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I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the hotter parts of the country. Ho

I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the hotter parts of the country. How much fuel/energy is spent cooling cars back down after they have sat in the sun for an hour?

1970-01-01 3y ago
Why isn't this actually happening? Parking lots are really 2D spaces, so leveraging the unused 3rd dimension is very smart and profitable.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  If it were profitable, they'd be profiting. Parking lots are parking lots because they require low CapEx, almost no OpEx. You buy some abandoned land, raze it, asphalt it, charge $30 a day per space (at let's say 75 spaces), tow the rest (at the driver's expense). You're pulling in a little under $67k/month. Wait for a commercial developer to come buy and take it off your hands for 3x its value. You know how much it costs to dig up the ground, install power lines, a box, then bury footings, bolt in legs, install panels, etc, 9+ feet high? For a whole parking lot? $300k-500k, minimum (that's how much it costs just to install a small fleet of EV chargers btw, that's not doing major construction over an area the size of half a football field). How much you gonna make off these panels? A 200kW panel array generates about 480MWh/yr, which at 1MW/$40 comes out to about $19,200/year in SREC credits. PA energy price is $0.18/KWh, so 480MW is $24/hr. But you're making 80% efficiency and it's not sunny all day all year, so at even 50% usage, that's $24,960/year. Almost a third of what the parking lot makes a month. Before we talk paying back installation costs, assuming your net metering deal is perfect. It would be cheaper to build a multi-story garage, where you'd make WAY more money.
  - 1970-01-01 3y ago
    >How much you gonna make off these panels? You're dismissing the possibility of free EV charging attracting shoppers. Step 1 is getting people to visit your store, step 2 is getting them to buy something, and step 3 is getting them to come again. Step 1 & 3 would immediately get noticed by the corporate bean counters. The real problem I think is the up-front costs of the installation.

1970-01-01 3y ago

Why isn't this actually happening? Parking lots are really 2D spaces, so leveraging the unused 3rd dimension is very smart and profitable.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
If it were profitable, they'd be profiting. Parking lots are parking lots because they require low CapEx, almost no OpEx. You buy some abandoned land, raze it, asphalt it, charge $30 a day per space (at let's say 75 spaces), tow the rest (at the driver's expense). You're pulling in a little under $67k/month. Wait for a commercial developer to come buy and take it off your hands for 3x its value. You know how much it costs to dig up the ground, install power lines, a box, then bury footings, bolt in legs, install panels, etc, 9+ feet high? For a whole parking lot? $300k-500k, minimum (that's how much it costs just to install a small fleet of EV chargers btw, that's not doing major construction over an area the size of half a football field). How much you gonna make off these panels? A 200kW panel array generates about 480MWh/yr, which at 1MW/$40 comes out to about $19,200/year in SREC credits. PA energy price is $0.18/KWh, so 480MW is $24/hr. But you're making 80% efficiency and it's not sunny all day all year, so at even 50% usage, that's $24,960/year. Almost a third of what the parking lot makes a month. Before we talk paying back installation costs, assuming your net metering deal is perfect. It would be cheaper to build a multi-story garage, where you'd make WAY more money.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  >How much you gonna make off these panels? You're dismissing the possibility of free EV charging attracting shoppers. Step 1 is getting people to visit your store, step 2 is getting them to buy something, and step 3 is getting them to come again. Step 1 & 3 would immediately get noticed by the corporate bean counters. The real problem I think is the up-front costs of the installation.