Going vertical doesn't magically increase capacity. It increases capacity for fixed surface area and if the surrounding surface area isn't needed.
There is no free lunch, and traditional solar installations don't usually have a lot of light missing the panels.
Traditional single axis tracking installations don't miss much light. These provide similar characteristics in space constrained areas, which are also closer to electricity consumers, potentially reducing transmission costs.
Fixed panels - common in denser areas, do miss a lot of light.
Seems largely based on the assumption that most people view PV installations as a strictly planar affair.
Does my neighbor who has solar on both slopes of his pitched roof have a geometrically novel "folded plate" configuration which increases capacity by employing the biomimetic strategy of diurnal heliotropism?
Also, what’s state of the art $/kwh for rooftop and “on the ground” solar? Is $0.05 good these days?
Easiest wins are code to require large commercial and industrial buildings to meet load requirements for future solar installs, parking lot canopies that are solar ready (or solar installed at time of canopy install), and in the case of residential, ground mount with low regulatory overhead and minimal to no shading.
Related:
NREL: Solar Installed System Cost Analysis - https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in...
Cheap DIY solar fence design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597198 - October 2025
Great comment from that thread on cost breakdown (Alaska): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692595
The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas.
> The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas.
The data says different. Broadly speaking, anywhere in the continental US is favorable for solar. The US gets more sunlight than Germany, and Germany has 101GW of solar capacity installed as of this comment (deploying ~2GW/month). You might need more panels near Canada, but panels and land are cheap, and demand for power is low due to limited population (caveats being PNW, served by hydro, and NE-ISO in New England, which is going to turn up a transmission line in December to bring 1.2GW of hydro from Quebec).
For comparison, the US ag industry farms almost 60 million acres for soybean and corn biofuel, and that is far less cost and resource efficient than covering that land in solar PV.
Citations:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-fou...
https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal...
https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.g...
https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4
jsmailes•2h ago
AndrewDucker•2h ago
Which doesn't seem that excitingly new to me, but I don't know the industry that well. Has nobody tried vertical alignment before? Seems unlikely to me.
[0] https://jantaus.com/
soco•2h ago
floatrock•2h ago
> The funds are expected to help the startup scale its patented 3D solar towers that are designed to have high levels of energy density for space-constrained areas.
Third describes applications where this arrangement could be relevant:
> The product has applications for data centers, EV charging hubs, telecom towers, universities, and a range of industrial facilities, said Janta Power.
Clearly if land is cheap, traditional surface mount with no tracking is simpler and cheaper. This is targeting areas where land is at a premium but on-site capacity is still desired.