There's a lot of entirely unsupported statements here that seem to be nothing more than uneducated opinion.
You assume there's still a lot of rooftop space that doesn't already have solar on it. SK has very high population density and long started moving toward "less efficient" installs like balcony solar because most 'easy' rooftops already have solar on them. Remember: the rest of the world is way ahead of the US on this stuff. The UK for example regularly sees nearly 100% renewable powering of their grid plus 'recharging' their pumped hydro and BSS reserves.
You declare that covered parking solar is more expensive than rooftop, with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Rooftop solar involves a great deal of site-specific design work, and a ton of on-site, dangerous labor, and usually has to meet tighter code standards. Rooftop work is some of the most dangerous work one can do; that makes it more expensive labor but also injuries and deaths have a substantial cost to society. And labor has to be more skilled.
Parking lot solar setups can be almost entirely assembled in factories, highly standardized down to just about the ground. That reduces parts, eases supply chains, sales inventory, repairs, etc. Final bolt-together and wiring connections are fast, easy, and don't require skilled labor. "Bolt this stuff together, plug this into this." Used or partially damaged systems and their components can be easily repaired or reused elsewhere.
Parking lot solar encompasses a LOT of panels which is more efficient as fixed costs are spread out more; rooftop solar is generally less-so because it's smaller and as mentioned involves a lot of site-specific work.
You ignore the energy savings from the cars being much cooler and not needing to waste as much energy. Being shaded also means the paint, trim, interior, etc stay in better condition longer.
You ignore that solar on-site coupled with EV chargers on site eliminates a lot of grid transmission losses. In theory a residential complex, employer, retail, or commercial site could set up something like this, pumping most of the energy into the cars parked underneath, and have a fairly small connection to the grid.
Bifacial panels suspended well over the ground can collect a not-insignificant amount of energy from their underside.
Solar panels suspended where they have lots of airflow over and under them run cooler, and produce more electricity.
You don't seem very well informed on the subject and probably shouldn't be commenting so confidently.
> You ignore that solar on-site coupled with EV chargers on site eliminates a lot of grid transmission losses. In theory a residential complex, employer, retail, or commercial site could set up something like this, pumping most of the energy into the cars parked underneath, and have a fairly small connection to the grid.
How many square yards of panels would one EV charger need an a typical afternoon / evening?
A Solar panel produces about 250W peak per square meter. A parking spot can thus produce maybe three kW. A whole parking lot is probably enough for one or two chargers.
> A whole parking lot is probably enough for one or two chargers.
Super chargers, perhaps.
Most people drive so little that even just tiling the vehicles themselves will cover about 50-80% of the milage, albeit with the usual caveats like "seasons" and "who chooses to park in full sun?"
A non-grid tied charger cannot be depended on. You might get 40km worth of charge. You might also get zero if it's cloudy or the sun is behind a building.
You might say, oh this is fine, anything is better than nothing. But someone cheaper than you will think the same thing, and they will leave their car plugged into the charger all day long, because the cost of free surpasses everything. And it means that the charger will never be available.
> You might say, oh this is fine, anything is better than nothing. But someone cheaper than you will think the same thing, and they will leave their car plugged into the charger all day long, because the cost of free surpasses everything. And it means that the charger will never be available.
Two things:
1. Parking itself doesn't have to be free, even if the energy was. (Though I don't expect the energy would ever be free in a case like this, because sending it out to the grid isn't that big a deal, and neither is micro-billing).
2. You seem to be imagining a single isolated parking space in a bigger parking area, whereas the article (if you can call it that, it's the size and depth of a tweet) is saying it is mandatory, at a quoted rate of:
80 or more spaces must install solar power generation facilities with a capacity of at least 100 kilowatts
If this is to be a general requirement across all parking spaces, they don't get hogged, because there's always more parking.
Even better if we could somehow trunk my space’s 3500W of panels with the ones covering the combustion-driven car next to me. And the empty space to my other side…
As opposed me paying indirectly and directly for all the subsidies for the petroleum industry?
> Global explicit subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to around $1.5 trillion in 2022. […] The $7 trillion figure includes the social and environmental costs of fossil fuels.
The article you linked literally talks about fuel subsidies in the UK aimed at reducing the final cost of electricity for households and its vulnerability to rising of fissile fuel prices.
In the UK. A country that was one of the first to transition to renewable energy sources and which currently has one of the most expensive electricity prices. And then, to these "subsidies", losses from "road incidents" are added as other subsidies for fossil fuels.
Sorry, this is very difficult to perceive as an argument, it is literally designed for degenerates without education, who have difficulty understanding the meaning of words put together in sentences, and who, for this reason, evaluate any text by the presence of already familiar slogans in it
Why do you think anybody was operating under the assumption that this was free? But keeping your car topped up now is hardly free either, especially lately, so the question is really about cost comparison. And that's before you get into any externality costs.
They'd also be unhappy with a solar panel that only generated power when a car was plugged in. Fortunately it would still be connected to the grid, resolving both concerns.
Your car already has the battery built right into it, so a trickle charge for eight hours while you're busy at work might be enough to cover your commute.
2 kW over 8 hours would be enough for 100 km per day.
Why? The vast majority of cars spend most of the day stationary. I'd even venture to say most cars spend most of the day stationary in the same spot. If that spot has charging, slow or not, it would likely cover the daily energy used by that vehicle. Aside from road trips, that literally sounds like the perfect charging setup to cover most vehicle use-cases.
Going up thread a bit, I find "and have a fairly small connection to the grid."
Though even without that, so what? The typical commute is not half a battery's worth of kilometres.
And even for the exceptions, you're allowed to have a split between parking spaces labelled "this juice is completely free but slow at the best of times and depends on the weather" and others labelled "this juice costs ¥¥¥/kWh but is backed by that hydro plant and will fill your batteries in 30 minutes".
I would take the gamble somewhere there are 220+ days of sunshine per year, happy to pay occasionally and commute for free the rest of the time.
If anything all the panels can be connected together and charge the bosses cars up first and if there is any daylight left the charging can trickle down the org chart to the masses.
> You ignore the energy savings from the cars being much cooler and not needing to waste as much energy. Being shaded also means the paint, trim, interior, etc stay in better condition longer
There's good points and then there's "let me add some random stuff on top"
You assume there's still a lot of rooftop space that doesn't already have solar on it. SK has very high population density and long started moving toward "less efficient" installs like balcony solar because most 'easy' rooftops already have solar on them. Remember: the rest of the world is way ahead of the US on this stuff. The UK for example regularly sees nearly 100% renewable powering of their grid plus 'recharging' their pumped hydro and BSS reserves.
You declare that covered parking solar is more expensive than rooftop, with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Rooftop solar involves a great deal of site-specific design work, and a ton of on-site, dangerous labor, and usually has to meet tighter code standards. Rooftop work is some of the most dangerous work one can do; that makes it more expensive labor but also injuries and deaths have a substantial cost to society. And labor has to be more skilled.
Parking lot solar setups can be almost entirely assembled in factories, highly standardized down to just about the ground. That reduces parts, eases supply chains, sales inventory, repairs, etc. Final bolt-together and wiring connections are fast, easy, and don't require skilled labor. "Bolt this stuff together, plug this into this." Used or partially damaged systems and their components can be easily repaired or reused elsewhere.
Parking lot solar encompasses a LOT of panels which is more efficient as fixed costs are spread out more; rooftop solar is generally less-so because it's smaller and as mentioned involves a lot of site-specific work.
You ignore the energy savings from the cars being much cooler and not needing to waste as much energy. Being shaded also means the paint, trim, interior, etc stay in better condition longer.
You ignore that solar on-site coupled with EV chargers on site eliminates a lot of grid transmission losses. In theory a residential complex, employer, retail, or commercial site could set up something like this, pumping most of the energy into the cars parked underneath, and have a fairly small connection to the grid.
Bifacial panels suspended well over the ground can collect a not-insignificant amount of energy from their underside.
Solar panels suspended where they have lots of airflow over and under them run cooler, and produce more electricity.
You don't seem very well informed on the subject and probably shouldn't be commenting so confidently.