• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 个月前

    Sort of a lemons-into-lemonade situation. But maybe we shouldn’t have paved over prime agricultural land to make parking lots to begin with.

  • Fugtig Fisk@feddit.dk
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    2 个月前

    To be honest, i dont think we have large enough parking lots where i live. Only at the airport have i seen pretty large ones and we have 3 of those in my country

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 个月前

      Is your nation truly food secure if you are relying on imports? Can you be certain that in 20, 50, 100 years that land would still be better as solar panels than farmlands?

      • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
        0·
        2 个月前

        son, I cant watch my streaming channels with electricity from wheat fields. we need them photovoltaic cells so I can check my sites

          • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
            0·
            2 个月前

            YO! I’m not fuckin fifty… yet… Ben Hur came out in 1959 so the film would be 25 years old before a current 50 year old could even partially understand it…

            wife and I watch it around easter. heston’s over-acting is fucking hysterical

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 个月前

      Likely it was used on parts of them that are actually agricultural, then the fossil fuel industry paid good money to call every hill a prime agricultural land.

      • etchinghillside@reddthat.com
        0·
        2 个月前

        Seems like solar panels can be easily relocated when the land is desired to be used for agriculture. I admittedly don’t know what the loss would be on some of the power infrastructure for routing this would be though.

        • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netEnglish
          0·
          2 个月前

          I believe they are relatively hard to move, but I’m not a solar expert by any stretch (though it’s a different story when it comes to soil).

          Somewhat related: putting panels on reclaimed tailings ponds or waste rock dumps is a good idea, in that usually these have an engineered cover (rock/soil/LDPE) That limits rooting depth (don’t want plants reaching what we are trying to protect [toxic waste]) so we plant grasses and shit rather than trees. Grasses + panels is the best of both cover stability and green energy

  • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    2 个月前

    Or even better: banning all single story parking lots to have less sealed area. Then putting solar panels above the unsealed area and allowing nature to own everything below the solar panels, instead of agricultural conglomerates who pollute the ground water and produce food for livestock.

    • yokonzo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 个月前

      I think you’re kind of missing the point, having solar panels in parking lots would add use to otherwise useless land. There’s plenty of them in the US and it would also create a relief from the concrete hotspots that it makes. I mean have you ever been walking through a parking lot and hating your life because you’re sweating so much?

      • EherNicht@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 个月前

        I get that. That really makes sense. Tho it kind of makes it harder to then justify getting rid of parking to improve density. But this will most likely also not happen otherwise so yeah

          • Crashumbc@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 个月前

            It’s not the cost of the panels, it’s the cost of the structure to hold them. And the maintenance involved.

            • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
              0·
              2 个月前

              There are solar generating facilities literally everywhere now. To mount them high enough to park under is a miniscule cost difference. There are also already massive parking lots with covers all over the place. We have probably 5,000+ covered parking spaces at the airport in my city, for example

    • spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 个月前

      The problem is a simple paved lot can be redeveloped into something useful easily. Once there are EV chargers and and solar roofs in place, it’s that much harder to break the cycle of car dependency. Places like Walmart/Costco/strip malls are probably better off just placing panels on the roof instead of building a new structure for them. I’d actually extend that to just about any building. This isn’t really happening at any scale on its own, which tells us it’s less economical than other installations. Forcing higher cost installations while also entrenching parking lots that often shouldn’t exist seems like poor policy, although I’m sure there are some places where it makes enough sense. But if we care about preserving farmland and wild spaces, stopping sprawl is the only real policy that matters, and that means stopping car dependency and parking lots.

  • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.world
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    2 个月前

    Plastering agricultural land with parking lots and suburban sprawl is a crime against humanity. This wasteful land use needs to end.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 个月前

      I’ve done a ton of biking in my area over the last 15 years, and it’s been depressing seeing how much former farmland and unused wild area is getting gobbled up by the fucking McMansions and “high 700s” McTownhouses. The townhouses are especially sad - like, you’re out in the middle of fucking nowhere (no town in sight) and yet you’re jammed in with neighbors on both walls?

      • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
        0·
        2 个月前

        Efficiency doesn’t care how big your country is, sprawl would be as inefficient in Cyprus as in Russia, you spread your services and infrastructure over an unnecessarily large area, to huge economic and environmental cost, and forcing people to rely on a car to move around

  • m0darn@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 个月前

    I live near a school playground in Vancouver. In the summer the kids don’t use it because it’s too hot and sunny. In the winter kids don’t use it because it’s wet.

    I feel like a solar panel canopy would be 3 birds with one stone.

    • cybermass@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 个月前

      Yess, vancouverite here also. How do we get our municipalities to do projects like this? There’s so much space that would be perfect real estate for solar canopies

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 个月前

      I’d love a covered highway. Protect against rain, snow, dawn/dusk sunlight blinding the driver. Focus on the East to West highways first.

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 个月前

    Yeah, plastering parking lots over prime agricultural land was definitely a mistake. And it’s hard to wind that back. We just need to make sure new infrastructure and planning reduces car dependency rather than further entrenching it.

  • RyanLiu@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 个月前

    You know what parking lots actually are? Land that investors bought and they’re waiting for the housing prices to go even higher before then build another empty residential high-rise over it. No sense putting solar panels on a parking lot that’s gonna be gone in a few years.

  • bad_alloc@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 个月前

    Every installation has benefits and drawbacks:

    • If you have humans walking below PV, you must prevent parts falling down
    • The support must be quite wide, requiring more expensive carrying members
    • Constrains traffic
    • Cars are protected from hail and heat (good for car factories!)
    • Makes electricity where it’s needed
    • Very visible progress toward renewables

    France made it mandatory for large malls to install these btw.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 个月前

      Cars are protected from hail and heat (good for car factories!)

      What? Car companies would love for your car to get damaged. That way, they can sell you replacement parts.

      • Sconrad122@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 个月前

        Once you buy them sure. But not while they are sitting on a lot outside the car factory waiting to get sold

          • Sconrad122@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 个月前

            Yes, I’m just speaking to the point the comment was making, that solar panels over parking lots that are at car factories particularly benefit from the hail defense aspect because the parking lot owner (the factory) has a vested interest in maintaining the condition of the parked cars. This isn’t an argument for any point of view, it’s an explanation of what was clearly ambiguous language by the original commenter, based on your misinterpretation. The sass is unnecessary

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      2 个月前

      you must prevent parts falling down

      So like any ceiling with HVAC, etc? I was thinking that the coverings were a boon to pedestrians due to the shade they provide on hot days (depends on location, of course)

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 个月前

        So like any ceiling with HVAC, etc?

        Yes, but HVAC systems rarely have to cover an entire parking lot. There’s a lot of attendant infrastructure that comes with it. Compare that to dedicated rural solar fields, where you don’t have to worry about people wandering in and around the panels. Its not a deal-breaker, but it does raise the unit price.

      • el_bhm@lemm.ee
        0·
        2 个月前

        Sounds like a bare minimum for an installation. Sure, it costs. And that is why it should be mandated.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        2 个月前

        Yeah, if we lived by that rule, industrial HVAC wouldn’t exist because everyone would be afraid of things falling from the ceiling.