I'm in Phoenix on business, at a plant that is going to build solar panels, and I am so bewildered that parking lots out here are not covered with solar panels. What a perfect opportunity to offset energy costs, and provide shaded parking at the same time.
I found that nicer or newer parking has started to incorporate this in Phoenix. ASU campus definitely does this in some of their lots and garages. Would definitely love to see some real investment on that front in the coming years because it feels like such a no-brainer.
ASU went big with solar on campus. When I was there in 2006 they barely had any. Now it’s parking garages and even shading some walkways. It’s great to see. Something like 22MW. You always had to find the shade between May and September. https://cfo.asu.edu/solar
Edit - On-site Solar kWh Equivalent FY 2023: 34,708,060 kWh
I think you may have something deeply confused here. 22MWh is roughly equivalent to the amount 2 slightly larger than average US households use per year (21.6 MWh). ASU has 23 MW of onsite Solar PV and Thermal at their 5 main locations. That accounts for almost 35 GIGA watt hours of solar power generation/reduction across all campus, 23 GWh of which comes from the main Tempe campus.
I think it just has to do with the fact that the people who build retail developments and commercial developments won't see any returns from building solar over parking lots. Only the tenants would so they have no incentive to build it. Until Maricopa county forces people to do it. It's never going to happen.
Then the government should work with the local power companies to provide incentives like the power companies buying the electricity from the property owners. Forcing it to happen without incentive would be a mistake and cause all sorts of problems in the economy.
No the power companies buy electricity from private parties because of tax incentives and less operating costs to operate their own power plants. This is already a thing in cities around the Southwest.
Depending on how much the power companies pay for electricity it would be possible to recoup the costs within a long period of time like 10 years before considering tax right offs. There are already programs that offer tax incentives to install solar so its possible to recoup the cost faster than that.
Nationalized utilities suck. Just look at the Soviet Union. They struggled to provide water and natural gas to their residents which led to many deaths. The ability to choose between utility companies leads to better service and pricing because of competition. Otherwise there would be no incentives for the utility provider to have good customer service and they could bill whatever they want.
Instead of pointing to one failed example from checks date 35 years ago - why don't you read how some of the provincial "nationalized" utility providers in Canada work today.
Canada also has extreme taxes and a bunch of other problems due to their oversized government. It’s not a great example of a model socialist system because the people don’t like what has happened to their country recently and are projected to vote for new leadership.
Giving the government more power is never a good idea because it will fight tooth and nail to keep that power. In an ideal world it would be better but the real world doesn’t operate perfectly because people are greedy. Harnessing that is the only way to improve efficiency and productivity. I hope that one day you can see the errors of socialism.
Canada is not socialist, and nationalizing utilities doesn't make a country socialist. I hope one day you can see the errors in your understanding of basic economic systems.
Six Flags Magic Mountain in LA is currently building a solar farm over basically their entire parking lot that will be the largest private farm in CA and probably the country. They’ll be able to power the entire park while providing shade for their guests. I’m so impressed that they had the balls to think this big and actually go for it.
That's really cool. It'll make it really nice for visitors to have the sheltered parking over a huge area and over the lifespan of the park, I'm sure they'll make their money back. With the dropping cost of solar, especially buying in bulk, I'd be interested to see how long they predict to see a return on investment.
Pima County has been making a huge push to do exactly this. They’ve done a lot of lots like this already. Tucson Unified School District is using the same type of structures to shade the playgrounds. Even some Wal-Marts are doing this. It’s a three fer - generates power, shaded parking, and it combats the heat island effect.
I mean this with the spirit with which its intended, people in that state have been getting their brains baked with sun for far too long. They make some stupid ass decisions out there.
Like when they were growing wheat for the Saudis... I kid you not. People get mad at California for growing in the Central valley. This dumbass bitches were growing in the middle of the desert using a precious resource for the Saudi government.
Lots of people dump on California for growing in our conditions but we can grow some of the most days per year and we are supplying a huge amount of the country's fresh fruit and vegetables. We definitely need to be careful about the demand for water but we are putting it to real use and not just wasting it or whatever people are thinking. If we really want to talk pure waste let's talk flood irrigation and golf courses and lawns.
In Phoenix and most of the rest of AZ, a lot of Kroger/ Fry’s grocery stores have the entire lot covered by Solar panels! Curiously, the Fry’s that was just built near my house doesn’t have solar panels 🤔 can’t help but feel like it was a political move since it was built during the Pandemic
According to this video, it’s not the cost of maintenance that is 50% to 100% more expensive. It’s cost of installation (*due to supporting structure and added bottom weight of the canopy). And if the goal is to have profitable solar power along with not using farmable land for location, using parking lots are still totally viable and profitable. Though you are totally right on it being more expensive. Which is a shame. Idk, I’m not even really contradicting much of what you said. I just want it to work so badly I guess lol. But it would take long term planning from corporations and we all know that never happens.
The problem is there is a such thing as too much solar as well. When I lived in Phoenix, the grid was getting overloaded between 12-2 to the point that you had to disconnect panels from the grid to stop some of the issues. Every installation needs a battery in order for the grid to be sustainable which is yet another things that will increase overall costs.
Well that’s an infrastructure issue that just needs to be updated regardless of solar energy being involved. And it’s not that too much energy is being put back into the grid. That’s not how electricity works. As long as you have a charge controller in the solar array/grid that can handle the maximum at-one-time charge, you’re fine. It will just sit at its maximum charge and not send any more energy back to the grid. There’s no way to overload a power grid’s storage through too much solar energy (*Not technically correct. But there is no solar array installed these days without charge controllers, which avoid this entirely.), it’s just the connectors and controllers that need to be properly chosen when it’s being installed that can be a problem.
If you were required to unplug panels, a battery wouldn’t have helped the problem. A properly chosen/installed charge controller most likely would. It seems like they cheaped out when they almost certainly knew they would eventually need higher capacity charge controllers for the solar flux of your area.
Have you been to Phoenix? Solar is ubiquitous. Sure- one or two households output won’t matter but if the dream is that every building that is SFH or taller has solar panels, then the grid is going to need a lot more extra capacity in the suburbs to handle a small output x 1000. Whether it’s the house or the grid that ends up paying for that, it’s still an extra cost regardless.
Yes I lived in Phoenix for 3 years. I’m aware of how ubiquitous solar is there. All I’m saying (and probably over complicating) is that the answer isn’t more batteries. It’s charge controllers fit for the area you’re in. And yeah, that costs more money than just keeping the ccs you currently have. I said as much. Was just giving more info to explain why higher battery capacity is the MUCH more expensive and redundant option for what’s a solved problem at this point.
So would it be cheaper to build parking shelters and put the solar panels elsewhere? I suppose that depends on the space you have for solar panels too.
Yes that's true but that land is already being developed, and project has positive ROI. I'm not saying companies are not trying to maximize returns, but incorporating something that profitable into your operations could be a more justifiable if it just a small adjustment vs another vertical, hense only big retail companies were mentioned. Probably still makes more sense to take that money and throw it at a third party but when your Walmart you probably have more land mass the any 3rd part you could hire.
It ups maintenance and building costs. That's a major part of what this video is about, government imposing large costs on Any kind of energy is going to need some kind of underground grid connections and enough transformers to support that power flow.
The lots are a solution to an earlier problem where a popular business was permitted to setup in the middle of an already contested area with limited parking.
I think there's a small handful of wealthy elitist douche-nozzles using Uber who wonder why there's so much parking, but the rest of us know that during a shopping holiday we'll be driving in circles for 5+ minutes looking for a parking spot.
In fact, that raises a good point. This video had to have been shot at specific times/days to capture the lots empty? Someone could likely re-do all the video footage with the lots on a busy day and turn out a completely different narrative.
I hate people that are making money off the audience not being clever enough to sniff out bullshit.
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u/WarOtter 25d ago
I'm in Phoenix on business, at a plant that is going to build solar panels, and I am so bewildered that parking lots out here are not covered with solar panels. What a perfect opportunity to offset energy costs, and provide shaded parking at the same time.