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French senate: parking lots for 80 cars must be covered by solar panels
- KurvaKing 4y ago
- geocrasher 4y agoI predict an uptick in the number of parking lots that can park exactly 79 cars.
- ISL 4y agoAnd a bunch of people working hard to show that, indeed, there ought to be eighty parking spaces, but one of them isn't marked, so the owner will need to retroactively install solar panels at great cost.
- gruez 4y ago>but one of them isn't marked, so the owner will need to retroactively install solar panels at great cost. Just pave over that space with grass?
- sidewndr46 4y agoCall it a nature preserve.
- prottog 4y agoPrecisely. France already has precedent for this, with their 49-employee companies: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-03/why-france-has-so-many-49-employee-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-03/why-franc.... On the surface, covering parking lots with solar panels seems like a good idea since it would both generate electricity and provide shade for the cars, but I'm not sure if the same resources won't be better spent on building more nuclear plants, which is something France already leads the world in. As a driver I certainly wouldn't complain about the shade, but were I a French taxpayer I would perhaps ask more questions.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThese are the same nuclear power plants they have a challenge maintaining adequately and building new ones, yeah? And take a decade to build? And solar and batteries are cheaper than nuclear on a levelized per kWh basis. So slap the panels on top of mandatory carports and call it a day. > That’s 11GW of new solar (same as 10 new nuclear reactors) powering millions of home - zero new land needed 11GW of generation on top of land already utilized and distributed. If I were a French taxpayer who just paid €10B to nationalize EDF, I would absolutely ask why you’d prioritize nuclear. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...
- IanCal 4y ago> So slap the panels on top of mandatory carports and call it a day Particularly given that one of the new and growing consumers of large amounts of electricity is cars.
- prottog 4y ago> And solar and batteries are cheaper than nuclear on a levelized per kWh basis So I would expect to see countries with higher share of solar generation and less nuclear would have lower wholesale electricity prices than ones with less solar and more nuclear? This data isn't easy to find for a layperson like myself, but I'd be surprised if such a correlation existed. > If I were a French taxpayer who just paid €10B to nationalize EDF EDF was state-owned to begin with, and was only partially privatized in 2004 with the French state still retaining 80%+ ownership. The recent re-nationalization was only an acquisition by the state of the remainder. The French taxpayer was paying for it all along.
- Kon5ole 4y agoYou will not see lower prices because the true costs of nuclear are hidden in centuries to come and not included in the costs shown today. Nobody presents the actual cost of nuclear because nobody knows. Estimating costs even decades in the future is impossible, let alone centuries. EDF had 50 bn euros in debt and also needs to spend unknown bns more to fix aging plants. This means that nuclear power in France has operated with an average of at least 1 billion euros in losses per year for as long as it has existed. The costs per kWh for French nuclear power have never been correct, since they have obviously not covered the actual costs. You are correct in that the taxpayers pay for nuclear, and this is on top of and in addition to what they directly pay for the electricity. What they pay for the actual electricity is way too little to cover the costs of nuclear. The rest of the costs are hidden in general taxes. Everybody pays for nuclear in France, and they will pay for as long as they live and as long as their children live and so on for generations. The same is true for coal and oil etc of course. We have no idea how much it actually cost humanity to release fossil carbon into the atmosphere, but it's pretty clear by now that it was much more expensive in reality than what we paid when it happened.
- ct0 4y agoTime to get in the line painting business in france. Parking spots will be much much larger. They should have used Sq/ft or Sq/meter as the determining factor.
- isoprophlex 4y agoThat will just make the parking spaces smaller, right?
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y agoNo the suggestion is the lot owners would make the spaces larger to have fewer spaces to avoid the cost of installing the panels.
- stonemetal12 4y agoI think he meant the other option, if done by square meter. Then suddenly you have what would have been an 80 spot lot, is now a 90 spot lot, and a lot of dinged doors.
- isoprophlex 4y agoExactly! Any target metric can be gamed ;)
- smcl 4y agoThink GP is saying that if lot owners are forced to bear the cost of installing solar panels, this could encourage them to squeeze more spaces in. It could be that France has some regulations on car parking space size which would prevent this, however
- nicoburns 4y agoPerhaps, but this is probably aimed at really big car parks like shopping malls that have a capacity of far more than 80 cars. They won't be able to get around this so easily. Presumably companies that build these solar panels will be paid for any electricity generated, so it might work out quite well for them in the long term.
- gruez 4y ago> Presumably companies that build these solar panels will be paid for any electricity generated, so it might work out quite well for them in the long term. If it's actually profitable for them already (from a risk adjusted basis), then you wouldn't need a law mandating it. The fact that there aren't many takers suggests that it won't work out well.
- mcv 4y agoCompanies are surprisingly good at avoiding opportunities they're not familiar with. If it is actually profitable for them already, but they're not doing it, then a law mandating it may still be a good idea.
- passwordoops 4y agoRecall that Texas of all places leads the US in renewables integration. It's definitely not because of mandates, it's because their environment makes wind and solar profitable for the energy companies... Provided there's no major winter storms to break their back up generation
- gruez 4y ago>Companies are surprisingly good at avoiding opportunities they're not familiar with They don't need to. In the sunnier parts of the US, it's common for companies to install solar panels for free, in exchange for a cut of the generated revenue. >If it is actually profitable for them already, but they're not doing it, That's why I specifically mentioned risk in my previous comment. For instance, generating 10%/year ROI today might sound good, but if there aren't any price guarantees from the government it's possible that might drop to 1-2% a few years later. I'm not sure what the regulatory regime/economics for the solar industry France is like, but absent any evidence to the contrary I'm inclined to believe that there isn't free money lying around that companies are passing up.
- sottol 4y agoI would hope that's pretty obvious and a desired side-effect. Don't waste space on parking lots, but if you have to slap some solar over it.
- Scoundreller 4y agoJust create a parking lot tax and let the problem sort itself out. Cut income taxes with the savings and nobody will fight it.
- Tiktaalik 4y agoThis would be the best approach, but sadly in reality people will elect politicians with their sole aim of reducing any and all taxation, no matter how reasonable and needed. Even an imagined threat of proposed new parking/driving taxes contributed to sinking Vancouver's Mayor Kennedy Stewart in the most recent election (even though he voted against new parking fees earlier in the year).
- Tiktaalik 4y agoThe good thing is that incentivizing a lid on the size of parking lots is also good for the environment.
- eloff 4y agoThis makes a lot of sense on the surface. Protect the cars and people from rain and sun, and generate electricity at the same time, using no additional land.
- nashashmi 4y agoAnyone do napkin calculation on how much energy is used for the production of materials and steel for this? I can’t imagine it being that great.
- mcv 4y agoMaybe calculate the same thing for the parking lot itself, then.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoIt takes 1.5 years for a solar panel to produce more energy than was spent to create it. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
- gruez 4y agoWhat's the point of legislating on parking lots specifically? If all you want is solar capacity, wouldn't roofs be better because you don't need the support structures/lights? The whole thing reeks of "government has a cool idea and mandates it by decree". Is there some additional benefits of solar panels on parking lots that I'm missing, that requires government intervention to work?
- cabaalis 4y agoSeems like targeting businesses. Businesses have this odd existential mandate of having to make more money than they spend, or they would disappear. This doesn't typically happen to humans, so less humans follow that rule and subsidize losses with credit. Therefore people who want to force things that require money to implement go to who they perceive to have the money to burn.
- mschuster91 4y ago> Therefore people who want to force things that require money to implement go to who they perceive to have the money to burn. There exist a number of companies that build out solar on a rent basis, i.e. a supermarket hands over land usage and power sale rights to this company in exchange for a payment, and the company builds and maintains the solar panels.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoCreating a market. Lots of people build big car parks all the time, now all of them are required to have solar. So they've created a market for businesses to serve. Plus presumably, the French have a goal of selling more EVs, so solar on car parks is a nice synergy.
- jbn 4y agohow is it a synergy? the solar panels will necessarily feed into the grid (because electricity must be transported for immediate consumption), and not necessarily into EVs (since it can be sunny when no cars are here to recharge, or EVs need recharging at night when there's no sun). Only rarely will the electricity collected by the panels feed directly into the EVs. So IMHO not a synergy, it is merely co-location of the 2 (which is good, since parking lots are mostly unused space, now this space will in fact do something when not in-use for car parking).
- donatj 4y agoIs there a minimum KW output? Otherwise seems like this could create a market for super cheap low output minimum viable solar panels?
- sigstoat 4y agoyou can probably come up with a spreadsheet analyzing the costs and returns to figure out exactly where the most profitable point is, taking into account all the other fixed costs you’ll have in the build. i doubt the cheapest or the most expensive panels are that point.
- donatj 4y agoI'm thinking literal slab of plywood with a calculator size solar panel slapped on. Less than a dollar per square foot.
- sigstoat 4y agoheavier than a solar panel, increasing all labor and mounting costs, while producing ~zero return. also not as weather proof as a solar panel, so you'll be up replacing them sooner.
- donatj 4y agoI'm trying to decide if you're just being silly. There's no way installing and maintaining plywood is more expensive than solar panels.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoThe panel is already the cheapest part of the solar system in commercial scale. As little as €30/m^2 for older technologies that are being phased out because BOS makes buying more efficient ones cheaper. Durable plywood with a finish that doesn't scare customers away is not going to be much less and doesn't make €20 worth of electricity a year. Also you need calculator panels across 50% of it according to the law. If you're going to pay €30/m^2 for the support structure, why not add a real panel and some real inverters to pay the whole thing off in 8 years? Plus you'll attract wealthy EV early adopters. This is either a coincidence, or a very clever and perfectly timed move to provide a perfect market for the development of perovskites (which may wind up cost competitive with shade sails) while they're still too inefficient and unreliable to justify the cost of land, and hasten the transition to tandem cells by a few years.
- mcv 4y agoThis has always sounded like an obvious solution to me. It's a double win: cars stay cooler. On a sunny day, it's nice to park in the shade.
- pjc50 4y agoDoes anyone know what the reduced heating effect is of solar panels vs tarmac? Intuitively I'd have thought it was about 20%, the amount of energy extracted for use. It's also interesting that France, home of nuclear, is doing this - probably linked to the extent to which their nuclear plants are offline simultaneously for maintenance and they're having to import power.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoModern panels are about 22-24% efficient. Asphalt is about 0.1 albedo. So if you displace or export electricity. At least 12%. I can't for the life of me find the albedo of solar panels of various types (people just assume it's zero which is patently untrue because it's much more visible than black paint at 0.05). A completely made up guess would be around 0.05-0.2 (they look lighter than asphalt except for topcon) so my guess would be 17-34% better (or ballpark same as greenery).
- Zealotux 4y agoWe have a lot of nuclear but we're also aware it can't cover all of our needs and we need to transition to a more diversified set of energy sources.
- docdeek 4y agoDoes anyone know what happens to these panels in the snow?
- orev 4y agoObviously the power output goes down if they’re covered in snow. But you already knew that. No need to be facetious.
- docdeek 4y agoApologies - I didn't mean it like that. Obviously dark nights, cloud cover and snow impact generation capacity. I'm thinking structurally, though. Unlike rain or cloud, snow will add a heap of weight to panels. I'm wondering how that impacts their lifespan.
- pjc50 4y agoObviously you design them for expected snow and wind loads, but they're also angled and since they're black as soon as sun gets through to them it'll start melting off.
- michael1999 4y agoParis is at 49° N. Any panels will be installed with a sharp slope pointing South. Snow won't sit on a metal at that angle without extra snow catchers, much less on glass panels.
- maeln 4y agoWhat already happens with current panels in the snow ? And most of France, especially important population center where 80+ places parking usually are, see few, if any, snowfall in a year. So this is not really an issue.
- swayvil 4y agoOur solar collectors could use a recursively-branching fractal form for optimal light-collection. And they could be painted a pleasing shade, maybe green. And they could store the solar energy in a kind of CHON battery, for ez carbon sequestration and upcycling. And we could label our new product something snappy, like "Retarded Fucking Fake Trees".
- dimtion 4y agoNote that this law has only been voted by the Senate, and not the "Assemblée nationale". For a law to be adopted in France it must be voted in both chambers. And the "Assemblée nationale" has much more political power. In short nothing has been decided yet.
- Glawen 4y agoYes, and signed by the President. However the sequence is usually assemblee nationale and then sénat. Hence when it passes sénat (they do not hold a lot of power actually), it can be scheduled to be signed and published.
- ericd 4y agoOne less-obvious benefit to this will be that many spaces will likely be wired for EV chargers at the same time, since they'll be running electrical lines throughout the parking lot anyway. This should help make the switch to EVs much more attractive to many people who can't charge at home.
- jmugan 4y agoIt makes sense, but why can't they provide economic incentives so people naturally do what's best? Maybe some plan to buy electricity from urban surfaces, which will include car parks? With the current plan, people will throw up crap that enables them to check the box without helping anyone.
- jmugan 4y agoThinking about my own comment, maybe there is something special about parking lots being especially ugly. Maybe they are thinking about this more in terms of beatification zoning than electricity policy.
- ur-whale 4y agoWhat could possibly go wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwMEtuL-GQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwMEtuL-GQ . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAyPWcqiwzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAyPWcqiwzY
- muaytimbo 4y agoPrediction: all future lots have exactly 79 spots.
- steeve 4y ago11GW of solar is absolutely not 10 reactors. What the hell? They call themselves energy geeks and forget solar is intermittent?
- sschueller 4y agoInteresting fact, the parking lots at euro Disney produce a large chunk of the electricity needed in the park. Sad fact, the whole thing belongs to AXPO, a large Swiss state owned company that is supposed to ensure many places in Switzerland have enough electricity but instead invests heavily in foreign green energy...
- oliwarner 4y agoDetractors seem too focused on current energy usage and lack the foresight to consider the grid impact of a carpark full of cars wanting a top-up charge during the daytime. Yes a nuclear plant can generate all this power, but you have to ship it around. Local power sources (DC charging from DC panel arrays) could prove very effective.