3 ms·

I think I see where the misunderstanding is now and that there is indeed a gap in my statement. The point I was trying to make here was to challenge the need fo

I think I see where the misunderstanding is now and that there is indeed a gap in my statement. The point I was trying to make here was to challenge the need for nuclear energy _in the first place_ by installing solar in every parking lot. It should be considered and studied more thoroughly, if it hasn’t already. That said, I’m not against nuclear but there are significant environmental drawbacks to it for anyone who lives near a plant. I can’t think of any significant environmental drawbacks to installing solar in existing parking lots.

kragen 3y ago
of course shading a parking lot with solar panels improves the parking lot, but i suspect it won't replace nuclear (and it's probably more expensive than installing solar on hillsides or in fields, and yields less than installing them in deserts, though those may turn out not to matter) consider the usa, one of the most parking-lot-intensive countries in the world, with 278 million cars, almost one per person https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-s... 0.47% of the contiguous usa is covered in solar panels, 13778 square miles, or in modern units, 35680 square km https://time.com/6239651/solar-parking-lots-france-us/ https://time.com/6239651/solar-parking-lots-france-us/ (that's what the article says, anyway; i suspect the number is smaller, because https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837709000350 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648... only found 2.2 parking spaces per registered vehicle in a more-urban-than-average county; 5 m times 2.3 m times 2.2 times 278 million gives only 7000 square km of parking spaces, perhaps doubling if the parking lot covers twice as much area as the parking spaces in it) with 21% efficient panels, the 35680 km² figure would yield 7.5 terawatts peak; at a high 30% capacity factor it would average 2.2 terawatts, though the time article linked above only estimates 0.422 terawatts peak. possibly the discrepancy is due to oblique illumination: you can't get the full 1000 watts per square meter of insolation on a horizontal surface like a parking lot except in the tropics, where the us isn't. i suspect some of the discrepancy is so large due to an allowance for spacing the panels apart so they never shade each other. also the time article has an arithmetic error where it says half of 13778 is 4822 if we use, say, 14000 km² and a more plausible 18% capacity factor, without trying to take into account angling the panels and spacing them out, we get 2.9 terawatts nameplate capacity, 0.53 terawatts average the us uses 100 quads per year https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56980 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56980 which is 3.3 terawatts. 0.27 terawatts of this is nuclear so conceivably you could replace nuclear with parking-lot solar, but you'll need a lot more solar than that to power the rest of the economy

kragen 3y ago

of course shading a parking lot with solar panels improves the parking lot, but i suspect it won't replace nuclear (and it's probably more expensive than installing solar on hillsides or in fields, and yields less than installing them in deserts, though those may turn out not to matter) consider the usa, one of the most parking-lot-intensive countries in the world, with 278 million cars, almost one per person https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-s... 0.47% of the contiguous usa is covered in solar panels, 13778 square miles, or in modern units, 35680 square km https://time.com/6239651/solar-parking-lots-france-us/ https://time.com/6239651/solar-parking-lots-france-us/ (that's what the article says, anyway; i suspect the number is smaller, because https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837709000350 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648... only found 2.2 parking spaces per registered vehicle in a more-urban-than-average county; 5 m times 2.3 m times 2.2 times 278 million gives only 7000 square km of parking spaces, perhaps doubling if the parking lot covers twice as much area as the parking spaces in it) with 21% efficient panels, the 35680 km² figure would yield 7.5 terawatts peak; at a high 30% capacity factor it would average 2.2 terawatts, though the time article linked above only estimates 0.422 terawatts peak. possibly the discrepancy is due to oblique illumination: you can't get the full 1000 watts per square meter of insolation on a horizontal surface like a parking lot except in the tropics, where the us isn't. i suspect some of the discrepancy is so large due to an allowance for spacing the panels apart so they never shade each other. also the time article has an arithmetic error where it says half of 13778 is 4822 if we use, say, 14000 km² and a more plausible 18% capacity factor, without trying to take into account angling the panels and spacing them out, we get 2.9 terawatts nameplate capacity, 0.53 terawatts average the us uses 100 quads per year https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56980 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56980 which is 3.3 terawatts. 0.27 terawatts of this is nuclear so conceivably you could replace nuclear with parking-lot solar, but you'll need a lot more solar than that to power the rest of the economy