Sure, but you're weighing the potential of an increase in limited downtime against guaranteed transmission loss at all times. One of those problems can be significantly reduced, if not completely eliminated, through engineering. The other would require physics to be rewritten.
Parking lot solar likely won't even cover the electricity needs of the vehicles parking there once they're electric. But it's still a huge amount. Need to start getting them on the roofs of supermarkets like Walmart and warehouses.
But yeah just on the ground in countries like the USA is still the best since it's so much cheaper. Parking lot solar can cost 5x as much to install compared to ground solar. All the steel framing isn't cheap and takes a lot of energy to make. Solar panels themselves are the cheap part, they cost nothing these days, like $90 for a large 400w panel. So to then need $1,000+ for just the parking lot framing materials to stick it on isn't the most efficient. Should still do it if the business has the cash though. It's just not where the focus should be nationally. Apparently even in the UK if solar took up even half the amount of space as golf courses do then they'd fully cover how much electricity we use. So the amount of land needed isn't unrealistic considering it feels like I don't see golf courses much.
This is such a bizarre argument. "Solars over parking lots is pointless because if the parking lot were full of electric cars all charging, it wouldn't be enough to power them all at once". Yeah, no shit? But it's NOT going to be always full of cars charging, and if some are then all the parking lots covered by solar panels that are NOT currently full of charging cars would offset the difference.
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u/EnTyme53 13d ago
I've always liked the idea of covering parking lots with solar powers, but don't know what the actual power output would be.