Obvious choice
(midwest.social)
Solarpunk- yes, absolutely, we should be putting solar in car parks
- you deploy agricultural solar panels in grazing lands where the panels act as shade for grazing animals
Cover the corn fields that are 95% being used to produce ethanol for fuel mixture into gasoline. Replace a one-time-use fuel that takes a ton of water to produce, contributes to pesticide usage, and requires a bunch more energy for processing (and makes your car run less efficiently anyway) with fuel that can power homes, vehicles, industry, etc. starting now and lasting for decades with a one time investment into fully recyclable materials that is already pretty low cost and lowering all the time.
That would make too much sense.
Cover both
This one actually grinds my gears and it is too popular around here:
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
I live in tbe tropics, and in the new shopping centre they built modeld off of one from a different climate they put shade cloth over the car parks so it's not dry in the rain.
Then when we have cyclones it just gets ripped apart each year.
Really should be solid roof and solar panels.
Our hospital even has snow covers over the windows despite the weather never dropping below 15 degrees c and has never snowed because they copied another southern building
False dilemma.
Also that ain't no field.
Crop yields are only very slightly affected by agrivoltaics and variance tends to be reduced. Water usage is reduced a lot.
Even dedicated agrivoltaics would only cover a fraction of usually sub standard land for giant power outputs. The fear of someone plastering the environment with solar is fear mongering.
Building enough parking infrastructure to cover with panels is a waste of space (outside of America).
It's probably a good idea to put solar panels on car parks where we're going to have car parks anyway, though. In addition to agrivoltaics and using, as you say, substandard land for large scale solar. Also put it on roofs. Basically anywhere it doesn't do any harm, I say.
Governments should encourage every home to have at least enough solar powered energy to run a small refrigerator, a space heater, a small cooking surface, and a radio as a matter of national security. That can be achieved with porch solar and significantly hardens a population against attacks on energy infrastructure.
Good idea on a paper, but its expensive to build steel frames for the panels and there is the risk of somebody crashing and making expensive mess.
Also maintaning and cleaning anything elevated is a bitch.
And parking need resurfacing or at least repainting of the lines everynow and then.
Another way to think is that if covering parking lots with shade would be easy and viable we would have much more of shaded lots without solar panels allready.
Yeah, I'm largely spitballing. Perhaps the numbers don't work out, perhaps they do.
That said, solar over parking is a source of income. It may well pay for itself whilst providing parking that is both shaded and rain sheltering and improving energy security and helping fight climate change and probably powering a bunch of charge points underneath it, which you could either charge for or just leave free to encourage people to come to whatever the parking is attached to (or just the parking itself if it's a paid car park). My local Sainsbury's has a free charging point and it's a big part of why I shop there.
Also design the canopies to be their own scaffolding so the elevated maintenance is moot.
You can resurface under a canopy. Hell, petrol stations are almost always under a canopy and they definitely get resurfaced sometimes.
There's a risk of someone crashing into any building, too, but we still build things that are useful beside roads.
I'm just saying that, yes, it's not cut and dry, but I'm pretty sure the problems with the idea are generally solvable.
I would say let’s maybe not have car parks at all? They suck. We should as a species try to phase out personal cars, first of all. And secondly, until then, underground garages are infinitely better for everyone else.
OK, so in 100 years you get your wish and personal cars no longer exist. For the next 100 years, would you like to:
- put solar panels on top of car parks; or
- not do that?
In addition, after 100 years on top of the car parks that still exist (perhaps for the shared cars), would you like to:
- have solar panels on top of them; or
- not have them?
That’s a false dichotomy. I can choose a third option. Where we place car parking garages (multi-level above or underground) all around ring roads and ban cars from entering city centers. Then we put solar panels on top of most roofs, and in fields for grazing animals.
This obsession with car parks is exclusively American.
So you want to demolish all the car parks that already exist? All of them, tomorrow? Don't you think it will take some time before the builders can come and replace the last car park in your country with whatever it's going to be replaced with? During that time, would it not be better to put solar panels on it? (And then remove them before it gets demolished and put them somewhere else)
I am not American, I just think it's a stupid criticism of such a plan that we "shouldn't have cars and therefore shouldn't have car parks" because the fact is that we already do have them so we may as well use them as best we can.
In any case I don't agree on a total ban on cars entering city centres, at least not in the foreseeable future. The most bike-friendly cities I have lived in and visited have also had many cars. I suspect there is a place for personal cars, deprioritised compared to buses and bikes, in most cities for many years to come. During that time there will need to be car parks. Those car parks should have solar panels on, along with pretty much all other buildings.
How about we get that wish in, say, 10 or 20 years instead of your strawman scenario? Transforming cities to be walkable/bikable does not take that long, if you're serious about it.
Personal cars are going to be here for way longer than 20 years, but 20 years is still long enough to build a lot of solar panels, so the same questions still arise. What will your answer be?
Except in places where you can’t go below ground because of water, of course.
Well there are above ground parking garages as well…
Akshualy, covering your fields (partially) with solar increases crop yield by up to 20%. And also feeds your tractor environmentally friendly.
Both. AgroPV is a win win win.
It gives farmers an additional income stream
They can still farm the field with most Setups
Below the panels, the soil can regenerate and grow "weeds", important for bugs and small criters.
Even if they don't farm, you still get soil regeneration and solar panels leave no trace when removed.
But yeah, all the roofs, all the parking lots as well.
I'm not sure about the no trace part, wouldn't the higher structures need concrete foundations?
Not necessarily, it seems you can work with screw-based foundations even with higher setups. I found a german source with good pictures for what looks like a raspberry farm
Oh, and a comparison when to use what (looks like ai, but, you know...)
Oh that's great, thanks! It's s bit disheartening to see how many fields are covered in PV without doing agri-pv, effectively competing with farming, at least in my area. It seems like agri pv is a purely academic thing for now, at least I haven't ever read about productive usage. My best guess, aside from steep investment costs, would be that the laws are different for farming and pv (I'm in Germany).
Cover every dead roof that has sunshine beating down on it, yes.
But there’s an actual benefit to covering fields. Livestock can get shade and keep the grass in check for one thing.
I like the vertically mounted bifacial panels.
Highly recommended for areas that get a lot of snow.
I thought agrivoltaics gives a better yield as it protects the grass from too much sunlight that would cause it to dry out? I know in my garden the patch with the most grass growth had a wood sheet hanging over it.
Not going to comment on the fields, but car parks for sure. Keeps the car cool on hot days, can pack your shopping away without getting wet on rainy days, keeps snow off, etc.
@Viking_Hippie it might become helpful to cover the fields - many crops benefit from shade these days. Higher crop yields PLUS energy harvest. Win Win. Check for Agro-Solar or Agro-PV.
@Viking_Hippie But since we will remove all individual cars, there won’t be any car parks on which to build…
Got 'em. We should wait until we get rid of all the cars before we start putting up solar panels. One thing at a time people!
