks
| like dense, urban living. There's a reason the lowest carbon
| state is New York, and the lowest carbon nation per-GDP is
| France.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Okay, but in places where surface-level parking already exists,
| why not put solar over it?
| panick21_ wrote:
| Because that makes it that those parking lots will stay there
| for 25 more years. You want to remove these parking lots
| systematically from any kind of urban or even subburban
| environment as soon as possible. Not invest more into them.
| That is a far more worthy investment.
| emj wrote:
| Looking at Rutger campus, used as an example in the
| article, https://osm.org/go/ZctEjpw05- up to 50% of the
| area seems to be for car infrastructure. That's a lot of
| area.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It doesn't imply that the parking lots will stay there for
| 25 more years. It implies that until it is more valuable to
| construct something else on that land, the PV array would
| remain there for 25 more years. Whether or not parking is
| allowed under the array is entirely orthogonal.
| onethought wrote:
| France is not the lowest, it's beaten by a host of other
| countries:
|
| - France 0.1
|
| - Sweden 0.06
|
| - Somalia 0.04
|
| - Congo 0.03
|
| In fact a lot of countries in Europe/South America hover around
| the 0.1 mark.
| downvotetruth wrote:
| Roof is still an option.
| eliaspro wrote:
| The German state of Baden-Wurttemberg mandates PV on all car
| parks (>35 cars) and all new private and commercial buildings
| since 2022.
|
| https://www.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/service/presse/pressemi...
| (German)
| martijnvds wrote:
| I've read some horror stories about big solar installations not
| getting a license to be connected to the grid after
| installation (either because the grid is "full" or because of
| bureaucracy working super slowly).
|
| Is that a problem there as well, or is that more of a local
| issue in some (other) areas of the country?
| phito wrote:
| I don't know about Germany, but here in Belgium my house
| solar panels have not been working for about 2 years now.
| There are too many solar panels in the street injecting
| electricity on the lines, during sunny days the voltage goes
| over the ondulator's safety threshold and everything stops.
|
| There's been about 2500 complaints about this last year in my
| region of this small country. And the company in charge of
| the grid refuse to give any compensations.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Your panels are still working fine. Essentially, your
| problem is that you supplier is unwilling to invest in
| storage and management systems and doesn't provide inter-
| connectivity to the grid.
|
| Could you create a separate grid in your home? Off-grid or
| maybe hybrid, having no connection to your domestic power
| connections nor the supply. You'll be able to reuse nearly
| all of the existing solar equipment and will just need to
| invest a bit more to re-architect some of the electrical
| system in your home.
|
| It may be a little awkward to use, since you'll be
| sometimes unplugging appliances from one supply to another.
| But if you were willing to invest in energy storage too,
| there'd be more consistency from your solar and less need
| to unplug appliances.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You don't need a separate grid, just use a product like
| [1] to connect the grid to your house and a battery[2],
| and then connect the solar panels to the battery.
|
| North American products pictured, European versions
| probably available, but perhaps from a different vendor.
|
| 1: https://us.ecoflow.com/products/smart-home-panel 2:
| https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-pro-portable-power-
| sta...
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| Easier option is a Reliance Generator Transfer switch.
| Low-tech, but easy to install and can individually select
| which circuits are powered via solar or grid.
| fanf2 wrote:
| Do you have a home battery? I heard about similar problems
| in the Netherlands, and that although there is a lot of
| distributed solar generation there isn't much distributed
| battery storage.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Who would have thought "solar is producing way too much
| power" would be a problem that power companies have the
| legal ability to complain about...
|
| I'm shaking my head over here. 2 years.. They could have
| gotten together with the public to lobby for their ability
| to sell power to other places, or built some type of power-
| intensive value producer (desalination? hydrogen?).. They
| could be far richer than if they just sell power to
| residences.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| The worst part is that it implies that the local grid is
| also undersized for a major power draw
| (Heatwave/Blizzard) since as the AC grid is essentially
| bi-directional the solar would have to both surpass that
| _after_ the base draw of the regular buildings before the
| overvoltage start causing problems
|
| I mean unless your on nuclear or something that takes
| entire days to throttle up or down in which case
| congratulations you are now on a 100% green grid
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| The power co's have a legal monopoly and in the vast
| majority of states the commission that regulates these
| utilities have members that are open bought-and-paid for
| by the utilities. Thus, they'll never realistically stand
| a chance unless someone came along with a bigger
| checkbook. There aren't many companies that want to get
| into the power business these days that have billions of
| dollars and the know-how to operate power plants and all
| the distribution to reach nearly every home.
|
| However, this is ripe for disrupting like Uber did by
| skirting laws in many areas. Could it possibly be legal
| to 'provide' power and create a residential subdivision
| with a microgrid and the price is part of the sale of the
| house?
| dwiel wrote:
| It is possible you could get away with that in some
| places, but everywhere I've lived in the US, it is
| illegal to sell electricity to your neighbors. The only
| way around it I've seen is to give it away for free, but
| it is hard to build a scalable business around that.
| prvit wrote:
| You could always structure it like http://duuber.com/ If
| it works for drug dealers, perhaps it can work for
| electricity? :)
| technofiend wrote:
| Now that solar panels are trending down in price it seems
| IMHO the real disruption will be when batteries similarly
| become cheap enough that homeowners may disconnect
| completely from the grid or at least make solar the
| majority of their energy supply.
|
| If that happens energy companies will at that point be
| lobbying to force endusers to stay on grid to continue
| subsidizing maintenance.
|
| We aren't at that tipping point yet but with large tax
| breaks coming for EV ownership, an EV vehicle also makes
| a great way to dump "excess" solar power. Enough so that
| gas stations will start disappearing over the next few
| decades as well. Again, IMHO.
|
| If batteries get cheap enough it might make sense for an
| entrepreneur to sell or lease solar+battery+charger to
| people who want to sublet part of their property, crowd
| sourcing EV charging.
| joshspankit wrote:
| In many cases (and more by the day as companies lobby for
| it) it's actually illegal for homeowners to be
| disconnected from the grid.
|
| I mention it here because it's important to watch out for
| these types of laws and vote as neccessary
| rr808 wrote:
| > the company in charge of the grid refuse to give any
| compensations.
|
| The grid is expensive to maintain and it isn't there to
| deliver solar power the other way, there is no reason why
| it would compensate you. Next when Solar is generating the
| wholesale price is usually low, so really you shouldn't get
| paid much anyway.
|
| The final problem with Solar in Northern countries is that
| in cold Winter nights you want to get power from the grid
| and use the infrastructure which most of the year now
| doesn't make any money. So either you should pay very high
| electricity prices in those periods ie several Euro/kwH
| (which isn't politically acceptable) or realistically solar
| should be restricted in the first place.
|
| Lol if you're going to downvote me, tell me why residential
| solar deserves to get paid as much as it is.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| https://www.nrel.gov/state-local-tribal/basics-value-of-
| sola...
|
| Has some useful info.
| rr808 wrote:
| > compensated for solar PV generation at a separate VOS
| rate in dollars per kilowatt hour ($/kWh). The VOS rate
| accounts for solar PV's benefits to stakeholders net its
| costs.
|
| Yes this is what is needed. The problem with Northern
| Europe is that the VOS would be so tiny people wouldn't
| bother.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think that. Germany literally puts
| out tenders for rooftop solar and businesses bid to
| provide it.
|
| Why would they be going to all the bother of buying it if
| it had no value?
| ericd wrote:
| Load shifting is a thing. Create the conditions for solar
| overproduction, and we will adapt to use it. Hot water
| production can be done primarily during the day.
| Thermostats can treat houses as thermal batteries. And
| batteries will likely become a lot more common. A single
| night's worth of battery storage doesn't add all that
| much to the cost of a house. 30 kWh of lithium iron
| phosphate batteries can be had for $10k.
| rr808 wrote:
| Yes but you can't load shift over seasons. The OP is in
| Belgium, in Winter solar is not strong enough during the
| day to charge your batteries to get you through the
| night.
| ericd wrote:
| Right, the point is that overprovisioning solar is not a
| bad thing, and that it shouldn't be restricted. Not
| saying that it's sufficient on its own. Unless it somehow
| became so cheap that it was reasonable to overbuild to an
| extreme, and we had good energy sinks for peak times. If
| we became serious about direct air capture, for example,
| there might be an argument for it.
| kolinko wrote:
| That sucks. In Poland there are similar problems, but
| surprisingly the electricity company fixes that in a short
| period of time, usually.
|
| Surprisingly, because I would expect them to act exactly
| how you said :)
| xiwenc wrote:
| Out of curiosity, with my non-educated guess, why cant your
| system drop or stop producing electricity when it overloads
| the system? This way at least you can power your residence
| with solar power and drop the excess. Of course it's stupid
| of the energy grid/infra company's inability to "buy" cheap
| electricity. But at least it's not a huge loss for you.
| p_l wrote:
| That's apparently what happens - the solar panel control
| system trips due to high voltage caused by overproduction
| from solar panels into grid.
|
| Better than the stories of exploding substations being a
| Belgian plague that I heard from electric grid engineer
| few years ago
| towaway15463 wrote:
| It's not stupid to shut off overproduction from flooding
| the grid just as it's not stupid to shut off your tap
| when the bathtub is full. What is stupid is building so
| much solar that there is no where for the energy to go
| during peak production hours. Everybody is gung ho to put
| cheap panels on their roof but no one is footing the bill
| for adding storage without which all that power
| production just goes to waste.
| brazzy wrote:
| > What is stupid is building so much solar that there is
| no where for the energy to go during peak production
| hours.
|
| That's not stupid at all, it's unavoidable if you want to
| still have enough energy when you don't have peak
| production. Given how cheap solar is getting, it may even
| be more economical. And you always have the option to add
| storage later, when it becomes more economical (which it
| isn't yet).
| implements wrote:
| I guess it depends on how smart OP's inverter is.
|
| It sounds like it's grid-tie only - so it just shuts down
| when the local grid is over-voltage. Ideally you'd want
| something that could run in an isolated mode, if only to
| supply power to something useful like an electric water
| heater.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| Problem these days are 90% or more of the residential
| solar sold in the U.S. is only AC-coupled and nowadays
| only use micro-inverters. Meaning, when the grid goes
| down your solar is shut down as well. Modern inverters
| following standard UL1741 also will de-sync from the grid
| just from a signal from the PowerCo through frequency
| shifting to shut down your solar and require your house
| to go in grid-only mode (when the grid has too much solar
| production).
|
| Isolated DC-coupled solar is mostly done by DIY folks
| with inverters like Sol-Ark that can do AC or DC-coupling
| and can work when the grid is shutdown. Your solar
| constantly charges your batteries and powers your house
| as a microgrid. Any excess power COULD be sold back to
| the grid, but to avoid the added hassle of
| interconnection agreements, most just store it into a
| larger battery bank for rainy days. The goal here is to
| fully zero out your monthly power bill AND be self-
| sustaining.
| Archelaos wrote:
| A few days ago the Spiegel covered a similar story,
| although not from Baden-Wurttemberg, but from Bavaria:
| https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/service/bei-
| sonnenschein-w...
|
| Since the article is in German, I will give a short summary
| here:
|
| The solar panels of the person concerned are not completely
| off the grid, but the connection was already deactivated
| for more than 90 days this year. However, he is entitled to
| compensation for the electricity not taken, which so far
| amounts to 35,000 Euros.
|
| The article predicts that the problem will worsen rather
| than diminish in the near future, as grid expansion cannot
| keep pace with new installations, affecting wind more than
| solar. However, there is disagreement about whether this is
| a general problem or only a regional one and how long it
| might last. According to the article, a total of 6.1
| terawatt hours of electricity was lost in Germany in 2020
| (the latest available figure) due to downward adjustments.
| brazzy wrote:
| > According to the article, a total of 6.1 terawatt hours
| of electricity was lost in Germany in 2020 (the latest
| available figure)
|
| I don't think it makes sense to count all of that as
| "lost", at least in the sense of framing it as
| mismanagement.
|
| If you want solar to supply a large part of a country's
| electricity, you _have_ to overprovision to cover cloudy
| days, which automatically means that only a very sunny
| day, you 'll produce more electricity than you can use,
| since large-scale storage is not yet feasible.
| Archelaos wrote:
| If I understand it correctly, than it was "lost" not
| because there existed a general overprovision in ther
| European grid, but because the local grid was not able to
| accept and pass on what could theoretically be produced,
| meaning that somewhere else non-renuable energy resources
| were consumed instead. If this is correct, than I think
| it is jusified to speak of a "loss".
| brazzy wrote:
| I think the number given (6.1 terawatt hours) is just the
| total of not-used solar electricity for _any_ reason, and
| the reasons are probably not all that clearly delineated
| and distinguishable. Another factor is that coal and
| nuclear plants _cannot_ be spun down just because you
| have an abundance of solar power for half a day. And that
| 's not the fault of solar power, or the grid, or bad
| planning.
| Archelaos wrote:
| You are very probably right that many different reasons
| have contributed to the figure. To which percentage
| deficits in the grid structure are responsible I do not
| exactly know. But in any case, the topic plays a big role
| in the German mainstream media and politics. According to
| what I hear, the main problem is that the industrial
| energy consumers are predominantly located in the south
| of Germany, while the best locations for wind energy are
| at the coast in the north. This means that Germany needs
| a very different large-scale electricity grid for a
| renewable future. Past governments were rather tardy in
| planning,[1] so that upgrading the grid became the
| limiting factor for a rapid expansion of renewable
| energies.
|
| Something similar I could observe myself on a local scale
| in the region my parents live (also in the state of
| Bavaria, about 100 km away from the person who is
| mentioned in the Spiegel article). There, the limiting
| factor for the size of new solar parks was the capacity
| of the grid nodes in the vicinity. This is of course only
| anecdotal.
|
| [1] They first wanted to build "cheap" overhead power
| lines. After protests from the population along the
| planned routes, they changed their minds and decided in
| favour of underground cables and had to start planing
| again. Unfortunately, it took more than two years for
| them to change their minds. (And of course, it was not
| them that were responsible for the delay, but the evil
| protesters, generally long procedures and nonsensical
| appeal options.)
| ErikCorry wrote:
| It was Bavarian minister Aigner that in 2015
| blocked/delayed the improved North-South connection.
| Environmental organizations opposed the connection
| completely despite the clear environmental benefits. http
| s://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink#Wilster_%E2%80%93_Ber.
| ..
|
| The whole Suedlink process has been a triumph of pseudo-
| environmental Nimbyism over the actual environment and
| now threatens the whole energy stability of Germany in
| the coming energy-crunch winter.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| As of February 2022, in the northeast USA alone, there was
| more than 136GW of backlogged solar capacity awaiting to be
| connected to the grid. This is the rough equivalent of 80-100
| natural gas fired power plants
|
| Source: google search on "PJM Interconnection Backlog"
| btbuildem wrote:
| For a layperson, this seems like such a no-brainer: you're
| basically upgrading open parking lots to car ports. Drivers
| should love that, no?
|
| The lobbying angle explains A LOT. Of course, it's entrenched
| players clinging on to their profits. Oh well.
|
| The cost argument is interesting.. one would think it would be
| cheaper to build on already-developed lots, since no earth-moving
| and other infrastructure work is required -- but it looks like
| the structures must conform to a higher standard. Nobody cares if
| a panel topples in some remote field, but it one falls on
| someone's car, bad press and lawsuits.
|
| I certainly hope things move forward and we see more solar over
| the desolate landscape of the endless parking lots in North
| America. If anything, the promise "free" power to the lot owners
| could tip the scales.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most of the issue is around the funding model of developments.
|
| Basically, the owners of these things are usually syndicated
| and are in the business of harvesting money from taxes via
| accelerated depreciation. Having an asset that is producing
| money breaks the business model... they want to lose money on
| paper for the first few years.
|
| Usually when I see these types of things they are local
| businesses, banks or other entities that actually own their own
| property, or leaseholders making their own improvements to save
| opex. A few Targets near me have solar roofs, for example.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Currently, commercial solar installations can be depreciated
| 100% in the first year, which is a pretty strong tax
| incentive for developers. This is scheduled to reduce to 20%
| for systems placed in service after 2022. I haven't looked at
| the new energy bill so not sure if it would extend the
| current treatment.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| In the case of Edison Electrical Institute, your own utility
| might pay dues to them --- to lobby against your interests as a
| consumer. I think utilities are not required to report trade
| association dues on your bill.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > one would think it would be cheaper to build on already-
| developed lots, since no earth-moving and other infrastructure
| work is required
|
| Nope - trenching through a concrete or blacktop parking lot is
| much more work than running conduit on undeveloped land. Also,
| you've got to shut down your parking lot for a few weeks to do
| the work.
|
| It makes sense to do when building a new parking lot, in fact I
| see that kinda frequently these days, but retrofitting one
| seems like a lot of work
| dehrmann wrote:
| One reason I'm not confident in solar is there are a lot of
| small-scale installations, but fewer large ones. If the
| economics of it are so great, you'd think economies of scale
| and better locations would make it more cost effective than
| small installations. My theory about what's going on is there
| are tax breaks for small scale operators that make it
| marginally profitable on paper.
| nrp wrote:
| In the US, 70% of solar power is generated at utility-scale
| plants: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-
| solar-is-fou...
| mark-r wrote:
| That makes sense; power utilities have lots of money, and
| they're going to build new plants to provide power,
| that's their job. As solar power becomes cheaper relative
| to other options and has intangible benefits too, it will
| increasingly become the power plant of choice. I'm not
| sure the efficiencies of small vs. large solar even enter
| into the calculus. The transmission lines are a known
| part of the picture and largely already exist.
| glogla wrote:
| There's a lot of large scale installations, see https://en.
| m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_s...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Small scale costs slightly more due to economies of scale,
| but it also distributes the power sources and so cuts
| transmission costs and adds redundancy.
|
| Overall, as PV panel prices continue to trend downwards,
| we'll see less big installation in sunny places (which
| originally were the only ones that made financial sense) to
| more, smaller installs as other costs come to dominate the
| equations.
| jcims wrote:
| This must be passing a tipping point. I live in a very
| nondescript part of Ohio and there are about 12,000 acres
| of land incorporated into three different solar farms
| proposed, approved or under construction within 20 miles of
| my home.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Nope - trenching through a concrete or blacktop parking lot
| is much more work than running conduit on undeveloped land.
|
| that is true, but on the flipside you can avoid a lot of the
| trenching by putting the conduits in the structure of the
| canopy. The other important thing to note is that large
| buildings tend to have large substations near by, so the
| actual amount of trenching required is a lot less.
|
| However it does require a lump of capital to do, and it only
| makes sense really for the corporation that owns the land to
| do it.
| rufus-overhead wrote:
| I worked at this New Jersey facility when the parking lot
| solar was installed. The parking availability was only
| minimally impacted. Base pylons were installed over a period
| of about a month. That involved condoning off a small section
| of the lot while a crew cut a four foot square through the
| asphalt then used an powered auger to quickly excavate for
| the concrete pour. As I recall the crew completed a couple of
| those per day. The final installation of mounting structure,
| panels and electrical connections was done over a number of
| weekends. There was no trenching involved. As I recall the
| construction went surprisingly fast. I spoke with one of the
| building maintenance supervisors a couple of months after
| completion. He stated they were extremely happy with the
| power savings and return on investment. https://www.google.co
| m/maps/@40.8458928,-74.0970349,3a,75y,1...
|
| * edited out reference to surviving hurricane. Can't recall
| exact year this went up.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Also, you've got to shut down your parking lot for a few
| weeks to do the work.
|
| Would you have to shut down the _whole_ parking lot for roof
| work?
|
| It's anecdotal, but most parking lots I've seen around LA
| seemed to have an open top floor which was mostly empty since
| people presumably prefer their cars to be shaded. I know I
| specifically didn't want to leave my motorbike on the top
| floor for this specific reason.
|
| So adding solar panels, which would add shape, would
| basically increase the parking lot floor.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > parking lots I've seen around LA seemed to have an open
| top floor
|
| That would more commonly be called a parking _garage_ or
| _structure_ , a parking lot as referred to in the article
| is just an open, paved area of ground. I suspect the
| construction issues for the top floor of a parking
| structure are different from those of ground-level
| installation with no existing vertical structure. Also, by
| their very nature, parking garages most likely have
| significantly less square footage on the top floor than a
| parking lot for the same number of vehicles.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I just did an installation on my roof. We have very high
| winds in my area, so I went with a provider that already did
| a few dozen roofs in my area. I was surprised to see that the
| frames are not bolted to the roof, rather, they are bolted to
| concrete blocks which sit on pads on the roof. Each 300W
| solar panel feels like it weighs no more than 5 kilograms,
| the bolted aluminium frames look very easy to scale
| inexpensively. There are no trenches, rather, DC conduits run
| the length of the panels. I confidently hang out with my 7
| year old under the solar panels for a good half hour.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > We have very high winds in my area
|
| Here's a point that worries me slightly. With climate
| change comes more turbulent weather, and increased winds
| everywhere. Surely the first casualties of a gale or
| hurricane are panels. The bigger the area, the more
| vulnerable the installation.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Surely the first casualties of a gale or hurricane are
| panels.
|
| Actually, windmills.
|
| Seriously, I asked my electrical inspector why there are
| so few domestic-y scale windmills in my part of New
| Mexico, where for several months a year we have raging
| wind every day. "Nobody builds one that can last more
| than a year or so out here".
|
| The panels, on the other hand, are just fine.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Nearby, in windy and desolate Colorado, SunEdison has
| three big arrays, each with a different mounting
| technology:
|
| 1) fixed-tilt, seasonally-adjustable, flat-panel PV
|
| 2) single-axis-tracking, flat-panel PV
|
| 3) dual-axis-tracking, concentrator photovoltaics
| ncmncm wrote:
| Oddly enough, existing standards take weather extremes
| into account.
|
| Nice concern troll.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > concern troll
|
| That's a little rude and uncalled for isn't it?
| lovemenot wrote:
| It was a little rude, certainly.
|
| Whether uncalled-for or not depends on your intent. Only
| you are in a position to know for sure. My own feeling
| was that the comment was mostly deserved.
|
| Objections and problems raised against proposed solutions
| to critical issues, just left for someone else to solve
| _feels_ disingenuous. Whether not it actually is.
|
| Maybe, next time try to solve your own objections and we
| won't get the drama.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It does seem strangely rude.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It struck me as rude. But I also understand that too much
| time on HN (in particular) and I can get a little put off
| by some of the cynicism I see in the comments.
|
| Is the cynicism concern trolling? I'm not sure. Certainly
| there are people "with agendas" that would toss cynical
| remarks into a discussion thread like they were _thought-
| grenades_.
|
| But the more erudite leanings of HN also attracts a kind
| of skepticism from people who want to post as naysayers
| because it suggests they have already perceived the
| issue, saw its failings, and have moved on ...
| intellectually.
|
| I hate to even post the above because I'm pointing too
| many fingers and don't wish to put anyone on the
| defensive. (There are other reasons I am sure someone
| would post a contrarian comment.) I wanted to explain
| though why I don't immediately jump to "concern troll"
| when I see a negative comment put forth on a story about
| a very progressive idea.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Why dig trenches? Run the wiring in the overhead canopy.
| extra88 wrote:
| Maybe, but underground wires avoids problems caused by
| storms or people driving into structures.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Make the wires run through newly created speed bumps.
| It's a parking lot, and limiting speed should secure the
| panels even more.
| pjerem wrote:
| People driving into structures is already a solved issue
| in any covered parking, solar or not. We know how to
| build structures on steel poles that does not fall apart
| when people accidentally hit them with their car. You can
| even add steel bumpers around the poles like in any
| covered parking lot.
| extra88 wrote:
| You don't have to do the whole lot at once, it could be done
| one segment at a time. And many lots are underutilized most
| of the time, built to accommodate the need at peak times of
| year.
| zdragnar wrote:
| That means really inefficient scheduling of the different
| teams involved in making such a project happen. It'll drive
| up the cost significantly to have them start and stop
| multiple times, perhaps to the point of making it entirely
| uneconomical. Labor is already the largest cost of solar
| projects, after all
| ncmncm wrote:
| None of that is true.
|
| They can do one or two rows at a time without blocking
| use of the rest of the lot, and without stopping and
| starting.
|
| Labor is most commonly a tiny fraction of the cost of a
| solar installation, home rooftop excepted.
| zdragnar wrote:
| You need to break up the asphalt for trenches, dig down
| and set cement foundation for the solar frames, run
| electrical, repave and install the panels themselves. Oh,
| and once the fresh asphalt is cured, repaint the lines.
|
| You are _much_ better off doing an entire parking lot at
| once, or maybe half at a time, than you are doing
| multiple sections, as that work isn 't all done be the
| same people.
| Teever wrote:
| Comments like this bug me.
|
| If America had this kind of attitude during world war two
| it never would have supplied the world with the machines
| needed to win the war.
|
| Not only is this easier than previous mobilization
| against existential threats but we have better
| technologies for communicating and computing than ever
| before.
|
| If the logistical problem of coordinating underpaid
| illegal undocumented workers to shift between the walmart
| parking lot and home depot parking lot with surplus
| workers going and banging out a few McDonald's and
| Denny's restaurants is too much I gotta say we're fucked
| man.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is just concern trolling.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| In crowded city centers, i doubt wind would be fast enough to
| topple panels.
|
| Even so, the frames are sturdy enough to hold the panels
| against strong winds.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| Crowded city centres have _more_ wind due to the Venturi
| Effect, not less.
| rob74 wrote:
| Generally there are no huge parking lots in crowded city
| centers (or, if there were, they would be shaded by the
| highrise buildings producing the Venturi effect, so no good
| for solar panels), so the problem would take care of
| itself. But anyway, I don't think engineering a roof over a
| parking lot so it can support a solar panel and not fall
| over is an unsolvable problem.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| I agree but the OP is the one who brought up crowded city
| centres like that was relevant to the amount of wind. I
| don't understand what relationship they were trying to
| suggest there.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| No one is talking about the grid connection and batteries
| though. You will need batteries somewhere because demand and
| supply don't match.
|
| Then there is servicing the solar. And engineering/architecture
| bespoke to each case. I can see how a large solar farm might
| make all that more efficient.
|
| Put it this way, home solar is not always a no-brainer,
| financially, and that doesn't usually involve building a
| structure, just attaching them to a roof.
| prawn wrote:
| For commercial installations, demand and supply often match
| very well. They're not trying to get off grid but reduce
| bills. Whereas many homes with working parents and school age
| children are using power after sunset, for offices and
| shopping centres, they're running something like air-
| conditioning while the sun's up.
|
| Where I live, home solar pays for itself in 4-5 years; for
| our office building, it was 3-4 years.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Home solar is strictly more expensive than utility solar.
|
| If your area allows you to opt into power from a solar farm,
| and pay the solar farm's rates, jump on it.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Why is car park solar not more expensive then?
|
| Say you have 1000 car parks, 1000 plans you need to send to
| local governments, 1000 architectural plans to deal with,
| and son on.
|
| Some of the things will scale but a lot wont.
| ericcumbee wrote:
| if you own 1000 parking lots you already did that, if you
| pulled a permit to repave them you've done it again.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| Solar panels must also be maintained.
|
| Even a canopy without electronics on it, or a lot without a
| canopy on it, must be maintained to some degree. And parking
| lots are often mandated, with a specified capacity, for every
| use.
|
| Now that we're in an era where cities are moving toward
| eliminating cars from the road, reducing parking lot acreage,
| and easing those aforementioned mandates. So, as a business,
| we'll want to calculate the tradeoffs of installation and
| maintenance, as well as the understanding that we're less able
| or willing to demolish a productive solar array when I need to
| build something else in its stead.
|
| Installing solar arrays over a parking lot may essentially
| lock-in that desolate acreage while the value of the land
| underneath them begins to ramp up.
| foogazi wrote:
| I've seen solar go up in CA school parking lots:
| https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2017/03/11/solar-power-i...
| mgerdts wrote:
| Each of these installations could be paired with charging
| infrastructure appropriate for the location. Around office
| buildings where the typical stay is several hours, charges could
| exist in many or most stalls to charge cars through the work day.
| Retail where the stay is typically shorter would focus on rapid
| chargers. Some would focus on those that are shopping, others
| would replace the gas station on the edge of the lot.
|
| Every sufficiently large building has a loading dock. Those that
| get regular use with trucks that sit there for a while (trailers
| loaded and unloaded while the driver waits) could have rapid
| chargers for trucks.
|
| Some battery capacity would be needed to account for grid
| limitations in some areas. This would be a great second life for
| degraded car batteries. If the batteries are near full while the
| short term expectation is for high generation, the price could
| drop.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Retail where the stay is typically shorter would focus on
| rapid chargers. Some would focus on those that are shopping,
| others would replace the gas station on the edge of the lot.
|
| L2 chargers is what we desperately need. L3 chargers should be
| reserved to be built at long range locations.
|
| L2 chargers at a grocery store could give you ~40 miles in an
| hour. Enough to cover your daily commute.
|
| Put a bunch of L1 chargers in an office garage. They'll do
| around 4 miles in an hour.
|
| The reason to do it this way is because the same L3 connection
| doing a single 350kW charger can power ~30 L2 chargers. The
| circuit doing a single L2 chargers can power 10 L1 connections.
|
| We can reasonably put a slow charger pretty much anywhere
| someone would park. These slow chargers hardly impact the grid
| and are cheap to add.
| fnbr wrote:
| Are L1 vs L2 vs L3 chargers radically different in cost? Or
| is it that you want to provision charging speed proportional
| to the power being supplied from solar at the business?
| cogman10 wrote:
| For L1 and L2, the cost is all based on the cost of the
| circuit. Lower power means more cars charging at the same
| time.
|
| This is because all EVs have an AC to DC converter (L1 and
| 2 are AC, just different voltages).
|
| L3 ends up being a lot more expensive due to the high
| powered AC to DC converter required and usually a dedicated
| power line.
|
| Further, because of the amount of amps being pushed, L3
| chargers need special cabling (usually liquid cooled).
| notacoward wrote:
| > Are L1 vs L2 vs L3 chargers radically different in cost?
|
| Short answer: yes. L1 to L2 isn't _that_ dramatic - it 's
| typically a 240V 40A separate circuit, which is not
| something to dick around with lightly but pretty easy stuff
| for a regular electrician. L2 to L3 is a very different
| ballgame, involving specialist installers and interacting
| with the power company to get a fatter circuit. Even a
| single 100kW charger needs a circuit that would be at the
| high end of what most people get for their whole house, so
| for a bank of them you're equivalent to a whole
| subdivision.
|
| I agree with GP that L2 is the way to go for most parking
| lots. It's enough to provide more charge than the round
| trip took for most visitors, and you can have a bunch of
| them. Also you don't have to deal with different charging
| standards; J1772 is practically universal. You could put in
| even more L1, but you'll quite likely to have more than you
| have customers (at one time) to use them and those
| customers won't get as much charge back as they consumed
| for the visit. For something like a corporate campus where
| people stay all day it makes more sense, and an apartment
| complex likewise except that you'd need some local storage
| to "time shift" from the sunny day to the occupied night.
|
| Also, while I'm here, I'll raise another point that I
| haven't seen mentioned. The shade provided by a parking-lot
| solar array isn't just a matter of comfort or aesthetics.
| When it comes to charging EVs, it also allows faster
| charging and/or can help extend battery life. It's rare to
| find two technologies that complement each other so well.
| hk1337 wrote:
| At the very least it would provide shade for cars and power the
| lighting for when it gets dark.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Here's one in Montpellier France:
|
| https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.5849703,3.8875289,133a,35y,39...
| chefnote wrote:
| This is a good idea. Hope it gets shared wider.
| dabiged wrote:
| This has become very popular in Australia with both of the big
| retailers, Coles and Woolworths.
| sumedh wrote:
| Which city?
| prawn wrote:
| Here's an example in South Australia:
| https://binged.it/3vKGbm5 (panels on the buildings and over
| the parking areas)
| olivermarks wrote:
| IMO solar over tarmac and concrete urban areas is a good idea,
| but not on grass/dirt if it can be avoided
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Flinders University (South Australia) covered some large
| carparking with solar panels just a couple of years ago. The
| solution to the problem of funding seemed to be to get the staff
| and students to subsidise it through drastically increased
| parking fees. The idea rapidly turned from popular to unpopular,
| though was implemented anyway.
| sumedh wrote:
| > The idea rapidly turned from popular to unpopular, though was
| implemented anyway.
|
| Do they have good public transport?
| prawn wrote:
| They're at the intersection of a couple of major arterials
| including _the_ major arterial, so I 'd guess public
| transport to be as good as anything suburban relying on
| buses.
|
| There are always complaints about parking costs for hospitals
| (including one adjacent to this university) so that rise may
| have been inevitable and just muddied the issue?
| bilsbie wrote:
| You'd get the added benefit of gas savings for the vehicles
| parked under then not having to cool down with AC. Maybe not a
| huge difference.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Here in Tasmania, Launceston airport has a carpark with a 20kW
| solar canopy covering the roof of the covered parking area.
|
| https://www.driveparkfly.com.au/about-us/
| prawn wrote:
| There's a shopping centre in Adelaide with 1MW of solar
| canopies and 1.3MW on the roof. That project started in 2018:
| https://www.castleplaza.com.au/centre-info/learn-about-our-s...
| ncmncm wrote:
| You get 20 kW by covering just three spaces.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Yeah, could be more, but it something at least.
|
| Probably some cost / benefit analysis went on there that we
| wouldn't know about from the website.
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| WalMart should do this and become a net energy producer.
| panick21_ wrote:
| WalMart lobbies hard to make sure all their buildings have
| basically zero value as it reduced property taxes. They will
| put up the cheapest possible building and invest absolutely
| nothing into it. They deprecate it very quickly. Investing on
| solar panels on the roof or the parking lot just means more
| investment in a specific location that they don't care about.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| As has been noted elsewhere, at present commercial solar PV
| can be 100% depreciated in the first year.
|
| This is about to change, however.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I wish, in Phoenix, they would make this a requirement on all new
| construction and also require old construction to retrofit in the
| next 20 years. We absolutely need it here, and the places that do
| have it, it's wonderful.
|
| I actually think at some point people will _prefer_ to patronize
| locations that have solar shading over ones that don't. And just
| think: if they generate enough power they might be able to
| compete on prices by supplementing profits with solar generation.
| washbrain wrote:
| I wonder how this impacts carbon vs, say, eliminating the parking
| lot and encouraging better public transit and biking and using
| the reclaimed space for more housing or commerce.
| proggy wrote:
| I have similar thoughts. Surface parking lots are often targets
| for infill development of residential / commercial structures,
| which if built intelligently can increase density and therefore
| walkability / bikeability. I'd imagine adding solar panel
| canopies to surface parking lots increases their value
| significantly, reinforcing the car-centric land use pattern and
| making it more difficult to replace them. It is far more energy
| efficient to walk short distances in a dense urban grid than it
| is to drive long distances between buildings that are separated
| by oceans of parking lots.
|
| All that said, this is still a good solution for the land use
| pattern we have today. When it comes to environmentalism I'm of
| the view that perfect can often be the enemy of good.
| D-Coder wrote:
| If a large company (let's say Walmart) offered free recharging
| for EVs in their parking lots, that might bring more customers
| in. Your car needs an hour for recharging, might as well be right
| in front of the store.
| thatsamonad wrote:
| The Walmart near us has a set of EV chargers in its parking lot
| that offer free charging for up to 2 hours. I bought my first
| EV earlier this year and I've definitely visited that Walmart
| more than I ever would before because it's convenient to get a
| quick charge in and grab a few groceries, etc, I might need
| anyway.
| simon_000666 wrote:
| Challenge here is too much solar destabilizes the grid and
| there's not enough peaker plants/other sources to handle to
| variation in generation/load. The reason residential makes more
| sense is that it's consumed at source. I don't know the power
| draw needs of supermarkets but I doubt it warrants fully covered
| parking lots. Residential is better because it decentralizes
| power generation more and puts more power in the hands of
| consumers.
| prawn wrote:
| I would've thought that the average shopping mall is
| heating/cooling a lot more space (including high ceilings), a
| lot more often, and often during the day when solar is active
| and many households are empty? Large businesses run heating,
| cooling and lighting at times when I, being home, would not
| bother.
|
| I knew someone who owned a small shopping centre and years ago
| he'd already put solar on the roof and was charging tenants for
| electricity he was soon-enough getting "for free" (given the
| installation paid for itself fairly quickly).
|
| Here's an example of one in Australia - panels on the shopping
| centre's roof, and then solar canopies over the parking areas:
| https://binged.it/3vKGbm5 (Bing Maps since Google Maps has
| older satellite images for that area)
| ncmncm wrote:
| Strangely, power system engineers are not complaining about
| destabilized grids. Solar can be turned off instantly if it
| were ever a problem. In the future all the grids will also have
| plentiful storage, and be overwhelmingly more stable than
| today.
| simon_000666 wrote:
| Hmm, it's anecdotal but I know several grid engineers in the
| UK and Europe who are employees to deal with exactly that
| problem and spend most of their time complaining about the
| instability caused to a grid that needs investment to adjust
| to the new reality.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj6734
| II2II wrote:
| My instinctive response: if the parking lot is too large to
| generate power that will be consumed at the source, it is yet
| another reason to consider parking lots as inefficient land
| use.
|
| My second response: if society considers the electric
| automobile as an acceptable substitute for efficient land use
| and transportation infrastructure, perhaps we should be
| mandating this form of in situ power generation for automobiles
| so that people who make more environmentally sustainable
| decisions and those who cannot afford an automobile do not end
| up subsidizing power for those who choose to drive.
|
| EDIT, just to be clear: I commented on electric cars since they
| are a way to consume power at the source.
| simon_000666 wrote:
| True, that's a good point, I had forgotten about the idea
| that they could be used to charge a new electric fleet which
| would require a lot more electricity than the supermarket
| alone. In that case it makes sense, the supermarket becomes
| the petrol pump (which it was to an extent anyway). Surely
| then it's just a case of time, when the market economics make
| sense and supermarkets can make money out of it they will do
| it anyway.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Your first line is a common misconception (though the rest is
| solid).
|
| Solar and wind can switch themselves off very easily, so having
| too much is never a problem.
|
| In fact, having "too much" is generally the cheapest option and
| something every sane grid is aiming for right now.
|
| Once you actually have too much you can start to think of
| clever things to do with it, but again, that's the step after
| having "too much" because it's cheaper.
| koheripbal wrote:
| From an economics perspective, his first point is exactly
| correct.
|
| Solar dumps tons of nearly free energy when it's sunny in
| summer, but produces much less in the winter, and even less
| on random bad weather days/weeks. ...and zero after dusk.
|
| This has the impact of flooding the market periodically which
| makes financing the alternative power much more expensive.
|
| In that environment, the plants you turn to for such rapid
| on/off production are burning fossil fuels.
|
| You could also do nuclear, but there's no benefit to turning
| nuclear off, it actually obviates building any solar for
| day/summer/clearskies-only production.
|
| This would all be obviated if batteries were cost-effective,
| but they aren't yet.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > In that environment, the plants you turn to for such
| rapid on/off production are burning fossil fuels.
|
| This is the exact opposite of the truth.
|
| The problem you're vaguely referencing, the so called duck
| curve, was a problem _because_ fossil fuel plants can 't
| ramp as fast as renewables.
|
| One of the many existing solutions to this solved problem
| was in fact to ask the gas plants to ramp a bit faster,
| which they actually could do, they'd just never had to
| before. Still not as fast as renewables though.
|
| The real reason we turn the fossil fuel plants off when we
| can and only turn them on when we really have to is because
| burning fossil fuels is expensive and polluting.
|
| But luckily we can quickly minimize that, and save money,
| by building lots of renewables. And, as an added bonus,
| renewables and batteries ability to turn on and off so
| quickly provides many grid stability benefits that earn
| them money on top of the electricity they sell.
| tiku wrote:
| You can even farm under them, but it will cost a lot of extra
| material to put them up higher and you lose some space.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is not efficient. Farming requires many centralized
| functions not scalable in an urban environment.
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