 Car parks with space for 80 cars or more are now required by law to be covered with solar panels. - Parks between 80-400 spaces have 5 years to comply This will result in about 11 gigawatts of power. This should be required everywhere! 79 comments
 This law came into force on 1st of July 2023. IIRC, parking spaces for 80 or more *staff* must comply with the 3 years timeline as well.  @peterdutoit It's a thing at Australian shopping centres. The new thing is a big battery to time-shift the generation so that the centre's entire power bill is $0. @peterdutoit Und kann man unter diesen Solarplatten gleich Ladestationen für E-Autos platzieren? Der Strom der gerade gemacht wird, ginge dann wirklich in die E-Autos. Wäre dies technisch möglich?  @Irmgard Ja, diese Parkplätze haben alle Ladestationen. Gruß aus Frankreich. @peterdutoit  @peterdutoit or, you stack them and even plant some plants ... or: get rid of cars instead of creating lame excuses, you don't need cars to place solar panels there even would be wildlife ... f*** cars @greensofshade yeah we have to work what is*already* there. Of course, as you say we don’t need that many cars, but it would take a while to remove them from the system. In the meantime this is a great way to continue with electrification @peterdutoit building more parking lots? Finding excuses to keep them? no ... i don't think so?  @greensofshade @peterdutoit Surely since this makes car parks more expensive to build, it will actually *discourage* building more car parks. And any that are already there but not generating enough income to justify covering them with panels will also need to be decommissioned. Of course I’m hoping for more solar panels from this, but we should also see fewer car parks out of it, so if that’s your priority (and it’s a good one) then you should be happy?  @johnaldis @greensofshade @peterdutoit Good point, but if that's the case and car parks are discouraged, it'll be interesting to see the ultimate effect on car users and how they lobby governments. Frankly, I think we need to tackle car production and our car mind-set at the same time as solar panels for car parks. @peterdutoit should be a no-brainer and it's wonderful to see it implemented systematically in France, of all places.  @peterdutoit great idea, with the extra advantage that your car will be in the shadow and will not be too hot to sit in! (Nothing but) Flowers #TalkingHeads #Lyrics here https://genius.com/Talking-heads-nothing-but-flowers-lyrics  @peterdutoit Meanwhile in the UK, solar “farms” covering remaining greenbelt that has not already been built on seem to be all the rage https://stopbotleywest.com/home @peterdutoit it makes NO SENSE above Toulouse. Ok maybe Clermont Ferrand. That will be a HUGE money loss for extremely low production level. Did EELV invent this? Or the chinese business association in france? Force this on *any roofrop* in the southern half of France and I'll rejoice. Over all france, it's just 🤡 @f4grx @peterdutoit if it's possible in the Netherlands, it must surely be possible in France @jeronim @peterdutoit i would like to see ratios of solar generated power versus installed power. These are never shown. Installed power means *nothing* @f4grx @jeronim @peterdutoit the raw data (generated power, sometime installed power) is often published by grid operators. https://app.electricitymaps.com/ is a decent aggregator of that data worldwide @f4grx Wait: @f4grx @peterdutoit why? Belgium and holland have plenty of solar production. The 18 panels on my small city roof (east/west orientation with some shadow) produced more than 1000kwh since end of june. @f4grx @peterdutoit 7500wp in my case. Do you think people and companies would invest in solar if there’s no profit? My installation will be profitable after 6 to 7 year max. (without subsidies, estimated 4 years with) http://blogs.ulg.ac.be/damien-ernst/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2024/03/20240305_Chap6.pdf @peterdutoit My only hesitation would be: is this driving down provision of car parks by driving up the price of new ones being produced?    @mora I think they passed this law for new commercial buildings in 2015 already. However a retrofit campaign won’t do any harm that is for sure. @mora In France, we have *both*. The state pays subsidies if you build solar panels on your roof. Even in my very rural region, a small centre of workshops has build an immense solar roof for all. Farmers build it on big barns. @peterdutoit this is great not only for the climate but also for car users, meaning those treasured spots in the shade will be much easier to find. @peterdutoit Driving in Europe last month we parked under solar panels a couple of times. If you have otherwise dead space of carparks it makes sense to have panels above, with shade they cast being an additional benefit. @EricBranse how much EV charging capability did you see under the ones you parked under? @peterdutoit no idea quite honestly. The whole car park was covered. Scorching hot day both times so was very glad of the shade. First one was at IKEA at Hengelo, Netherlands. Can't remember where the other one was (Germany somewhere). @peterdutoit I can't say you how much per place but every covered parking space has a certain number of charging stations.  @peterdutoit Hmm. If such a rule were introduced in the UK there would suddenly be lots of 79-space car parks. Some of them would even be right next door to each other. We could cut the loophole possibility and make it for every staff or public car park no matter the size? @StingrayBadger @peterdutoit That's the sort of thing you have to think about when writing regulations, yes.  @peterdutoit @LiefhebberV @peterdutoit and with snow it'll be easier to find your car. I hope they will do this everywhere!  @peterdutoit@mastodon.green Nice! :D What do they do with the electricity? Or is that up to the owner?   @peterdutoit yes. I first heard of this a few years ago when I read that a car park in Australia had done it. I thought at the time "I bet everyone will be onto this" and I've been puzzled why it's not been spreading all round the world. Staggering that every factory, warehouse, school, hospital, car park etc isn't being covered in panels already.   @peterdutoit this is great news , although I hope there are caveats for car parks already planted with trees. It wouldnt be great if car park owners were forced to cut down trees to put solar panels.  @peterdutoit might also lead to a slight reduction of heat exhaustion cases and traffic accidents, since cars in the shade don't get as hot as those in the sun :D  @peterdutoit Not only does it generate cheap power, but it keeps your car from becoming an oven, which in an increasingly hot world is important too   Even as a car owner you'd want this as it provides shade for your parked car, making it less of an oven when you get in.   @peterdutoit Google tells me France requires about 445 terawatt hours of electricity per year. Divided through (365 × 24) that results in about 50 gigawatts used, on average, at any point during the day and year. So 11 GW from car parks would cover almost a quarter of France's power consumption. Of course these are all averages and power consumption varies wildly between day and night, summer and winter, etc. But huge if true. Do those numbers sound about right or did I miscalculate somewhere?  |
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@peterdutoit thank you