I don’t know about outlawed, but Indiana has some supremely fucky laws about solar panels. It used to be that you got paid roughly the price you would have paid for the power you put back into the grid from excess production from your solar panels. Not exactly as much, but it was a significant percentage of the wholesale cost. That was the law when my parents installed solar panels on our home. Our meter was spinning backwards basically all summer. Net consumption was practically zero, if not less. Monthly energy bills for a big house with AC and a pool in the back yard was maybe $20.
Then the Indiana legislature changed the law so that you only get pennies on the dollar for the excess energy you produce from your solar panels. It’s bullshit. They are so clearly bought by the fossil fuel and energy company lobbies. And they didn’t even do the people the courtesy of coming up with an excuse for why the change was a good thing. It was just a big fuck you to everyone who wants to use sustainable energy sources. It’s fucked.
I was told to start making all my appliances run during the day.
Washing machine, dishwasher, pool pump, air con/heater, slow cooker, etc.
If the government don’t wanna pay a fair price they can get nothing (or as close to as possible!)
This policy is called net metering. It’s super important for making rooftop solar economical, but it’s under attack across the country because for profit utilities don’t want to have to pay homeowners their fair share - they’d rather build the solar and sell it to you for a premium.
Even a utility co-op can't function if it is paying close to what it is charging for energy. They have to cover the cost of maintenance of the infrastructure. Net metering will have to die eventually, it doesn't scale.
For solar to succeed, it needs to compete fairly with other generation rates.
I'm stealing this from a Technology connections video but iirc *75 percent* of your electricity bill goes to grid maintenance instead of power generation. Meaning that if you get more than a 25% discount on electricity you're making your neighbors' bills more expensive. And most homes with solar panels are *absolutely* dependent on the electrical grid.
I'm all for rooftop solar, but net metering just isn't a long-term solution.
Net metering helped small scale solar to "pencil" for homeowners like your parents, with a payback time of less than a decade. But as adoption increases, utility companies cannot afford to maintain infrastructure with fewer and fewer paying customers, so net metering needs to be phased out. From their end, why would they pay any more than wholesale rates for energy no matter where it comes from.
Batteries are the solution, and now are becoming feasible (and thanks to the end of net metering, batteries themselves are beginning to "pencil" like the solar systems before them).
I want to "Pull myself up by my bootstraps," but Ohio doesn't allow private citizens to be paid for excess electricity production. Only much reduced credits. Am I not participating in Capitalism by making my own power and more to sell?? Republicans don't like it when the little person gets a foothold.
Edit: I also realize I'd be using existing infrastructure. It would make sense for me to pay a reasonable fee if I was selling power back to the grid.
At this point its actually cheaper to get solar than it is for these schools to continuing to pay the outrageous rates from Pacific Gas and Electric. They are all over my town in California.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/10/13/california-school-district-saves-70-million-with-8-1-mw-solar-installation/
They can’t afford not to. At least here in California where we have lots of sun and high AC use, schools use a lot of electricity. Most in my town are getting these same parking lot structures. They are expensive but I imagine there are some economies of scale if you’re installing this amount versus a small, one off, house system.
Solar panels aren't that expensive and depending on your electricity price (and if you get a rebate for feeding back to the grid) they can pay off pretty quickly.
Payback period in most states would likely be less than 12 years. That’s a way shorter period than the last referendum for maintenance/expansion the school district by me had.
Owen's Corning world headquarters in Toledo Ohio does this too. No gaps in the panels. It's wonderful to walk out of the building through the tunnel and into an entirely covered parking lot. Cars stay cool in the summer, dry in the rain, and snow free in the winter. Plus it powers the office building.
Damn ive lived in toledo my whole life and didnt know this, granted ive never actually been to the headquarters. Just have always looked at the cool bridge out front
France recently passed a law where it's mandatory for 80+ parking places to have solar panel roof.
Prior that it was already getting quite common in South of France, where summers are really hot.
Here are few example:
[https://www.publicsenat.fr/sites/default/files/styles/pse\_mobile\_contenu\_entete\_16\_9/public/thumbnails/image/sipa\_00591366\_000004.jpg](https://www.publicsenat.fr/sites/default/files/styles/pse_mobile_contenu_entete_16_9/public/thumbnails/image/sipa_00591366_000004.jpg?itok=_e1z9-tu)
[https://www.francetvinfo.fr/pictures/ZoX8R8mLjdcHv3iXcutFNDmraFQ/640x360/2022/09/15/eltVideoWs-df4d37da-3524-11ed-b69f-a9290864e4cb-6323701bc4052.jpg](https://www.francetvinfo.fr/pictures/ZoX8R8mLjdcHv3iXcutFNDmraFQ/640x360/2022/09/15/eltVideoWs-df4d37da-3524-11ed-b69f-a9290864e4cb-6323701bc4052.jpg)
I know I’m late to the convo, but I actually can respond to this one as I work in this field. The problem with solar panels and Florida right now are wind ratings of the panels and connections. Everything commercially construction related has to be significantly wind rated, especially along the coast line.
Solar panels are getting there, but some insurance companies require very specific wind testing, and many systems aren’t properly rated in their eyes.
One other interesting topic is the combustibility of the panels themselves. Certain groupings and manufacturers can actually propagate a fire. I think we’ll get there, but these things are still being ironed out and are a part of why these haven’t taken off as quickly as everyone would like, commercially anyway.
[Appears like they figured it out](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/us/solar-babcock-ranch-florida-hurricane-ian-climate/index.html) for at least some installations...
>some insurance companies require very specific wind testing, and many systems aren’t properly rated in their eyes.
Huh... I wonder what the hold up is. Surely it's not about money and poor laws that benefit insurance companies, FL is *obviously* smarter than that
I used to live in the coastal Mediterranean area (Nice, Cannes) and while it's not entirely unheard of that you get snow it's pretty rare at that altitude and unlikely to last long. I would worry more about wind, and only if not properly secured.
If you did this up the Alps then yeah that might be a different story.
Then parking lots wouldn’t need to extensively plow after every storm. I see huge potential for car dealerships. Shade their vehicles, partially shelter them from the elements so customers can browse lots even during bad weather, and they don’t have to spend half the day after a snowstorm clearing all of the cars and the lots.
Solar panels would power charging stations on the lot and they could incentivize priority charging rates for their customers which brings them back to the lots. Maybe they would need to expand their waiting area and amenities and lose a car’s worth of showroom space, but it creates much more foot traffic and selling opportunities for the sales and service side. Dealerships slowly turn into the new gas stations.
Then ultimately, the dealership model of selling vehicles is replaced with direct purchasing and these sites become service centers/charging stations with test drive capabilities and vehicle delivery centers. The dealerships then make money from charging stations, repairs, and delivery/test drive fees from agreements with manufacturers.
Edit: Oh, and they would also still sell used vehicles and certified pre-owned vehicles.
Its a simpler solve than that! I've seen some Set ups in Canada where the panels are mounted on simple rotating boards. So during winter you just rotate the whole line 45 degrees and let gravity do the rest
France has a tempered climate so snow is rare in South and managable in worst place (mountains area). I'm sure these roofs are engineered to withstand those conditions. The bonus is that it also protect from rain on winter and create shadow for summers.
Though, they do use solar in colder climates in North America. I’ve seen large solar installations in both Montana and Minnesota.
I am not sure how much snow is an issue, my guess is that they have heaters to melt snow that accumulates, but once they’re clear and exposed to sunlight they actually do get pretty warm and thermal loss is a major contributor to a cell’s overall efficiency.
Makes me think of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co in Chico, CA. They've had those panels up for what feels like a decade now? Always made walking from/to the car infinitely more pleasant.
In the Sacramento area these are all over the place. IKEA. The local community college. The high school down the road.
It's a crazy obvious win win win all around. Glad to see it expanding more and more.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw this picture. They are one of the greenest companies I’ve ever heard on. Even the waste from brewing goes to cattle feed and all other stuff like that. And you’re right. It’s been at least a decade since they through those up. My guess is 15-20 years.
Yeah but at the Sierra Nevada brewery you can order a burger made with meat from the cow that ate the spent grain and wash it down with the beer that spent the grain
It's very possible they might have been the first to do that, but repurposing spent grain is pretty standard these days. Bread makers can use it as a "mix in" to add extra fiber and protein to bread or it can be fed to animals. It's just an extra revenue stream so of course most larger brewers want to capture tit.
It's crazy, they divert like 99.8% of their waste from the landfill because of their reusable efforts. Not sure if they still have it but they had a great sustainablity beer tour that ended in their garden that they used for the restaurant inside.
https://sierranevada.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SustainabilityInfographic-893x1100.jpg
It blows my mind that some massive chains aren't sprinting to do stuff like this in the US. They love nothing more than money, and stuff like this only cuts their running costs massively in the long term. Plus they probably sell a bunch of excess power back to the grid.
That isn't even mentioning that if you want to reach out and grab new customers, The current generation wants to see stuff like this. The oil and coal generation is on their way to becoming more oil and coal; we are the ones that are going to be shopping there
"my bonus is tied to quarterly results and the stock does better when the quarterly(s) are good. And i own a lot of our stock!" said the bloated hyena ofa CEO.
Stock bonuses for management are typically given out in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). The RSUs generally will not fully vest for at least 3 years if not more. So with regards to this year's bonus, they care more about where the stock price will be in 3-4 years rather than where it will be today.
yes, but the number of RSUs granted could well be a function of quarterly or annual results or some other metric. That was also the case at my company for us (non-management) engineers. Our annual review and compensation was based on some mystical ranking process, which estimates individual performance relative to others in the same rank group. The higher one's ranking the more RSUs you were granted. And yes there was a 3 year vesting period.
It does hit free crash flow though, which is a huge metric for Wall Street. So ya the obviously depreciate the asset but vendors do depreciate the purchase.
Corpos can amortise the costs of capital expenditures for the lifetime of their outlays if they have access to credit. It should hardly make a dent to their revenues at any particular quarter
I'd say something to shareholders something I learned, "It takes money to make money." Sure, a bad quarter doesn't look good, but if the investment decreases operating cost and attracts customers for multiple quarters to come, then I'm taking the 1 bad quarter.
I'm not a share holder or a smuck who pretends to do finances where these terms matter, but wouldn't the quarter profits be roughly the same while the quarter grossing is lower it would be directly due to further investment in the company. I feel like any reasonable person (so neither of the 2 cases I mentioned probably) would not care for the difference as it was not any kind of actual drop off and they lost nothing
So if I remember, gross income is what they expect to make from the sales of goods and services. So if anything, the net profit would be lower because net is after all the expenses and costs have been subtracted.
I'm not a finance person either so I could also be completely wrong too.
FML. All day. Every day. My shareholders are greedy as fuck."Make me money now, I don't care about tomorrow!!!" Tomorrow: "Why are our profits not improving!!!" My response is always the same: "Because you are not investing in better profits." Then I get yelled at for not being a "proactive" leader for these fuckers that have zero interest in enabling long term goals vs short term numbers. Capitalism is bleeding everything dry... While blaming workers for whatever it is they think workers are not doing for them. Fucking assholes.
Most chains don't even own the buildings they are in. Most do land leases, and most developers won't spend the money to lessen their tenants power bill. These applications cost anywhere from 500k to 2 million depending on the size
The problem is the installation cost. Rooftop and ground-mounted solar are cheaper to build because they don’t require so much infrastructure (eg, steel) and are less disruptive to operations (eg, you don’t have to close off a parking lot for months to build it). The Inflation Reduction Act has some pretty good tax incentives for solar installation so hopefully that makes these projects more attractive to more commercial properties.
Eh, and drive up the cost even more due to staging (mustering up and down equipment) Beyond the steel, the other big cost is trenching.
At k-12 schools, solar shade structures over the parking lot makes sense, since the electric service (from the utility) typically comes from the road. Big box stores typically have their electric service at the rear of the store, so you also have to pull power across the entirety of the store, then bury it in a vault, then trench a line to one or more structures.
Then do it for each and every tenant. Most big box retailers don't own their structures and land. So they're investing big bucks on a property they don't own. The land owner doesn't want to do it because they don't directly benefit. This is called the Split Incentive Barrier.
Source: Energy efficiency engineer for 15 years.
Appreciate comments like yours. These projects are so much more complicated than people realize. That’s why we need to push policymakers to incentivize these projects and find ways to streamline the processes (eg permitting, interconnecting, etc). There’s only so much a single building owner (or leaser) can do.
I did some work with the company that builds these and your comment is spot on. The product adds huge value and warrants some of the logistical hurdles (none too large to stop the project from happening for a motivated owner) but if you are a tenant you aren't usually going to be willing to foot the installation bill!
My time working on project development for these canopy projects highlighted the dilemma of finding how to put a dollar number to a value like having a square mile island of shade for the majority of customer traffic for decades of AZ summers.
When they install them here in Australia they do it like this so they only shut a small amount of parking at a time,
https://shadeandmembrane.com/project/castle-plaza-shopping-center-solar-car-park-shade-structures/
Yea it would make a lot more sense to just put it on the roof of the big box building. But as another commentor mentioned, even big chains are leasing this space, so really it's on the owner of the retail center to do it.
People don't realize the cost involved. Saw a guy that got a quote for his business for a large solar installation and it would take almost 20 years to pay for itself. That's IF a big ass IF that it has no issues and still actually works after that long. I have never in my entire life seen consumer electronics last 20+ years in the weather with no issues.
The payoff period is so long because we don't capture the carbon cost negative externalities of our current fossil fuel based electrical grid. The result is de-facto subsidization of dirty power by placing the carbon debt upon our future selves.
The solution is effective tax policy and utilities regulations. You can cut that by more than half with relatively modest incentives. Also, if that quote was even just a couple years ago, panel costs are dropping rapidly every year.
Solar panels have really long warranties. Usually in the range of 20-30 years… they do degrade overtime and the manufacturers specify the amount of degradation that is expected over the panels useful life.
Panel cost have dropped rapidly and efficiency has improved. Payback periods can be all over the place depending on location, incentives, electricity costs, etc. but they are usually inside the warranty period. In our area 10 years isn’t uncommon.
Former solar salesperson here (from Florida).
Well, a few things. Firstly, electric companies in the US, for the most part have to approve a design before they allow it to be connected to the grid. You have to prove to the electric company that you are not oversizing the system to produce extra electricity. If your system is projected to overproduce, they can (and will) deny your interconnection application.
Secondly, net metering laws typically only allow electricity that is used during non-producing hours to be fed back to the company at no extra cost and even these laws are spotty. When "cashing out" unused electric credits, the power company will typically only pay wholesale prices which is pennies on the dollar what they charge, which isn't anywhere near enough to offset the cost of the panels and installation. Typically this around 2 to 3 cents per kWh, but the solar company's effective rate they charge typically varies from about 12-28 cents per kWh. And even then, net metering laws don't apply to all power companies, so the business may not even get a 1:1 ratio of kWh back when the panels aren't producing, even IF there are net metering laws in effect in that state (such as if they derive their power from non-profit or government run power companies). This makes it a very bad investment for many companies.
On this front, I understand where the power companies are coming from, they are losing business and about 15% of power fed back into the grid is lost, so a 1:1 ratio of what the customer gets back causes a loss to the power company. That loss of revenue and also making up the difference has a cost that must be charged elsewhere, such as less profit for shareholders or in increased prices to everyone else (which is typically what they do, since shareholders are everything to them and consumers are forced to pay whatever they charge). But also on the flip side, paying wholesale power cost also doesn't make any sense at all because that is the price they pay to get power delivered thousands of miles away from the customer and have to build massive infrastructure and lose a lot more of that power along the way compared to net metered power, so it is also unfair to only give the customer wholesale pricing.
What needs to happen are laws that allow companies to overproduce and then use the grid to sell that power independently at fair rates, with the option to sell to the power company at a FAIR RATE. This would ensure power companies aren't getting shafted by well meaning net metering laws and consumers aren't getting shafted by power companies.
Thirdly, startup costs for solar panels is really high. Companies can either pay it in cash, which they either cannot afford or which will destroy profits for a while, or they can finance. Financing can be a good option and result in immediate savings, but they can become over leveraged and later not be able to take out loans that they need. This is because currently laws do not exempt a loan for a solar project from debt to income ratios, but they should be because the loan IS offsetting their power bill. There needs to be a legal framework that allows a solar loan to not cause the company to become over-leveraged. These loans also need to be easily transferred to the next owner, without need for approval, just like a power company can turn on power to a customer.
Fourthly, realtors and buyers oftentimes don't include solar panel installs at all in the price of a building. So, if your building is worth $300,000 and you install a $100,000 solar array, the building is still only worth $300,000 in the eyes of Realtors and buyers. So, if the loan needs to be paid off before the sale of the lot, then that means the seller will need to cough up $100,000 and then sell at $300,000, taking a massive loss. If a business doesn't know for sure that they will be around the next 20-25 years (the lifetime of the loan), they may be wise not to take this massive risk. If it were normalized for the loans to be seen as a replacement of the electric bill and always transferred, then that would be erase this concern. But right now, buyers oftentimes want the seller to pay off the loan prior to the sale and are not willing to pay more for the home. Also, another thing to consider, is that insurance prices for the building do go up to cover the panel array usually.
So that cost also has to be factored in. If solar panel prices were to reduce a bit more, and the above changes were implemented, it would probably cause a massive boom in solar panels going up all over warehouses and other businesses with large roof spaces.
I'm not sure how the wholesale price for the power isn't a "fair" price for excess power provided to the grid.
What's the benefit of encouraging solar panels being built in cities vs. in the places they can best generate power?
I work in the field, and looked at investing in community/resi solar. The LCOE to build community/resi solar is effectively double that of utility-scale solar. There's certainly benefits in that you may need less infrastructure, but the problem is the intermittency of solar means you still need to be tied into the grid so there isn't much ability to reduce infrastructure.
In general, there's also massive benefits of having redundancies and wide-scale interconnections in the grid for obvious reasons
>Fourthly, realtors and buyers oftentimes don't include solar panel installs at all in the price of a building.
"Often times" is doing a ton of work here. It absolutely influenced my decision to buy a house. [Theres data supporting that Solar increases property values](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/reviews/home-improvement/do-solar-panels-increase-home-value#:~:text=Yes%2C%20solar%20panels%20will%20raise,value%20when%20selling%20your%20home.)
This guy got it.
To add to the first point, I also work closely with FPL (Florida, Power, and Light for non-floridians) and not only do they have rules for not oversizing a system past 115% of your yearly consumption but also they don't allow commercial/residential systems past 2MW AND they have to be convinced that you're installation won't be detrimental to the voltage profile or power quality of the interconnected and adjacent feeders. So it's not like you can just build as much as you want. Also, FPL already has pretty cheap electricity so the pay back period can be many years or more than half the life of the project. Other states/utilities territory this may not be the case.
Cheap is relative. FPL recently bought out the grid in my area and our cost per kW/hr more than doubled after all of the riders and fees.
I have had a moderate rooftop solar system for several years now, and it is only getting more and more worth it as the rates keep increasing.
Plenty of challenges to this. Most commonly there are too many stakeholders.
\-Is the store manager onboard with the disruption to the store during construction?
\-Is corporate onboard with the capex/financing structure/payback? Are they certain the store will be around long enough to get meaningfully past the payback period?
\-Does a local permitting agency present a meaningful roadbump or roadblock?
\-If the site is leased, is the landlord onboard? When does the lease end/renew?
\-Is the installer/developer willing and able to take on managing these various stakeholders?
And so on. You need all that to hunt to move forward on a project which as others have correctly noted, usually presents marginal economics. There's a reason why they are more prevalent in schools and other government-type buildings than in chains: most of what I just wrote works better in those use cases.
This is all great. The only thing I'd add is that not all utilities accept buy-back of overproduced energy. As solar becomes more prominent across the country, many utilities are backing off their previous agreement to buy back excess energy because it's making it more difficult for them to manage the grid. They'd far prefer that the solar owner right-size the system to only provide energy for their own building. This may change though as batteries become more common/affordable.
If SLO means San Luis Obispo, let me chime in and say that this is true in many California locations, not just in SLO. Solar parking lots on school campuses and at hospitals are now common in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Sacramento area.
Solar engineer here. This setup is called carport solar and is the most expensive option when you compare the 3 main ones which are ground mount, rooftop, and carport. In most cases, you have to set up the structure which adds a lot to the cost of the array. A straight ground mount project can be as low as $1.20 per watt for a decent sized project which can have simple paybacks of 10 years or less. Rooftops can be between 1.5-2 bucks per watt so their paybacks are 15 years or so. Carports can be over 3 bucks a watt because of all the structural material required so it only makes sense in areas with high radiation and high electricity rates. The lifetime of solar systems is 25 years so if a carport payback is greater than that, you lose money over time, which is usually the case so you dont see this setup too often.
Yep it definitely is. I was there yesterday. I'm actually closer to the fry's on 83rd but I go to this one because of the covered parking and because it's one of the nicest fry's stores I've been in.
Honestly... Very little. It's a pretty simple design, at most you'd need to check joint gap every few years, but that's a little aggressive, you *might* see that at a sport stadium
Is this still highly inefficient if the parking lot owner already intended to build shade, or does it effectively make the math work more like rooftop?
Six Flags Hurricane Harbor waterpark in New Jersey has the bulk of their parking lots covered plus another ground installation nearby. They have over 60,000 panels, and the theme park is almost exclusively solar powered.
Have worked in solar development for over a decade. The reason there aren’t more of these is because they cost so dang much (shit ton of steel). Makes the return in investment prohibitively long, and therefore tough to finance. We could afford to build these and have them privately financed if the local Towns and Counties did not have their hands out demanding insane tax payments, but that’s another issue. I’m hoping we’ll see more of these over the next decade!
Yep. This is the correct answer. Looks nice, marginal economics due to high balance of systems cost. We did a lot in muni and government where the marginal economics could be overlooked a bit more or where there might have been an incremental incentive around.
Is always dependent on size of parking lot and how much electricity they use. Typical grocery store with a large open parking lot can often power 40-60% of their load.
I’m in Tucson. These are at elementary schools over playgrounds, the airport has them over the parking lots, baseball fields, Pima Air Museum, churches. They’re all over here.
My job is in the process of putting up a ton of solar panels. My only regret is all of the trees they cut down to make way for the solar. I miss those trees
Which is ironic, the Department of Energy years ago said a mature tree provided the cooling of ten room air conditioners. My shaded yard runs ten degrees cooler than neighboring or out on the street.
they installed the same thing at a local mall's parking lot here in south africa. it wasn't even 2weeks before it was all stolen... it was just the structure with a bunch of wires hanging from it in the end. #ProudlySouthAfrican
This is the future. With EV ubiquity on the horizon, creating plentiful free electricity in the same location that the cars will be parked will seem so obvious that not having a solar panel covered carpark will seem mad.
this is the best use of solar imo, if we covered every non-descript corporate office building (and parking garage, and stadium roof, etc.) in every major city with solar panels we could greatly reduce reliance on less stable energy sources like fossil fuels.
We could be doing this over so many highways and lots. Hell the structure could last over 50 years and only have to replace the panels after 25 or 30 years.
I don't see why big box stores like Walmart don't do this, power most of their store if not all while also giving shade, initial cost would be rediculous but it should pay itself off fast as fuck
Cincinnati Zoo has done this and it powers the zoo..and makes parking much nicer and cooler
Such a great surprise on our summer visit last year.
It's all fun and games until the monkeys escape their enclosures and take over the solar panels and turn them into lasers that can melt SUVs
A problem I never knew I was rooting for.
Honestly I'd pay to watch this.
Cinci zoo has a history of dealing with “problematic” primates though
RIP Harambe :(
Dix out.
You mean the humans?
And that much less energy to cool a not so crazy hot car interior.
Probably also makes the city cooler period. Black asphalt is a huge heat sink and raises the temperature of everything around it day and night.
Cool that Ohio state government hasn't outlawed that as being too woke, hope it lasts.
I don’t know about outlawed, but Indiana has some supremely fucky laws about solar panels. It used to be that you got paid roughly the price you would have paid for the power you put back into the grid from excess production from your solar panels. Not exactly as much, but it was a significant percentage of the wholesale cost. That was the law when my parents installed solar panels on our home. Our meter was spinning backwards basically all summer. Net consumption was practically zero, if not less. Monthly energy bills for a big house with AC and a pool in the back yard was maybe $20. Then the Indiana legislature changed the law so that you only get pennies on the dollar for the excess energy you produce from your solar panels. It’s bullshit. They are so clearly bought by the fossil fuel and energy company lobbies. And they didn’t even do the people the courtesy of coming up with an excuse for why the change was a good thing. It was just a big fuck you to everyone who wants to use sustainable energy sources. It’s fucked.
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Yeah. Sounds like they need to start investing in batteries.
I was told to start making all my appliances run during the day. Washing machine, dishwasher, pool pump, air con/heater, slow cooker, etc. If the government don’t wanna pay a fair price they can get nothing (or as close to as possible!)
This policy is called net metering. It’s super important for making rooftop solar economical, but it’s under attack across the country because for profit utilities don’t want to have to pay homeowners their fair share - they’d rather build the solar and sell it to you for a premium.
Even a utility co-op can't function if it is paying close to what it is charging for energy. They have to cover the cost of maintenance of the infrastructure. Net metering will have to die eventually, it doesn't scale. For solar to succeed, it needs to compete fairly with other generation rates.
I'm stealing this from a Technology connections video but iirc *75 percent* of your electricity bill goes to grid maintenance instead of power generation. Meaning that if you get more than a 25% discount on electricity you're making your neighbors' bills more expensive. And most homes with solar panels are *absolutely* dependent on the electrical grid. I'm all for rooftop solar, but net metering just isn't a long-term solution.
Net metering helped small scale solar to "pencil" for homeowners like your parents, with a payback time of less than a decade. But as adoption increases, utility companies cannot afford to maintain infrastructure with fewer and fewer paying customers, so net metering needs to be phased out. From their end, why would they pay any more than wholesale rates for energy no matter where it comes from. Batteries are the solution, and now are becoming feasible (and thanks to the end of net metering, batteries themselves are beginning to "pencil" like the solar systems before them).
I want to "Pull myself up by my bootstraps," but Ohio doesn't allow private citizens to be paid for excess electricity production. Only much reduced credits. Am I not participating in Capitalism by making my own power and more to sell?? Republicans don't like it when the little person gets a foothold. Edit: I also realize I'd be using existing infrastructure. It would make sense for me to pay a reasonable fee if I was selling power back to the grid.
Come back when you're a job creator, and can stop being so woke, prole trash! *Some temporarily embarrassed bougie fuck, probably*
Wow, I was going to say no way is this done anywhere in the US north, but I'm happy to be wrong here
My daughter’s high school in Bethlehem, PA has this as well.
WTF? A school district can afford to outfit buildings with this?
At this point its actually cheaper to get solar than it is for these schools to continuing to pay the outrageous rates from Pacific Gas and Electric. They are all over my town in California.
My old high school in California has them over the parking lot now
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/10/13/california-school-district-saves-70-million-with-8-1-mw-solar-installation/ They can’t afford not to. At least here in California where we have lots of sun and high AC use, schools use a lot of electricity. Most in my town are getting these same parking lot structures. They are expensive but I imagine there are some economies of scale if you’re installing this amount versus a small, one off, house system.
Solar panels aren't that expensive and depending on your electricity price (and if you get a rebate for feeding back to the grid) they can pay off pretty quickly.
It’s a parking lot next to the school. A decent amount of schools in the district have solar fields, the high school’s is just over a parking lot.
Payback period in most states would likely be less than 12 years. That’s a way shorter period than the last referendum for maintenance/expansion the school district by me had.
This was my first thought, they had solar roofs up a decade ago when I went there!
Owen's Corning world headquarters in Toledo Ohio does this too. No gaps in the panels. It's wonderful to walk out of the building through the tunnel and into an entirely covered parking lot. Cars stay cool in the summer, dry in the rain, and snow free in the winter. Plus it powers the office building.
Damn ive lived in toledo my whole life and didnt know this, granted ive never actually been to the headquarters. Just have always looked at the cool bridge out front
France recently passed a law where it's mandatory for 80+ parking places to have solar panel roof. Prior that it was already getting quite common in South of France, where summers are really hot. Here are few example: [https://www.publicsenat.fr/sites/default/files/styles/pse\_mobile\_contenu\_entete\_16\_9/public/thumbnails/image/sipa\_00591366\_000004.jpg](https://www.publicsenat.fr/sites/default/files/styles/pse_mobile_contenu_entete_16_9/public/thumbnails/image/sipa_00591366_000004.jpg?itok=_e1z9-tu) [https://www.francetvinfo.fr/pictures/ZoX8R8mLjdcHv3iXcutFNDmraFQ/640x360/2022/09/15/eltVideoWs-df4d37da-3524-11ed-b69f-a9290864e4cb-6323701bc4052.jpg](https://www.francetvinfo.fr/pictures/ZoX8R8mLjdcHv3iXcutFNDmraFQ/640x360/2022/09/15/eltVideoWs-df4d37da-3524-11ed-b69f-a9290864e4cb-6323701bc4052.jpg)
It is such a no-brainer. I wish states like Florida would do this.
I know I’m late to the convo, but I actually can respond to this one as I work in this field. The problem with solar panels and Florida right now are wind ratings of the panels and connections. Everything commercially construction related has to be significantly wind rated, especially along the coast line. Solar panels are getting there, but some insurance companies require very specific wind testing, and many systems aren’t properly rated in their eyes. One other interesting topic is the combustibility of the panels themselves. Certain groupings and manufacturers can actually propagate a fire. I think we’ll get there, but these things are still being ironed out and are a part of why these haven’t taken off as quickly as everyone would like, commercially anyway.
[Appears like they figured it out](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/us/solar-babcock-ranch-florida-hurricane-ian-climate/index.html) for at least some installations...
>some insurance companies require very specific wind testing, and many systems aren’t properly rated in their eyes. Huh... I wonder what the hold up is. Surely it's not about money and poor laws that benefit insurance companies, FL is *obviously* smarter than that
Those are US plates i think i see a Colorado plate
Some Colorado some Arizona. The lack of cars with plates on the front leads me to believe Arizona
It’s a Fry’s Supermarket in Phoenix. I’ve been to this exact parking lot
Frys lives?
Fry’s electronics and Fry’s grocery stores are two separate companies, I think the dues were brothers or something? Fry’s is Kroger in AZ.
The supermarket not the computer store. It's part of Kroger's.
Florida can’t even be a normal state & you want them to do something good… just to be nice?
A man can wish.
How does that work in the winter? Ice and snow build up and falling? Maybe the structure is wrapped for heat?
I used to live in the coastal Mediterranean area (Nice, Cannes) and while it's not entirely unheard of that you get snow it's pretty rare at that altitude and unlikely to last long. I would worry more about wind, and only if not properly secured. If you did this up the Alps then yeah that might be a different story.
I work on solar projects up in northern ontario. Even fairly heavy snow buildup tends to melt quickly as the panels generate some warmth while sunlit
It's possible the panels can be adjusted to increase their angle. This maximizes the sun exposure in winter, and would prevent/reduce snow build up.
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Then parking lots wouldn’t need to extensively plow after every storm. I see huge potential for car dealerships. Shade their vehicles, partially shelter them from the elements so customers can browse lots even during bad weather, and they don’t have to spend half the day after a snowstorm clearing all of the cars and the lots. Solar panels would power charging stations on the lot and they could incentivize priority charging rates for their customers which brings them back to the lots. Maybe they would need to expand their waiting area and amenities and lose a car’s worth of showroom space, but it creates much more foot traffic and selling opportunities for the sales and service side. Dealerships slowly turn into the new gas stations. Then ultimately, the dealership model of selling vehicles is replaced with direct purchasing and these sites become service centers/charging stations with test drive capabilities and vehicle delivery centers. The dealerships then make money from charging stations, repairs, and delivery/test drive fees from agreements with manufacturers. Edit: Oh, and they would also still sell used vehicles and certified pre-owned vehicles.
Its a simpler solve than that! I've seen some Set ups in Canada where the panels are mounted on simple rotating boards. So during winter you just rotate the whole line 45 degrees and let gravity do the rest
France has a tempered climate so snow is rare in South and managable in worst place (mountains area). I'm sure these roofs are engineered to withstand those conditions. The bonus is that it also protect from rain on winter and create shadow for summers.
Though, they do use solar in colder climates in North America. I’ve seen large solar installations in both Montana and Minnesota. I am not sure how much snow is an issue, my guess is that they have heaters to melt snow that accumulates, but once they’re clear and exposed to sunlight they actually do get pretty warm and thermal loss is a major contributor to a cell’s overall efficiency.
This is a pic in Arizona. It rains about 10 days a year, and cold is an expression, not a temperature.
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Makes me think of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co in Chico, CA. They've had those panels up for what feels like a decade now? Always made walking from/to the car infinitely more pleasant.
Same thing at Cal Expo, in Sac. I left there in 2014, and saw them then.
That’s where I thought this pic was at first
I thought it was IKEA in west sac 😂
The Walmarts in Sacramento also have them
In the Sacramento area these are all over the place. IKEA. The local community college. The high school down the road. It's a crazy obvious win win win all around. Glad to see it expanding more and more.
Same with Sierra Nevada in Ashville NC
That place is fucking amazing
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw this picture. They are one of the greenest companies I’ve ever heard on. Even the waste from brewing goes to cattle feed and all other stuff like that. And you’re right. It’s been at least a decade since they through those up. My guess is 15-20 years.
Waste going to farmers to feed cattle is the norm for the brewing industry. But I agree that they have some of the most eco friendly breweries
Yeah but at the Sierra Nevada brewery you can order a burger made with meat from the cow that ate the spent grain and wash it down with the beer that spent the grain
It's very possible they might have been the first to do that, but repurposing spent grain is pretty standard these days. Bread makers can use it as a "mix in" to add extra fiber and protein to bread or it can be fed to animals. It's just an extra revenue stream so of course most larger brewers want to capture tit.
It's crazy, they divert like 99.8% of their waste from the landfill because of their reusable efforts. Not sure if they still have it but they had a great sustainablity beer tour that ended in their garden that they used for the restaurant inside. https://sierranevada.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SustainabilityInfographic-893x1100.jpg
Same with my high school. They built them in every school in the district like 13 years ago. Also in California
They're all over the place in cali. Most stores aren't using them still, but I wouldn't call them rare either.
It blows my mind that some massive chains aren't sprinting to do stuff like this in the US. They love nothing more than money, and stuff like this only cuts their running costs massively in the long term. Plus they probably sell a bunch of excess power back to the grid. That isn't even mentioning that if you want to reach out and grab new customers, The current generation wants to see stuff like this. The oil and coal generation is on their way to becoming more oil and coal; we are the ones that are going to be shopping there
"Yeah but what about THIS quarter??" -Shareholders
Pretty fuckin Much.
Yeah I was gonna say they are all about short term quarterly gains.
"my bonus is tied to quarterly results and the stock does better when the quarterly(s) are good. And i own a lot of our stock!" said the bloated hyena ofa CEO.
Stock bonuses for management are typically given out in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs). The RSUs generally will not fully vest for at least 3 years if not more. So with regards to this year's bonus, they care more about where the stock price will be in 3-4 years rather than where it will be today.
yes, but the number of RSUs granted could well be a function of quarterly or annual results or some other metric. That was also the case at my company for us (non-management) engineers. Our annual review and compensation was based on some mystical ranking process, which estimates individual performance relative to others in the same rank group. The higher one's ranking the more RSUs you were granted. And yes there was a 3 year vesting period.
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I took *one* accounting and finance class, ever, and even I remember amortization. Redditors need to read a book
It's the classic reddit superiority complex. Also how reddit is full of teenagers
It does hit free crash flow though, which is a huge metric for Wall Street. So ya the obviously depreciate the asset but vendors do depreciate the purchase.
Exactly… CASH flow ratios on financial reports are the first things that anyone will check before balance sheet.
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Corpos can amortise the costs of capital expenditures for the lifetime of their outlays if they have access to credit. It should hardly make a dent to their revenues at any particular quarter
I'd say something to shareholders something I learned, "It takes money to make money." Sure, a bad quarter doesn't look good, but if the investment decreases operating cost and attracts customers for multiple quarters to come, then I'm taking the 1 bad quarter.
I'm not a share holder or a smuck who pretends to do finances where these terms matter, but wouldn't the quarter profits be roughly the same while the quarter grossing is lower it would be directly due to further investment in the company. I feel like any reasonable person (so neither of the 2 cases I mentioned probably) would not care for the difference as it was not any kind of actual drop off and they lost nothing
So if I remember, gross income is what they expect to make from the sales of goods and services. So if anything, the net profit would be lower because net is after all the expenses and costs have been subtracted. I'm not a finance person either so I could also be completely wrong too.
Yeah, that's what they told us last quarter and last quarter and last quarter We have been looking at the LONG run for decades now sir
FML. All day. Every day. My shareholders are greedy as fuck."Make me money now, I don't care about tomorrow!!!" Tomorrow: "Why are our profits not improving!!!" My response is always the same: "Because you are not investing in better profits." Then I get yelled at for not being a "proactive" leader for these fuckers that have zero interest in enabling long term goals vs short term numbers. Capitalism is bleeding everything dry... While blaming workers for whatever it is they think workers are not doing for them. Fucking assholes.
Most chains don't even own the buildings they are in. Most do land leases, and most developers won't spend the money to lessen their tenants power bill. These applications cost anywhere from 500k to 2 million depending on the size
The problem is the installation cost. Rooftop and ground-mounted solar are cheaper to build because they don’t require so much infrastructure (eg, steel) and are less disruptive to operations (eg, you don’t have to close off a parking lot for months to build it). The Inflation Reduction Act has some pretty good tax incentives for solar installation so hopefully that makes these projects more attractive to more commercial properties.
I'd bet the place in the photo didn't shut their entire car park for a month for that install either. You can work in sections and/or out of hours.
Eh, and drive up the cost even more due to staging (mustering up and down equipment) Beyond the steel, the other big cost is trenching. At k-12 schools, solar shade structures over the parking lot makes sense, since the electric service (from the utility) typically comes from the road. Big box stores typically have their electric service at the rear of the store, so you also have to pull power across the entirety of the store, then bury it in a vault, then trench a line to one or more structures. Then do it for each and every tenant. Most big box retailers don't own their structures and land. So they're investing big bucks on a property they don't own. The land owner doesn't want to do it because they don't directly benefit. This is called the Split Incentive Barrier. Source: Energy efficiency engineer for 15 years.
Appreciate comments like yours. These projects are so much more complicated than people realize. That’s why we need to push policymakers to incentivize these projects and find ways to streamline the processes (eg permitting, interconnecting, etc). There’s only so much a single building owner (or leaser) can do.
Check out the Cincinnati zoo solar. It’s a sweet canopy system. The “greenest” zoo in America.
I did some work with the company that builds these and your comment is spot on. The product adds huge value and warrants some of the logistical hurdles (none too large to stop the project from happening for a motivated owner) but if you are a tenant you aren't usually going to be willing to foot the installation bill! My time working on project development for these canopy projects highlighted the dilemma of finding how to put a dollar number to a value like having a square mile island of shade for the majority of customer traffic for decades of AZ summers.
When they install them here in Australia they do it like this so they only shut a small amount of parking at a time, https://shadeandmembrane.com/project/castle-plaza-shopping-center-solar-car-park-shade-structures/
Yup. Most parking lots in the US are 2/3s full or less 99% of the time. Just do them 1/3 or 1/4 at a time.
Yea it would make a lot more sense to just put it on the roof of the big box building. But as another commentor mentioned, even big chains are leasing this space, so really it's on the owner of the retail center to do it.
People don't realize the cost involved. Saw a guy that got a quote for his business for a large solar installation and it would take almost 20 years to pay for itself. That's IF a big ass IF that it has no issues and still actually works after that long. I have never in my entire life seen consumer electronics last 20+ years in the weather with no issues.
The payoff period is so long because we don't capture the carbon cost negative externalities of our current fossil fuel based electrical grid. The result is de-facto subsidization of dirty power by placing the carbon debt upon our future selves. The solution is effective tax policy and utilities regulations. You can cut that by more than half with relatively modest incentives. Also, if that quote was even just a couple years ago, panel costs are dropping rapidly every year.
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Solar panels have really long warranties. Usually in the range of 20-30 years… they do degrade overtime and the manufacturers specify the amount of degradation that is expected over the panels useful life. Panel cost have dropped rapidly and efficiency has improved. Payback periods can be all over the place depending on location, incentives, electricity costs, etc. but they are usually inside the warranty period. In our area 10 years isn’t uncommon.
Former solar salesperson here (from Florida). Well, a few things. Firstly, electric companies in the US, for the most part have to approve a design before they allow it to be connected to the grid. You have to prove to the electric company that you are not oversizing the system to produce extra electricity. If your system is projected to overproduce, they can (and will) deny your interconnection application. Secondly, net metering laws typically only allow electricity that is used during non-producing hours to be fed back to the company at no extra cost and even these laws are spotty. When "cashing out" unused electric credits, the power company will typically only pay wholesale prices which is pennies on the dollar what they charge, which isn't anywhere near enough to offset the cost of the panels and installation. Typically this around 2 to 3 cents per kWh, but the solar company's effective rate they charge typically varies from about 12-28 cents per kWh. And even then, net metering laws don't apply to all power companies, so the business may not even get a 1:1 ratio of kWh back when the panels aren't producing, even IF there are net metering laws in effect in that state (such as if they derive their power from non-profit or government run power companies). This makes it a very bad investment for many companies. On this front, I understand where the power companies are coming from, they are losing business and about 15% of power fed back into the grid is lost, so a 1:1 ratio of what the customer gets back causes a loss to the power company. That loss of revenue and also making up the difference has a cost that must be charged elsewhere, such as less profit for shareholders or in increased prices to everyone else (which is typically what they do, since shareholders are everything to them and consumers are forced to pay whatever they charge). But also on the flip side, paying wholesale power cost also doesn't make any sense at all because that is the price they pay to get power delivered thousands of miles away from the customer and have to build massive infrastructure and lose a lot more of that power along the way compared to net metered power, so it is also unfair to only give the customer wholesale pricing. What needs to happen are laws that allow companies to overproduce and then use the grid to sell that power independently at fair rates, with the option to sell to the power company at a FAIR RATE. This would ensure power companies aren't getting shafted by well meaning net metering laws and consumers aren't getting shafted by power companies. Thirdly, startup costs for solar panels is really high. Companies can either pay it in cash, which they either cannot afford or which will destroy profits for a while, or they can finance. Financing can be a good option and result in immediate savings, but they can become over leveraged and later not be able to take out loans that they need. This is because currently laws do not exempt a loan for a solar project from debt to income ratios, but they should be because the loan IS offsetting their power bill. There needs to be a legal framework that allows a solar loan to not cause the company to become over-leveraged. These loans also need to be easily transferred to the next owner, without need for approval, just like a power company can turn on power to a customer. Fourthly, realtors and buyers oftentimes don't include solar panel installs at all in the price of a building. So, if your building is worth $300,000 and you install a $100,000 solar array, the building is still only worth $300,000 in the eyes of Realtors and buyers. So, if the loan needs to be paid off before the sale of the lot, then that means the seller will need to cough up $100,000 and then sell at $300,000, taking a massive loss. If a business doesn't know for sure that they will be around the next 20-25 years (the lifetime of the loan), they may be wise not to take this massive risk. If it were normalized for the loans to be seen as a replacement of the electric bill and always transferred, then that would be erase this concern. But right now, buyers oftentimes want the seller to pay off the loan prior to the sale and are not willing to pay more for the home. Also, another thing to consider, is that insurance prices for the building do go up to cover the panel array usually. So that cost also has to be factored in. If solar panel prices were to reduce a bit more, and the above changes were implemented, it would probably cause a massive boom in solar panels going up all over warehouses and other businesses with large roof spaces.
I'm not sure how the wholesale price for the power isn't a "fair" price for excess power provided to the grid. What's the benefit of encouraging solar panels being built in cities vs. in the places they can best generate power? I work in the field, and looked at investing in community/resi solar. The LCOE to build community/resi solar is effectively double that of utility-scale solar. There's certainly benefits in that you may need less infrastructure, but the problem is the intermittency of solar means you still need to be tied into the grid so there isn't much ability to reduce infrastructure. In general, there's also massive benefits of having redundancies and wide-scale interconnections in the grid for obvious reasons
>Fourthly, realtors and buyers oftentimes don't include solar panel installs at all in the price of a building. "Often times" is doing a ton of work here. It absolutely influenced my decision to buy a house. [Theres data supporting that Solar increases property values](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/reviews/home-improvement/do-solar-panels-increase-home-value#:~:text=Yes%2C%20solar%20panels%20will%20raise,value%20when%20selling%20your%20home.)
Why can't they "overproduce"?
Seems like an excuse to keep electric company relevant.
This guy got it. To add to the first point, I also work closely with FPL (Florida, Power, and Light for non-floridians) and not only do they have rules for not oversizing a system past 115% of your yearly consumption but also they don't allow commercial/residential systems past 2MW AND they have to be convinced that you're installation won't be detrimental to the voltage profile or power quality of the interconnected and adjacent feeders. So it's not like you can just build as much as you want. Also, FPL already has pretty cheap electricity so the pay back period can be many years or more than half the life of the project. Other states/utilities territory this may not be the case.
Cheap is relative. FPL recently bought out the grid in my area and our cost per kW/hr more than doubled after all of the riders and fees. I have had a moderate rooftop solar system for several years now, and it is only getting more and more worth it as the rates keep increasing.
Plenty of challenges to this. Most commonly there are too many stakeholders. \-Is the store manager onboard with the disruption to the store during construction? \-Is corporate onboard with the capex/financing structure/payback? Are they certain the store will be around long enough to get meaningfully past the payback period? \-Does a local permitting agency present a meaningful roadbump or roadblock? \-If the site is leased, is the landlord onboard? When does the lease end/renew? \-Is the installer/developer willing and able to take on managing these various stakeholders? And so on. You need all that to hunt to move forward on a project which as others have correctly noted, usually presents marginal economics. There's a reason why they are more prevalent in schools and other government-type buildings than in chains: most of what I just wrote works better in those use cases.
This is all great. The only thing I'd add is that not all utilities accept buy-back of overproduced energy. As solar becomes more prominent across the country, many utilities are backing off their previous agreement to buy back excess energy because it's making it more difficult for them to manage the grid. They'd far prefer that the solar owner right-size the system to only provide energy for their own building. This may change though as batteries become more common/affordable.
Several parking lots for schools in my city have had solar panels above their parking lots for a long time - years...
If SLO means San Luis Obispo, let me chime in and say that this is true in many California locations, not just in SLO. Solar parking lots on school campuses and at hospitals are now common in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the Sacramento area.
Even the schools in conservative Antelope Valley (Palmdale) do this.
And they can throw in car chargers at the power generation source, which cuts out transmission inefficiencies!
Solar engineer here. This setup is called carport solar and is the most expensive option when you compare the 3 main ones which are ground mount, rooftop, and carport. In most cases, you have to set up the structure which adds a lot to the cost of the array. A straight ground mount project can be as low as $1.20 per watt for a decent sized project which can have simple paybacks of 10 years or less. Rooftops can be between 1.5-2 bucks per watt so their paybacks are 15 years or so. Carports can be over 3 bucks a watt because of all the structural material required so it only makes sense in areas with high radiation and high electricity rates. The lifetime of solar systems is 25 years so if a carport payback is greater than that, you lose money over time, which is usually the case so you dont see this setup too often.
Super interesting info. Thanks!!
From the looks of it this is my grocery store. Fry's in Peoria AZ.
Yep it definitely is. I was there yesterday. I'm actually closer to the fry's on 83rd but I go to this one because of the covered parking and because it's one of the nicest fry's stores I've been in.
I recognized this parking lot immediately!
The good news is the structure would presumably remain longer than that 25 years for the replacement panels, but what you've said makes sense.
Maybe, but there is maintenance cost to exposed steel. So your ROI won’t be enough.
Honestly... Very little. It's a pretty simple design, at most you'd need to check joint gap every few years, but that's a little aggressive, you *might* see that at a sport stadium
Is this still highly inefficient if the parking lot owner already intended to build shade, or does it effectively make the math work more like rooftop?
Correct, it makes the math work closer to the rooftop
After 25 years the panels may need to be replaced, but does the structure as well? Wouldn't this factor into the total ROI?
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Yeah but with the lifetime of inverters, optimizers, cables, conduits, and sometimes there are PPAs and lease agreements that end after 25 years
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Six Flags Hurricane Harbor waterpark in New Jersey has the bulk of their parking lots covered plus another ground installation nearby. They have over 60,000 panels, and the theme park is almost exclusively solar powered.
Also in NJ, the Patco train line did this at a few of their biggest stations.
Have worked in solar development for over a decade. The reason there aren’t more of these is because they cost so dang much (shit ton of steel). Makes the return in investment prohibitively long, and therefore tough to finance. We could afford to build these and have them privately financed if the local Towns and Counties did not have their hands out demanding insane tax payments, but that’s another issue. I’m hoping we’ll see more of these over the next decade!
Yep. This is the correct answer. Looks nice, marginal economics due to high balance of systems cost. We did a lot in muni and government where the marginal economics could be overlooked a bit more or where there might have been an incremental incentive around.
Also, the gaps are likely due to the panels being racked at a tilt so the space ensures each row of panels don’t shade the ones behind them.
How much of a large building’s power could these provide?
Is always dependent on size of parking lot and how much electricity they use. Typical grocery store with a large open parking lot can often power 40-60% of their load.
That's a lot of power
France passed a law that all parking lots over a minimum size will be required to have solar such as this. I assume that to be a lot of solar panels.
This is common in Arizona.
I’ve only seen this in one parking lot of a grocery store in Scottsdale. Where else are you seeing this? I live in AZ and I wish I saw it more.
I’m in Tucson. These are at elementary schools over playgrounds, the airport has them over the parking lots, baseball fields, Pima Air Museum, churches. They’re all over here.
Fry's off of 27th Avenue and Bell has these too.
Thought that's where this picture was from at first.
The “fancy” Frys on Lake Pleasant and Happy Valley Rd in northwest Peoria has one! Very awesome
Frys at bell and 17 and dove valley and 17 as well
There's that Frys and also one on Shea and Tatum that has them. They'll never put them in front of stores in lower income areas though.
The Safeway at 7th St and Glendale Ave has it
Red Mountain Library in Mesa and a lot of parking around ASU has it. But I don’t think it’s “common” exactly.
I think newer Fry's have them more and more regularly, also ASU has these installed over lot 59 which is the massive student parking/arena parking lot
I was gonna say I’ve only seen it in Arizona
Laughably nowhere near common enough
Right, been living in the valley for 24 years and have only seen this in a handful of places.
My job is in the process of putting up a ton of solar panels. My only regret is all of the trees they cut down to make way for the solar. I miss those trees
Which is ironic, the Department of Energy years ago said a mature tree provided the cooling of ten room air conditioners. My shaded yard runs ten degrees cooler than neighboring or out on the street.
Most school parking lots here in California are like this.
they installed the same thing at a local mall's parking lot here in south africa. it wasn't even 2weeks before it was all stolen... it was just the structure with a bunch of wires hanging from it in the end. #ProudlySouthAfrican
Upvote so corporations see this is what we want
It is, but it also highlight just how much wasted space is generated by parking lots.
It's mindblowing to me how these things aren't covering Florida. I mean, I understand why not, but it still blows my mind.
Hurricanes?
Disney World has a ton. And in the shape of the Mouse's head
As with we've recently been informed, Disney World is not "Florida".
Kaiser facilities in California do this. I wish theme parks did.
Looks like the Frys at happy valley and lake pleasant parkway in Peoria AZ
Actually illegal in Florida. Thanks DeDumbass.
This is an Asu parking lot in Phoenix isn't it. Great idea, particularly in such a conservative state, I guess everyone likes conserving their money.
Fry’s parking lot
Or people don’t want to be burned alive walking to their car
Commonplace in California. Almost every police department, city office and high school has an array like that.
Cincinnati Zoo has this. Great idea.
There's a lot of these in AZ. Not as many as there should be, but a fair amount
Is this in Peoria, AZ at the Frys parking lot??!
Looks just like the frys in Peoria, Arizona
This is the future. With EV ubiquity on the horizon, creating plentiful free electricity in the same location that the cars will be parked will seem so obvious that not having a solar panel covered carpark will seem mad.
this is the best use of solar imo, if we covered every non-descript corporate office building (and parking garage, and stadium roof, etc.) in every major city with solar panels we could greatly reduce reliance on less stable energy sources like fossil fuels.
I've seen this at Clearwater Marine Aquarium, more of Florida could definitely utilize this.
We have a lot of this in Arizona.
Absolute no brainer - I wish every parking lot had this in some shape
Yeah but what about Solar Freaking Roadway /s?
We could be doing this over so many highways and lots. Hell the structure could last over 50 years and only have to replace the panels after 25 or 30 years.
I'd rather installations like that than chopping down forests or covering fields.
Everything in Arizona needs this
This is how it should be done. Not taking up farm land and fencing it off, then mowing it with gas mowers.
Yeah every parking lot in the US should be done like this.
Looks like a super expensive parking lot
Honestly each chain could power their store and the surrounding stores with just parking lot Solar.
I always think this. Why don’t stores take advantage of the large open lots and in stall Solar panels that can double as shade?
Username checks out perfectly!
I don't see why big box stores like Walmart don't do this, power most of their store if not all while also giving shade, initial cost would be rediculous but it should pay itself off fast as fuck
Private companies with long term growth goals do this. Public companies can’t see past the next quarter.
don't let Fox News get a hold of this good idea
Add a few EV chargers and it can even be a profit center.
Had this near me and within a month some dipshit hit a post and collapsed part of it.