If you park in one of several commuter lots on
Michigan State University's campus, you'll likely score a premium parking spot. That's because each parking lot is sheltered from the sun, snow and rain by solar panels. They're mounted above the lot on steel structures tall enough for tailgaters in RVs to park beneath. Besides providing a more pleasant parking experience, the university gets cheaper, cleaner solar energy from the solar panels.
It's a great thing to not have to scrape your car free of snow in 20-degree weather. I know, because I was a commuting student at Michigan State for two years and gladly took advantage of the covered parking.
So why don't all parking lots have solar panels over them? We need to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of global warming. And, as extreme weather becomes more common, shade and shelter from downpours would be a welcome development for drivers.
Each solar panel installation has a different energy and financial evaluation. Rooftop and ground-mounted solar panels produce differently based on their latitude and the angle they're installed at. Parking lot owners may forego solar panels for reasons including cost and inconvenience. However, some solar experts think increased interest in sustainability (90% of Americans wanted more solar farms in 2020, according to Pew) could mean more solar parking lots are headed our way.
For many homeowners, installing solar panels will save them money in the long run. The same is true for large institutions.
Michigan State estimated the parking lot panels (located over five lots) would save $10 million over 25 years. The university gets the electricity from the panels under a power purchase agreement, which means it doesn't own the panels but agrees to purchase the power. It saves by getting the power for a lower price than from an alternative source.
"A carport is roughly 40% more expensive compared to a ground mount system," said Tim Powers, a research and policy associate for Inovateus Solar, the company that built Michigan State's system. It costs more because of extra materials (it takes taller, stronger structures to get solar panels that far off the ground), extra labor (it takes longer to build) and extra engineering costs, he said.
If the only motivation is getting solar for the cheapest possible price, carports aren't the way to go. But there are other reasons an institution might adopt solar in their parking lots.
Michigan State's carports have won national and state awards, and account for 5% of the energy consumption on campus -- a step towards the university's sustainability goals and a nice round of good publicity. Several people I interviewed for this story suggested it might make the university more attractive to incoming students, though empirical evidence of the impact of a school's sustainability on a student choosing it is harder to find.
a solar carport covering an average Walmart parking lot would have a capacity of about 3.1 megawatts, said Joshua Pearce, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Western University in London, Ontario.
Pearce modeled the viability of solar carports at big box stores, choosing Walmart for its ubiquity. The chain has also made public commitments to sustainability and is one of the leading corporations in solar capacity installed. Walmart says it has 600 onsite renewable energy installations, but didn't share information about planned or installed parking lot solar canopies. It has reportedly installed at least seven throughout California.
While it's hard to say if someone would opt for one retailer over another because of the environmental messaging of a large, visible solar array, would they if it meant parking out of the sun, snow or rain?
Pearce has a hunch they might, though his research hasn't looked at this question directly. He thinks stores might attract even more customers by providing discounted or free electric vehicle charging to shoppers.
An average Walmart parking lot could support about 100 electric vehicle chargers if covered in solar panels, Pearce's research found.
"I believe that if you're given free parking underneath the canopy that can charge your electric vehicle, you'll spend a little bit more time in the store because you're going to wait for it to get charged," he said. "Even if you only buy one thing, that will be a net profit for the store."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-don-t-we-cover-every-parking-lot-with-solar-panels/ar-AA10CE0n?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=fb309844ffef409181751379dcd5d3e4
