12 parking lots

657 kW nameplate capacity

1.23 GWh per year of energy production

The 185,000 cubicles worth of CO2 emissions is likely based on average pollution per car, and average carbon intensity of the local grid.

"Here in the US, we’re proving that out, too – the Northwest Fire District in Arizona partnered with Standard Solar to build a conceptually similar, 657 kW solar carport system across 12 parking lots (shown, above) that delivers more than 1.23 million kWh of clean, emissions-free power annually and offsets the equivalent of 185,000 vehicles’ worth of harmful carbon emissions."

Pedestrians too.

Just because old school power generation is often out of sight, it shouldn’t be out of mind

Matter of taste. But I find geometric rows of tilted rectangles much less noisy (visually) than a zillion random cars, or an acre of cracked asphalt.

Yes, but if you’re building shade canopies over the parking lot anyway (this is quite common in southern Europe, for example) the marginal cost to add solar to the design will be relatively small. And if the government is backing it, production volumes will rise so it’s no longer a niche product. Economies of scale.

And of course, once more people are using self-driving cars instead of owning their own, cars will have less idle time spent in lots.

Better to replace some farmland, which you can make a strong argument for if you're growing crops for biodiesel or fuel-ethanol were the sun-to-wheel efficiency is terrible.

> Parking lots are horrible. They're butt ugly heat islands that take up way too much space.

I've got bad news about nearly black PV panels... it might be cooler under them, but around them is a different story.

My personal thought is to saturate rooftops before going for the poorer ROI parking lot PV canopies.

Wait until you hear about public transit...

> Generally the problem with carpark solar is the mounting solutions are low volume niche products that cost way more than traditional ground mounts.

Not really. You don't need anything unusual, just regular flat panels. The main expense is building the canopy itself to conform to all the requirements for hurricane/seismic resistance.

How would this work? Who is then paying for the solar?

I’ll believe that when I see it.

On the home side, the hardware is largely there. The charger I'm buying and many others support it - though many need a future software update. On the vehicle side though, it's very inconsistent; there are only a few vehicles that support it and even for those, what my installer told me is that the manufacturer warranties typically either void the warranty entirely if V2(G/H) is used or harshly limit the amount of energy that can be used. They're concerned that it will lead to excess wear on the battery, the main component of an EV.

And I think I agree with them. With current battery technology, I don't think using EVs as a grid-scale storage system for renewables is viable. For grid-scale or residential storage, you want a battery that can be as heavy and physically large as it needs to be but it needs to deal with a lot of charge/discharge cycles. Your best option here right now is LiFePO. For the kind of EV people are generally willing to buy right now, you need to cram as much range into the car as you can, which means the battery needs to be as energy-dense as possible and charge/discharge cycles are less of a concern. That means LiPo.

I think the most realistic use of EVs for grid-scale integration is what they're calling "virtual plant", where they're treated like a separate source of energy that the grid can tap into in exceptional situations.

They’d wear out roads less, use less resources to make, be safer to others in crashes, etc. I dislike the trend of increasingly larger vehicles just to move a single person around 87% of the time.

Alberta was the the fastest growing renewable producer in Canada due to high winds and long solar days and low cloud cover. The provincial government in the pocket of the oil industry banned renewable developments for months under the excuse that it was "destroying farmland" and then came back months later with a policy that hamstringed future development.

to these people, renewables are a threat because they can't be a parasite off it.

It's really not cool to insult people, you know. This is in just as poor taste as when smug Americans say "Europoors".

Either solar panels, or rain gardens, or permeable pavement, or canopy, or some combination.

But then again that might make loopholes that make my head spin. Might have to leave the higher rung up to organizations like LEED and leave the minimums as one or maybe two choices. Maybe make the other harder than solar unless you have a weird situation where say adding trees is simpler than running power distribution, like across the street from the shop.