It’s not the most cost effective way to install solar, though. A tall structure designed to put the panels high up in the air and leave a lot of space for cars is a lot more expensive than normal rooftop solar or even field setups. This is basically a way to force some of the cost of clean energy as a tax on parking lots. Which may not be a bad thing for dense cities where parking lots have their own externalities on the limited available land.
You assume there's still a lot of rooftop space that doesn't already have solar on it. SK has very high population density and long started moving toward "less efficient" installs like balcony solar because most 'easy' rooftops already have solar on them. Remember: the rest of the world is way ahead of the US on this stuff. The UK for example regularly sees nearly 100% renewable powering of their grid plus 'recharging' their pumped hydro and BSS reserves.
You declare that covered parking solar is more expensive than rooftop, with no supporting evidence whatsoever. Rooftop solar involves a great deal of site-specific design work, and a ton of on-site, dangerous labor, and usually has to meet tighter code standards. Rooftop work is some of the most dangerous work one can do; that makes it more expensive labor but also injuries and deaths have a substantial cost to society. And labor has to be more skilled.
Parking lot solar setups can be almost entirely assembled in factories, highly standardized down to just about the ground. That reduces parts, eases supply chains, sales inventory, repairs, etc. Final bolt-together and wiring connections are fast, easy, and don't require skilled labor. "Bolt this stuff together, plug this into this." Used or partially damaged systems and their components can be easily repaired or reused elsewhere.
Parking lot solar encompasses a LOT of panels which is more efficient as fixed costs are spread out more; rooftop solar is generally less-so because it's smaller and as mentioned involves a lot of site-specific work.
You ignore the energy savings from the cars being much cooler and not needing to waste as much energy. Being shaded also means the paint, trim, interior, etc stay in better condition longer.
You ignore that solar on-site coupled with EV chargers on site eliminates a lot of grid transmission losses. In theory a residential complex, employer, retail, or commercial site could set up something like this, pumping most of the energy into the cars parked underneath, and have a fairly small connection to the grid.
Bifacial panels suspended well over the ground can collect a not-insignificant amount of energy from their underside.
Solar panels suspended where they have lots of airflow over and under them run cooler, and produce more electricity.
You don't seem very well informed on the subject and probably shouldn't be commenting so confidently.
There are all kinds of bad externalities caused by seas of asphalt that is unused 95% of the time, but few countries are all that interested in using any mechanism to make the property owner pay for them.
We absolutely should see more trees in many cities, but they introduce their own challenges in parking lots, especially if they’re placed retroactively.
Two birdnests have set up shop, both in my rafters (one on CCTV). My ceilinghooked bicycle will be decommissioned for this summer's nesters.
Unfortunately, being the only porch/shade: the cats are also prowling... figuring out the rooftop connections.
#PoopPorch2026
If gasoline engines burned their fuel as efficiently as possible, they would produce three by-products: water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N2).
Unfortunately, engines do not run perfectly, and as a result, they also produce three by-products commonly referred to as the "terrible trio" of automotive pollutants. This trio includes the following:
* Carbon monoxide (CO) – An odorless, tasteless, poisonous gas, carbon monoxide can cause a variety of health problems and even death. Many urban areas experience critically high levels of carbon monoxide, especially during the cold winter months when engines take longer to warm up and run cleanly
* Unburned hydrocarbons (HC) – Responsible for causing a variety of respiratory problems, unburned hydrocarbons can also cause crop damage and promote the formation of smog
* Oxides of nitrogen (NOX) – Like unburned hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen cause respiratory problems and promote the formation of smog
Granted most of that is probably coal power plants and stuff but... All the more reason for more solar.
(Without huge infrastructure dedicated to car welfare, Phoenix is uninhabitable.)
As an aside, your username reminds me it’s about time for another rewatch of cowboy bebop
Maybe I'm just using American mindset where there is lots of open land that is good for solar generation? Perhaps not true in Korea?
If you're putting up structures to shade cars from bright sun anyway then it doesn't take a lot of legislative pressure to enforce "the thing you put up has to be solar panels".
Not familiar with SK, but in principle this parking shade had better be panels works. This is doable within both governmental, social and financial frameworks in countries that get decent sun. Whether SK qualifies as "decent sun"...idk...seems borderline to my unqualified eye
I think this might be partially an indirect tax on parking lots inside a dense city. It raises the cost of using land for parking, but does so in a way that provides shade and clean energy at the same time.
Also the "surrounded by high rises" locations are more likely to be built as parking garages in the first place.
Instead of just having a heat island, you generate power to run AC in the associated buildings, and you also get shade for the parked cars.
It was the same parking lot I saw many years ago. But this time, instead of feeling sorry for the owners of the cars that were obviously getting cooked up, that whole are was shaded in bajillion solar panels.
It seemed like such an obvious win-win for everyone, I expect it to catch on fairly quickly.
For comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area has a population density of 430/km² [2]
I doubt they have vast tracts of undeveloped land. And while solar panels can replace agricultural land or wooded areas, doing so isn't always a big political win.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
Building where people live means (near) zero transmission infrastructure.
As someone who has lived in Korea, this will be great for the apartment complex parking lots.
That said, I don't think it's aggressive enough. Why not scale with the number of parking spaces?
Depends on the colour of the cars and pavement. A PV will send ~20% of the light energy hitting it down the wire, the rest = heat.
PVs don’t really reflect back much light for obvious reasons.
The increased surface area might help it radiate more heat at night on a clear day, unless the panels are flat and then it’s no change really.
However I am curious about the "NO USE FRANCE" text at the end of this article. Is this a licence issue or something? Would love it if someone with insight would be able to comment!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
In terms of the formatting/brevity, Reuters was originally a wire service. They'd cover news in foreign locations and send it by telegraphic wire to local newspapers that would license the content.
Telegraphs charged by the word and didn't have letter case. Cryptic in-band signals like "NO USE FRANCE" are a relic of that time.
Since the link OP posted is to the B2B part of Reuters, I'm assuming they still haven't modernized this system.
My best guess is that Chris Jung has some kind of an exclusivity contract for publishing in France. Looking at his website, he publishes in "Paris Match", a French magazine, so it may be related.
The best time was years ago, the second best time…
We see the results of initiatives like this in BC, Canada. About 10 years ago they passed a law that when any government building is getting a renovation of any kind, public EV chargers must be built in the parking lot.
The result is that every single town without exception has EV chargers now. The future is coming, despite some doing their best to slow it down.
If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.
If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Does South Korea do mandated parking minimums like I hear is common here in the US? That would tell whether this is a tax on business property in general, or a tax on driving / personal mobility specifically.
You should see how hard PG&E is working to prevent commercial and multifamily buildings from going solar. If the legislature voted to force PG&E to get out of the way, to allow property owners to do obviously cost-effective upgrades to their own properties, plenty of people would call it a “mandate”
If I owned the lot, I could take on no-risk (which may be why the lot was purchased to begin with), or take on a 6-figure investment that could bankrupt me if the demand for the lot vanished. (I suppose in that case you’d at least be making money on selling power back to the grid.)
Or, as happened in actual reality, you tell the owners they have to put it in place. Imagine that - the two weirdly specific things you came up with aren’t actually the only two options. Who would’ve thunk.
Wouldn't mind putting up panels if I could sell and use the power. But fuck governments telling property "owners" what they can or can't do.
A mandate is an authoritative command, order, or authorization to act, typically given by a higher authority, such as voters, a court, or a governing body .
So in the sense that a mandate is passed by government, and governments are sometimes authoritarian? If your logic is stronger than that you'll need to explain it to me. I'm not saying Asian countries are not authoritarian, I take no stance on that, I just genuinely don't understand how mandates imply authoritarianism.