Green Energy

also, agrivoltaics is a thing. Judiciously placed solar panels can reduce ground heat and water use through evaporation, which can be beneficial for growing crops.

The left part is only true if the roofing has to be built explicitly for the panels. There are already covered parking lots, I can't see any downsides in just adding panels on top.

And I doubt that it requires longer cable runs than panels somewhere on a field.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for solar and wind. Put those panels everywhere possible, the more the better. I just don't get why even having this discussion.

cool cool cool, except cities have 25% of their space taken up by parking lots, and land that has solar panels like on the right are pretty much stuck being just solar.

pavement does not need to be heated by the sun. and putting up a solar field needs to include the cost of the land, where as parking lots do not

The parking lot economics don't figure if you'd be building a shelter for the lot anyway. Its hardly custom engineering, theres like 3 designs I see everywhere.

In places that get heavy sun/rain, it's quite common.

I’ve also noticed Lemmy seems to have zero understanding of farming/plants/farming infrastructure and can’t understand that nearly all food crops require FULL sun and building an opaque canopy over crops that need FULL sun will absolutely decimate that crop, you can’t just grow plants on vibes they require very specific things, especially cultivars that humans have designed to make huge fruiting bodies, that takes SO MUCH ENERGY (sun)!

I see this problem a lot too in people asking about prepping, there doesn’t seem to be a well educated prepping community on Lemmy and the amount of people giving out advice like a backyard garden will sustain you as a food source in an emergency is not only wildly ill informed but dangerous for those taking the advice

Just convert every biofuel field into a solar field. Boom, year round power output and way more efficient than growing plants to burn.

Then work on replacing every car with electric.

Eventually it will be more cost effective to retrofit old structures.

My Aldi just put roofs over part of their parking last year. And then they put solar panels of the roof... of the store. Because yeah, there's way more space on the roof than on the parking and I bet it's 10x easier to put solar panels there.

I like to look at parking solar more like balcony solar. It's free real estate. Throw a few solar panels up here and there. Put a few on the existing light poles on the parking lot and/or around the perimeter. It's more about integrating small additive power generation to existing infrastructure than trying to extract maximum Kwh per square foot like field solar.

I'm confused by the title. Are you saying the stuff in the picture is wrong or misrepresenting reality, or the opposite?

My company has a very green mission statement, and they did the solar parking lot right before COVID. After they built it, they realized that the design basically funneled snowmelt down to directly between every car, and the cooler ground froze it almost instantly.

So 80% of the workforce went remote during COVID, and the ones that stayed couldn't park in the lot during winter because it was an icy deathtrap.

Half of their points make no sense

Some places have plenty of open space that nobody sees. Solar farms there are usually fine. Some places are beautiful countryside with hills between small villages. The nimbys are probably right. Quite ugly, unless they are somewhere you can't see. Additionally, industrial buildings and city rooftops should be used, as well as car parks if you can keep the costs low.