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Glad to see that there are still some adults left that will step up. I would like for there to still be a livable planet for My grandchildren.

Every time I see a parking lot here in the United States in July or August I always think why the fuck is this not covered in solar panels?

So, good on France.

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What do roads do for parking lots?

I'm taking the being gay and ending my genetic line route.

We want our cars as hot as the Devil's asshole and we like it that way

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> is this not covered in solar panels?

or pecan trees

So who gets the electricity and who pays for the set up?

Parking lots?! and why is that?!

Maybe I read it wrong but it looks like the business owners pay for it and the energy goes to the public?

It’d make more sense for the power to go to that particular business and then have the energy company buy the surplus to power homes.

I don’t have solar but my energy company has an opt-in program where they buy any excess energy, or all of the energy you generate.

If the energy companies are going to buy excess energy in France then it could be somewhat of an investment for those businesses.

Cover the cars with el-voit-coating, then send the electricity via WiFi/Bluetooth

Ok, now, how to transmit electricity like that ...

Because they're giant, flat spaces, in the middle of cities/towns, with no buildings. Perfect for building these type of awning structures with solar panels overhead. The cars parked below also have the benefit of being shaded from the sun.

Parking lots are for people to park their cars.

To "generate up to 11 gigawatts, which is the equivalent of 10 nuclear reactors, powering millions of homes"?!

Usually it goes to the business first, surplus goes to the public and you get paid very badly for what you provide extra. It's unlikely to have much surplus at all though since businesses work during the day when production is high, so it's just cheaper electricity.

Here in Cali they do that. Libraries, schools, and other public places at least.

because they're otherwise a massive waste of space

"But that's not important right now". Read this in a Leslie Nielson voice.

It’s still somewhat of an investment though, no? Generating your own electricity rather than buying on from someone else.

Yes, for businesses it's very worth it, I know a company that moved CNC machines to another factory warehouse that had tons of solar panels because they had surplus and it pays off quickly if you use it.

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*during the day when sunny. Solar does not power homes. I have solar and it's nice during the day but that's where it ends. The use case here would be to change parked EV's specially at a commercial parking lot where most cars would park during the day.

I was just quoting the article, you know, the thing that nobody seems to read on Reddit...

And that would be an excellent use-case, as well as replacing defunct generation plants with battery storage locations.

Cost.

The higher they are off the ground the more steel you need to keep them up. They are more subject to wind loads. They are also more difficult to service.

Then you ask how high to make them. Tall enough for a Tesla, a crossover, a lifted pickup, a semi, taller?

10' high ought to cover the vast majority of consumer grade vehicles on the market.

So, 10'.

Yeah it's not a particularly hard question to answer. Just ask yourself this.

How high are bank teller windows? How high are parking garages? How high are the lowest acceptable bridges off the roadway?

My university has it, and it just makes sense. Parking lots are enough of a waste of space, might as well provide shade and power with solar panels.

Or is it because there's money in the solar panel business?

Maybe there’s just no parking on the roof?

I don’t know how old you are but I want a livable planet for me!

Europe has limited space and they want to reduce reliance on Russian natural gas.

I also don’t think this is supposed to be an investment as much as it’s supposed to displace the cost of paying for electricity generated from coal with clean energy generated on site

Yeah, I think the best the US could ever usually do is post these at least at semi tier. There are a lot of semi drivers with sleeping cabs who use empty parking lots overnight. Plus uh, I know specifically of at least one bridge that's got at least 12 signs on each side warning about its height limit and despite that people hit it at least once a month, I imagine the same risk with solar panels would be quite expensive.

Things can be used for more than one thing

Ah yes, big solar. Famously more profitable than big oil.

Will those solar panels ever produce enough electricity to produce the steel needed to build the supports? If not they are carbon positive (not in a good way) from the start.

This is cool but they support the weight of cars?? And what about rain? And people like to break shit

Aren't solar panels fragile? Like wouldn't the weight of 2 tons be enough to break the panels?

I was confused by the headline, but I think they're specifically referring to car parks, as in the multi-level buildings. Might be wrong though.

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Would that really bring in enough power to turn away from fossil fuels? Probably not, oh well, stay optimistic I guess

True, when the pavement gets hot you can also use it for frying an egg. But since the fuckin libs are trying to take that away from parking lots I figured I'd keep this uplifting and leave it out.

You can fry an egg on the solar panels. Things can be used for more than one thing.

Isn’t the top level of a car park usually also for parking? So does this only apply to car parks with non-functional roofs, or do car parks need to sacrifice top level parking spots?

You put the solar panels over the parking spaces like an umbrella or canopy tent = covered parking and solar energy = win-win

There are bridges with heavy steel beams in front of them to keep people from hitting the bridge by having them hit the beam. I imagine something similar could work there if it really became an issue

Breaking 60. My generation continues to mess up the world because they don’t want to be inconvenienced by change. Not real proud of my contemporaries.

So leave some space for the semis or larger vehicles without coverage

11GW of solar at this scale would cost somewhere around $11-$16 Billion. 10 Nuclear reactors would cost $150B or more. Even with 4 hours of storage, or 50GWH, at $100 per KWH would add an extra ~$5B to the bill. If all the panels did was store power during the day and then use the power like a peaking plant in the early evening that would be useful.

The parts are fairly standardized and are a commodity product. Servicing them is not a huge deal. I have seen several of these covered parking lots here in California. 3ish acres of parking would be a 1MW system, which would generate enough energy for 3000-4000 miles of driving per hour of sunshine, if they were selling it to EV owners for 15 cents per kWh they would be selling like $150 per hour, 2500 hours per year, $350-$375k per year, on a system that was maybe $2M to build, not a bad investment, $100k per year profit after financing costs for the first 10 years.

Depends on the parking lot. One for a grocery store or a mall or strip mall? Sure, plenty of space that would make sense and could easily be worked around. But for a fast food joint or convienence store, most would need to be uncovered and just spackled with a few token areas for panels, and for most hotels I've seen more than half would have to do the same as well. These are sometimes the only places these people have for miles. These aren't easy to turn vehicles either, they usually look for empty parking lots because of how wide their turns are, and I've seen gas trucks hit dumpsters and randos driving uhauls hit gas pumps. If every panel isn't by default hung high enough that a semi couldn't accidentally hit it, it will get hit at least once within a year, and if there's a support beam within the bounds if the parking lot that will get hit at least once every 2. We still have plenty of good places to put panels though where they aren't at risk, every rooftop, all over signage, mounted like a Canopy plenty high up over various public areas, I just think it's logistically impossible to cover every parking area in the US with them without having so many exceptions that it becomes untenable.

On a slightly separate note, parking lot sidewalks are one of the few places I can ever find to sit down and relax on a walk. Everywhere around me that isn't a public park has gotten rid of sitting areas and public benches because they draw in loiterers, drunks, and drug abusers, or at least that's the excuse used. It's fucking sad that part of me is upset at losing what's objectively and already sad thing to latch onto.

Most importantly, how high are you when you go through a Taco Bell drive thru at 2AM

All buildings and parking lots should be covered in solar panels because duh. There are solar panels on a community college lot near me in LA and it always makes me happy.

There is some money there but the margin is on the smaller side. There’s been lots of solar businesses / companies that haven’t survived the 25 year mark (common warranty period for solar panels).

No no no just use that electricity to power an extremely bright light and shine it into another solar panel!!

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Green energy is owned by big oil.

And charging!

Michelangelo and Da Vinci were gay, and they left humanity much more than simply children. I don't like the idea that all we can do for the future is make children.

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You place them on a wodden or steel structure. Example

With me it's those large warehouses, my god such a waste of chance to utilize all that rooftop real estate for energy production

Does this account for parking lots that get little sunlight? No point in some places

How are parking lots defined, as in, how do you get around this new law?

Steel is ~6000 kWh/ton to produce. My home solar array has so far produced 26000 kWh. I think they'll be fine.

fuck... that's high

>Michelangelo ... gay

Not sure about this, no way a gay man would paint a peepee that small. /s

Yea why not roofs of buildings like costco

This is such a win-win! Your car is in the shade/out of the rain an extra energy. In most Western European countries it would make sense with the hot summers lately.

Parking lots where I am are about $3 per square foot.

Solar cells are about $9 per square foot.

You are quadrupling the price before you even get into having to add the frames to elevate them above the 14' minimum clearance, bury all the additional cabling and infrastructure or deal with all the additional permitting and regulatory compliance not to mention liability of you previously open lot now being a code compliant structure.

After that you also have all the headache of actually plugging the cells into something productive.

Industrial power like you would find in a large grocery store makes it nearly impossible to simply backfeed like you would residential solar so you would either need an independent system that used it for something like charging batteries that can later be used for something or a second utility service specifically for the solar to dump it's excess. If you go the second route and you have a decent sized parking lot that is going to require a dedicated run to a substation in some cases because the local distribution lines aren't sized for that kind of local load.

If the cells are doing something productive they will also require maintenance far more than a parking lot that you can safely ignore for a decade or two at a time.

It will also make things in property management like snow removal far more time consuming and risky so therefore more expensive as well while adding additional pest control requirements for all the critters that will try and get into these structures and providing far more surface area for your vandalism cleanup folks to deal with.

All of these costs will be passed directly to shoppers and anyone using the utility.

You do like drive thrus put a hoop at the entries with a tube hanging from it so if you're too tall it bangs your shit.

If it makes sense financially, then why aren't the parking lot owners making the decision themselves?

... why did you specifically say Tesla but non-specifics for the other vehicle types?

if this backfires, and it leads to no new parking lot construction at all, then good

/r/fuckcars

But don’t the systems need to be maintained and updated semi regular? That would drive costs up after a certain time, making it less profitable.

Driving around, hell even flying over in Microsoft flight sim, makes you realize how screwed we are. We could have had every single new build with solar roofs, all cars parks, factories, warehouses, shopping centres covered with them. Then you go around at night and see the amount of waste, multi story car parks all lit up with not a single car in them cuz they close from like 8pm till like 7am, shops with big lit up windows but not open, just pointless waste. The whole system needs changing.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 freaking heck, it says covered with, not paced with. Holy crap my guy

But if it's covered in solar panels, where will you park your car? ;)

Freaking heck, you're the second comment I've seen that thinks they mean that they will pave the ground with solar panels. They will COVER the lots. As in a canopy of solar panels. Is this a language thing or something?

I worked with a company in LA for a while, and a pretty clever guy (no, for real - he was kind of the opposite of stupid) once argued against me when I said, listen, you have all those flat roofs, I mean, the major part of El Segundo is like that, and you have sun going crazy 12 month a year, plus you need a ton of electricity for all the ACs, why the heck don’t you put solar everywhere…

And he was „nah I don’t think it will pay off… I mean you need to replace them after 20 years or so, don’t you…“

Me, looking at my measly 900W solar array in Germany, providing for much of my basic electricity needs while it’s pretty dark here like 80% of the year o.O

Well, that was 10 years ago. I hear things have changed…

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Makes so much sense! Especially in sunnier places

They need to be cleaned, and if something breaks they need to be fixed, but they are pretty low on maintenance.

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The French law makes exceptions for truck parking, and in 5 years in France I never saw a single lifted pickup.

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Expect fewer parking lots.

That seems like common sense. Wish America would do this

Penis standards were different back then

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Give the cars the COVID vaccine and they will be able to receive the electricity!

the new generation is destroying the world just as much. The blame isn’t all on yours.

The world would be unaffected without their paintings if they were to disappear one day. I can find you 10 kids on tik tok who can do better artwork.

However a lovely child? Would devastate many if lost.

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So the article says car parks up until 400 have to put up solar panels in 5 years and above 400 in 3. This would be the new law

I have to say, I have to commend the French on how pragmatic they are when it comes to their energy policies. Good on them!

I don’t know if French people park many semis in public parking lots. I’m guessing Non.

Just the first car that came to mind as a not very tall vehicle most would be familiar with. No other reason.

Sure makes sense, I'm American so there are different considerations here.

I'm also not against this, just answering the question. The higher off the ground the panels are, the more it costs. Its a cost benefit calculation.

I mean, France is pushing efforts to de-car it's urban centers. Having all this additional cost discourages the construction of new parking lots (which this applies to), and thus discourages vehicle traffic. It also helps prepare for the EU ban on ICE vehicles in 2035.

Honestly I gotta wonder why every business in America hasn't at least tried to budget for rooftop solar. Once you get it installed that's easy money off all your power bills.

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depends on their definition of large, but in what scenario would an ikea, costco or walmart parking lot get little sunlight?

Enough for a hatchback, sedan or stationawagon. And a few spots for vans.

Which if they were only applying this law to metros above a certain level of population density would make sense, but this just applies the cost to the bottom end of the supply chain across the nation and allows it to multiply as it flows up.

France has nationwide population density similar to the US midwest, the car bans only make sense in about 9% of the country, for the remaining 92% this is just added cost for near zero benefit.

seeing as big parking lots are a big subsidy for car usage, maybe it's good if they cost more to build to reflect their environmental costs...

We don't have much coal energy in France, we have a lot of nuclear.

If you make them as tall as a standard overhang, like one you would find as apartment-designated parking, you will be able to fit almost all vehicles except for bro-dozers.

I’ve only ever seen people with semi trucks or campers park at the back of the lot anyways, so you wouldn’t have to cover the WHOLE lot

Definitely depends. Was visualising inner city carparks surrounded by buildings

I used to live in Arizona, I always wondered why they didn’t mandate that all new homes had solar. You see more parking lots with Solar there at least, but why not go a step further and require new houses too

It depends on the timeline and costs. I could see some parking taken offline if the cost is too high.

C'mon America...copy them. The planet would earn a big 'W'

>France has nationwide population density similar to the US midwest

Not at all. France has about a population density of 117.7 people per sqkm or 304.8 per square mile. the US midwest supposedly has 90 people per sqmile, which is approx 34.7 per square km. France is more than 3 times as densely populated. Not only that, 44% of the country lives in the 20 largest metro areas. How is that in any way similar?

Did you confuse miles and km when looking up the numbers? r/confidentlyincorrect

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Nuclear works too!

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Won’t flying a helicopter become a nightmare

Ah alright, I didn't think of that

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I don’t know how it is in France, but in Germany there is higher payout if you only provide the net, without using any yourself, for bigger scale projects. It’s still not high, but it does pay over a while. The land directly next highways is often plastered with solar cells. Obviously it is profitable.

I’m guessing even more so on parking lots. You still have the parking lot. Only now it’s shady.

Electricity is stored in the balls.

That’s true to an extent. But My generation and the previous generation are so set in the good old days that they resist any change. And voters in our age groups make up a larger percentage of the vote. The writing is on the wall about Climate Change, but they refuse to see it.

https://i.imgur.com/phsQwjw.jpg

Well I knew practically you wouldn’t pave them into the ground. And where I’m from we don’t have parking lots with dolor panels so I had no clue. Also most parking lots are just open space with no roof so if it’s like a parking garage that makes more sense. I was mostly joking though sorry to upset you

You would build a canopy over the parking lot. It wouldn't make sense for a parking garage because they take the surface area that a large lot would cover, and instead stack it up. Solar panels need surface area.

I know, was just a bad joke. I'll see myself out.