It's probably less expensive than field setups in large part due to siting near existing infrastructure. And it doesn't have to out compete residential, it just has to be a net positive investment on its own terms, out competing an otherwise unshaded parking lot that isn't leveraging it's airspace for anything.

Rather than a tax on lots it's something that turns them into a source of revenue generation.

A better version for shade and city beautification is to force trees around/within the parking lot.

I wonder if this will make it preferable to build parking structures rather than parking lots.

There's a lot of entirely unsupported statements here that seem to be nothing more than uneducated opinion.

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.

I wouldn't call it luxury. It's just that people don't find it attractive while living in Seoul. Average joe definitely can afford having a car.

> Having a car is somewhat of a luxury

That's true in many other places, too, like many European and US coastal cities where car ownership rates aren't nearly as high as many people probably think they are.

Phoenix is uninhabitable precisely because it's entirely optimized for car life from what I heard? (i.e. massively spread out, no walkability, etc)

Phoenix as well as other similar places (such as Las Vegas where I live part of the year) have an outsized benefit from installing solar compared to normal places. We basically never have to deal with rain or clouds. Installing solar here is a total no-brainer.

If you want America on board, get the people on board. Tell them why it's a good idea to stop driving their car. I'm not saying this to be snarky, but that's what it's going to take.

I’d love to not have a car, but I’ve lived in five us cities - one (nyc) had public transportation that was usable - the rest public transportation was massively less efficient than driving. Until that gets fixed people are driving…

Building solar panel installations in remote locations still requires linking that back to the main grid, and all the in-between infrastructure needed to transform and transmit that power. Building it in an urban location allows you to tap into the existing grid without much added public investment, similar to how some power grids will purchase power from homeowners as an added incentive for doing a home solar install.

>It seems inefficient to put solar panels over parking areas as it requires significant amount of structure which costs a lot more than shade it creates is worth

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

In a city the best place to put them first is roof tops. Rooftop solar has minimal structural requirements relative to parking lot canopies.

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.

I'm an American, and it seems like a great use of land to me. This sort of a policy is particularly sensible in areas where it's hot, and there are extensive parking lots next to places that are mostly active during the day.

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.

South Korea is pretty mountainous so yes, available land is much less compared to America where we have square miles upon square miles of open land. South Korea is little less the size of Kentucky.

A flat parking lot is already a ridiculously inefficient use of resources. Putting solar panels on top directly improves quality of life (through shade) and claws back a bit of that inefficiency.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559893

I don’t think it’s that much more - it’s really just extending the length of the pilings used in regular ground mounted utility scale solar?

South Korea has a population density of 507/km² [1]

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

It seems inefficient to not put solar panels over a parking lot. I'm not sure how shade is a major consideration here or how light weight solar panels are a large expense compared to the cost of space in a city. Parking garages are often net negatives to cities and parking lots are generally major negatives to cities since they drive density down and reduce foot traffic (which reduces economic churn). At least this way the city gets another small use out of that area in the form of some local electricity generation. Density and variety of use are major factors in urban health.

It doesn’t really matter if there’s land that would theoretically be more ideal if the value of the power generated pays for the infrastructure buildout. The best land for solar panels is the land you can build on now.

Something like 70% of the Korean peninsula is mountainous, and a lot of the space between mountains is taken up by cities and farms. This puts flat land at a bit of a premium

Correct. There really isnt “more remote” in Korea because it’s such a small nation geographically speaking. You’re never more than a few hours from the farthest border.

Yes, build far away and wait 30 years for transmission lines to be built or to be connected to the grid.

Building where people live means (near) zero transmission infrastructure.

it seems wildly efficient to use the massive amount of dead space we cede to cars. Without cars, parking lots are just massive heat sinks that trap and hold heat. Might as well do something with them to make it a little bit better. It also has the added benefit of creating shade for people in the summer and cover during rain.

Dedicated parking areas are hugely inefficient in the first place from an economic perspective, so this is at least getting some double duty out of them.

It adds utility to an arguably less useful use of space (shut up, I used use two words in a row and twice here), minimizes transmission costs and losses (the power is needed right there in the parking lot or where the people parking there are going to), and doesn't displace other land use (farms or nature).

Top of my head thought:

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.

It might be because there's a person in the photo, and France is very strict on photographing people.

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.

I was going to say, there must be some research on how much/little this impacts the urban heat island effect.

> This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich” ) government should have mandated years ago.

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.

Even if no more energy infrastructure is destroyed from the moment of this post, the Iran war will do more to speed this up than decades of science, I think.

Every government tells property owners what they can and cant't do. Find one that doesn't, and you'll have found a failed state.

South Koreans give their government the authority to do such things because we understand that the government need authority to serve its people well. And if the government misuses its authority, we will revoke our permission.

Many Americans are permanently afraid of their government, and they have no confidence that their fellow citizens will man up and confront the government if necessary, so they'd rather have a permanently weakened government that can't serve its people well but somehow (miraculously) still capable of unleashing misery.

A comedic tragedy, really.

The idea of an 'owner' doing whatever they want on 'their' property is ridiculous. They bought that land with restrictions and an understanding that it was part of a regulatory framework. Should an 'owner' be able to set up an industrial chemical plant in the middle of a city without any regulation? How about an open pit mine? A gun range with no regulation? Should I be able to create a massive speaker system pointed at your house next door to drive you away with no consequences? All actions are actually interactions. Everything someone does on their property has impacts to others. We give 'owners' a lot of leeway but that shouldn't be unlimited. Requiring things like solar on roofs, or gutters on roofs, or restricting roof uses, etc etc are all valid concepts. It can, and should, be debated how far those regulations should go but 'get your government off my land' is never a good argument.

A mandate for renewable energy is authoritarian now? What? This is a great initiative.

Your options are basically Somalia. Instead of "authoritarian" governments issuing "mandates" you'll get to deal with warlords that will just kill you, take your land, and do whatever you want with it.