All Parking Lots with more than 8 spots Should Have Solar Canopies and EV Chargers

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firsttruck

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This is a regulatory problem that has solutions, and yes mandatory imposition of infrastructure in private businesses is quite problematic.
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Almost all of modern society's network infrastructure ( local roads, interstate highways, electrical grid, telephone grid, railroads, pipelines) required mandatory imposition on some or many private businesses.
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Almost all of modern society's network infrastructure ( local roads, interstate highways, electrical grid, telephone grid, railroads, pipelines) required mandatory imposition on some or many private businesses.
Which is why I said it’s problematic
 and why I specified imposition of mandatory infrastructure “in” private businesses, not mandatory infrastructure “on” private property.

Very different discussions.
 

Zapharus

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I didn't mean cover the whole state but the parking lots like France mandated. I assumer that [most] Arizonans don't live in parking lots :)
I was being facetious. Sorry, I forgot to add “/s” at the end of my comment, that’s on me. 😅😬
 

GlockandRoll

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Almost all of modern society's network infrastructure ( local roads, interstate highways, electrical grid, telephone grid, railroads, pipelines) required mandatory imposition on some or many private businesses.
You do realize the difference between building infrastructure in the public domain vs dictating what a private business has to do - right?
One is common in all functioning societies. The other is tyranny.
 

Zapharus

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If Walmart covers their parking lots in solar canopies how will we park our 12+ foot high RVs in the lot to spend the night while on the road? They'll have to jack them up to 14+ feet and the support beams will mean long vehicles will not be able to park in two consecutive spaces. This is currently true where parking lots have trees so I guess that part isn't much different.
There’s a Walmart in San Diego with solar panels covering a large portion of their parking area and the canopy is pretty tall. It’s tall enough to easily accommodate an RV and even if someone stood on top of the RV they wouldn’t be able to reach the top of the canopy.
 


Crissa

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You do realize the difference between building infrastructure in the public domain vs dictating what a private business has to do - right?
One is common in all functioning societies. The other is tyranny.
The line between public and private gets blurry pretty quickly. Building codes apply to all buildings, because no building except maybe a small tent is only there for the occupant.

That private parking lot changes the environment from temperature to water infiltration to pollution from stormwater. It doesn't absorb the wind like a naturally growing patch of forest might, and if it's fenced off it blocks access around the sides, and even if not, it pushes things further apart which might rather be nearer, starving businesses from foot traffic they need to survive. Emergency vehicles need to go around or past it, and might be called to serve in it. And depending upon what's in it might have noise, air, or other pollution or hazards.

Being private doesn't mean it doesn't impact others in the public sphere.

-Crissa
 

Cybertruck Hawaii

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Businesses are just going to wait for a government tax credit before investing in any project. Put it on the government’s dime.
 

mhaze

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It always blows my mind when I'm in the city, in a tall building, looking down at the roofs. Wasted space. ...
Particularly in urban areas where hurricanes are a threat, the solar panels should not be placed on rooftops. They will just become missiles and slam into adjoining structures when hit by 150mph winds.

Instead, all operational and functional human units should wear a solar panel on their head. Most of these units have only one head, so the panel size per unit will be limited to 150 watts.
 
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Solar Canopy Provides Power to Electric Bus Fleet in Montgomery County (Maryland USA)
Transportation Reporter Adam Tuss visits a new bus facility in Montgomery County that will generate energy from the sun to charge a fleet of 70 electric buses.
Sep 15, 2022
NBC4 Washington

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US: Nation’s Largest Solar Bus Charging Project Opens in Montgomery County (Maryland USA)
This is the third microgrid in the US that will use solar power to charge buses for public transportation
Infrastructure by Tiana May
Published 03 Nov 2022
https://bus-news.com/us-nations-largest-solar-bus-charging-project-opens-in-montgomery-county/


Tesla Cybertruck All Parking Lots with more than 8 spots Should Have Solar Canopies and EV Chargers Fga4g4QXgAMJQ6e


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Construction Begins on Integrated Microgrid and Charging Infrastructure Project for Montgomery County Department of Transportation’s RideOn Electric Bus Fleet at Brookville Smart Energy Bus Depot
September 9, 2021
https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Item_ID=38040&Dept=50




Tesla Cybertruck All Parking Lots with more than 8 spots Should Have Solar Canopies and EV Chargers brookvillecollage2


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USGS estimates impervious parking lot coverage for all 3,109 U.S. counties
Jun 21, 2019
https://stormwater.wef.org/2019/06/...rking-lot-coverage-for-all-3109-u-s-counties/

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model estimates, for example, that commercial land has consistently contained the highest percentage of parking lot coverage over the last four decades. In 2012, the model identified just over 12 billion m2 (129.1 billion ft2) of commercial land in the U.S. — about 2.4 billion m2 (25.8 billion ft2), or 20.13%, of which was covered by parking lots. Other types of land use with the most impervious space included industrial and military facilities with 19.58%, and major transportation centers such as train stations and airports with 7.43%.

In all, the model estimates that about 5.5% of all U.S. land was covered by parking lots in 2012, a figure that is growing with each decade.

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Estimating the presence of paved surface parking lots in the conterminous U.S. from land-use coefficients for 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012
Dates Publication Date 2019-04-04 Start Date 1974-01-01 End Date 2012-12-31
https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/5c0ea593e4b0c53ecb2af59f

** data files available. See article.

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GlockandRoll

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I'm so sick of my comments being deleted here.
 

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I'm so sick of my comments being deleted here.
It's tough, I know, I got a strike last go around. It's very easy to go wrong since everything is political, at some level.

But, we gotta live together, and share this site under the host's rules.

I try to make comments when I think I can help the conversation be constructive. At least that's my goal.

-Crissa
 

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I love the idea of solar parking, but I’d suggest if it were some kind of regulation or incentivized that it should only apply to parking areas which receive sunlight at least 70-80% of the day.

If your lot is just north of a tall building, not much point to covering it with solar. Likewise, I don’t want to encourage cutting down trees to put up solar. We have a lot of trees in Oregon, they are quite nice.

There are plenty of areas with exposure which can be used for solar. Large stretches of highway 5 for example.
 

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A way to achieve greater than 100% solar power in the U.S., without sacrificing Arizona
December 12, 2019
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/12...power-in-the-u-s-without-sacrificing-arizona/

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For some quick math, a parking spot can hold about 9 solar modules, if they’re 400 watts each, and we can use half of the roughly 2 billion parking spots in the country – that’d total about 3.6 TW of solar capacity. This might conservatively 5,000 TWh/year – which would all on its own cover US’ approximate usage of 4,000 TWh/year.

** Note: In 2022, most professional solar panels are now 500W - 550W each, 25% more output than 400W panels.

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In France, all large parking lots now have to be covered by solar panels
By Jennifer Mossalgue | Nov 8 2022
https://electrek.co/2022/11/08/france-require-parking-lots-be-covered-in-solar-panels/

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The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.

Big-box stores could help slash emissions and save millions by putting solar panels on roofs. Why aren’t more of them doing it?
By Rachel Ramirez and Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN
Published 3:01 AM EDT, Sun March 20, 2022
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/20/us/solar-power-on-big-box-store-rooftops-climate/index.html


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Why Putting Solar Canopies on Parking Lots Is a Smart Green Move
Solar farms are proliferating on undeveloped land, often harming ecosystems. But placing solar canopies on large parking lots offers a host of advantages — making use of land that is already cleared, producing electricity close to those who need it, and even shading cars.
By Richard Conniff
November 22, 2021
https://e360.yale.edu/features/putting-solar-panels-atop-parking-lots-a-green-energy-solution

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Fly into Orlando, Florida, and you may notice a 22-acre solar power array in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head in a field just west of Disney World. Nearby, Disney also has a 270-acre solar farm of conventional design on former orchard and forest land. Park your car in any of Disney’s 32,000 parking spaces, on the other hand, and you won’t see a canopy overhead generating solar power (or providing shade) — not even if you snag one of the preferred spaces for which visitors pay up to $50 a day.

This is how it typically goes with solar arrays: We build them on open space rather than in developed areas. That is, they overwhelmingly occupy croplands, arid lands, and grasslands, not rooftops or parking lots, according to a global inventory published last month in Nature. In the United States, for instance, roughly 51 percent of utility-scale solar facilities are in deserts; 33 percent are on croplands; and 10 percent are in grasslands and forests. Just 2.5 percent of U.S. solar power comes from urban areas.

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A typical Walmart supercenter, for instance, has a five-acre parking lot, and it’s a wasteland, especially if you have to sweat your way across it under an asphalt-bubbling sun. Put a canopy over it, though, and it could support a three-megawatt solar array, according to a recent study co-authored by Joshua Pearce of Western University in Ontario. In addition to providing power to the store, the neighboring community, or the cars sheltered underneath, says Pearce, the canopy would shade customers — and keep them shopping longer, as their car batteries top up. If Walmart did that at all 3,571 of its U.S. super centers, the total capacity would be 11.1 gigawatts of solar power — roughly equivalent to a dozen large coal-fired power plants. Taking account of the part-time nature of solar power, Pearce figures that would be enough to permanently shut down four of those power plants.

And yet solar canopies are barely beginning to show up in this country’s endless acreage of parking lots. The Washington, D.C., Metro transit system, for instance, has just contracted to build its first solar canopies at four of its rail station parking lots, with a projected capacity of 12.8 megawatts. New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport is now building its first, a 12.3 megawatt canopy costing $56 million. Evansville (Indiana) Regional Airport, however, already has two, covering 368 parking spaces, at a cost of $6.5 million. According to a spokesperson, the solar canopy earned a $310,000 profit in its first year of operation, based on premium pricing of those spaces and the sale of power at wholesale rates to the local utility.

Rutgers University built one of the largest solar parking facilities in the country at its Piscataway, New Jersey campus, with a 32-acre footprint, an 8-megawatt output, and a business plan that the campus energy conservation manager called “pretty much cash-positive from the get-go.”

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17 parking lot solar canopies will generate power and research opportunities
May 18, 2021
Clemson University ( South Carolina, USA )
https://news.clemson.edu/17-parking...ll-generate-power-and-research-opportunities/

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The Ternium ( Monterrey, NL, Mexico ) Corporate Building that Is Now Fully Sustainable
In total, 1,012 solar panels were installed.
November 2021
Ternium ( Monterrey, NL, Mexico )
https://www.ternium.com/en/media/news/ternium-sustainability-solar-energy--25461142722


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on the fourth floor of the University Plant parking lot, the installation of a photovoltaic system of 1,012 solar panels began to produce 90% of the energy necessary for the operation of its corporate building. Each panel can produce 445 watts (W), reaching an installed capacity of 450 kilowatts (kW). “These panels make it possible to generate approximately 630 thousand kilowatts per hour and year. This offers us the capacity to cover (on an annual average) at least 90% of the consumption that the building needs”, explains Edison Grisales, Infrastructure & Services Project Manager of Ternium Mexico. This is equivalent to the electrical energy consumption of approximately 100 houses.

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On the other hand, Albes Urdaneta, head of Energy Efficiency at Ternium Mexico, points out the possibility of incorporating photovoltaic systems at other points in the plants to replace electrical energy with solar energy is currently being studied. “The idea is that all the plants have this type of energy wherever possible,” explains Urdaneta.


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A Study on the Power Production Potential of Parking Space Solar Shelters in Kingston, Ontario
By Evan Metcalfe
Queen’s University: ENSC 501 Kingston, Ontario, Canada 2016
https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/handle/1974/15626/ensc_501_metcalfe.pdf?sequence=1

Abstract The implementation of solar shelters over top of parking spaces has the potential to make the production of renewable energy a secondary function of parking lots without impeding their ability to function as parking locations. This has the capacity to reduce the amount of natural space converted to solar farms as solar energy becomes more common. In addition, if these shelters are outfitted as charging stations for electric vehicles, they could serve as a driver for a cultural shift towards a more sustainable vehicle fleet. Implementation of this technology has begun on a small scale in San Diego, California and this project assessed the feasibility of implementation in Kingston, Ontario. This study set out to determine how much energy could be produced by a solar shelter over one parking space and how many parking spaces would be required to produce 1% of Kingston’s total electricity consumption.



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What “might” be slightly easier to legislate/prosecute is mandatory access to electricity if charging a fee for parking. Business would then install solar to generate more money from the realestate.

Provide level 1 or 2 vehicle charging as part of the parking fee. Everyone pays the same price to park, EVs gain more value, making ICE drivers start to pay for the uncosted externalities of their vehicle choice.
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