Solar parking lots have a HUGE upside....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 10-1-2008

All kinds of businesses and organizations have facilities that they need electricity for. These range from shopping centers, to manufacturing companies, to municipal buildings and more.

As the cost of solar photovoltaic collectors, systems, and installation continues to fall relative to power from the grid that is produced by burning natural gas, petroleum, and coal it will become both cost effective and a superb hedge against rising prices or reduced supply of natural gas, petroleum, and coal for all kinds of businesses and organizations to install solar photovoltaic power systems.

I also think that within 10 years all utilities will pay for electricity fed back into the grid in excess of the electricity taken out. (Many of them now will zero out the electricity part of your bill but give you no incentive to generate or supply them with electricity beyond that.)

However, these businesses and organizations are now constrained by the size of the roofs for their facilities, and by the kind of roofs they have in place in some cases.

So, if they had a way to site additional solar panels at their facility, it might now and will soon for sure pay them to do that.

Most of them do have this extra space now!

Except for high-rises in downtown areas, they virtually all have parking lots over which a roof or canopy can easily be built to hold more solar panels.

In fact, one recent and large solar photovoltaic installation in the Silicon Valley shows that solar parking lots can more than double the amount of available solar electricity many companies or organizations can generate at their facilities.

A story on the "solar parking lot" at Applied Materials was in the Saturday San Jose Mercury News, of 9-20-2007.

The story was based on the original Press release. And, that press release came from SunPower instead of Applied Materials since SunPower provided the installation & possibly the solar cells.Here's the important part of the SunPower release from Friday, 9-19-2008.

(Note that of the 2.15 Megawatts, 1.2 or 55.8 %, more than half, comes from the parking lot installation --NOT the roof of their building. Great job!!)See:

http://investors.sunpowercorp.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=335603

(The release also had a picture.) "(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080919/AQF026) "

"Applied Materials Activates Largest Solar Deployment on a Corporate Campus in U.S.
SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Sept 19, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -

- Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT) and SunPower Corporation (Nasdaq: SPWR) today announced completion of two SunPower solar power systems totaling 2.1 megawatts at Applied Materials' corporate facilities in Sunnyvale, Calif. The systems represent the largest solar power deployment at a corporate facility in the United States.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080919/AQF026)

"This is another exciting milestone in the adoption of solar power in California," said Mike Splinter, president and chief executive officer of Applied Materials. "More companies are realizing the wisdom of integrating solar as a non-intrusive, clean, silent form of energy generation into our businesses and communities. We've converted our parking lots to power plants and we encourage others to join us in making solar power a meaningful part of the energy supply."

The system includes a 950 kilowatt SunPower PowerGuard(R) installation and a 1.2 megawatt SunPower(R) Tracker installation atop an elevated parking canopy.

The SunPower Tracker follows the sun as it moves across the sky, increasing sunlight capture by up to 25 percent over conventional fixed-tilt systems. Both systems use SunPower solar panels, the most efficient panels available on the market today. SunPower uses Applied Materials' Baccini technology in its solar cell manufacturing process. "

But the good news on solar parking lots is even better.

This story is unusually significant because, of the 2.15 megawatts total, 1.2 megawatts, or more than half the total comes from the solar cells over their parking lot.

Here's more on why that's so important:

From the a separate story that ran in a Sunnyvale newspaper: "We've converted our parking lots to power plants," Applied Chief Executive Mike Splinter said in a statement.

Covered parking lots for employees also mean less hassle getting to and in and out of their cars in rainy weather for their employees.

And, the shade from the "parking canopy" & solar cells on it also means the employees also will burn less gasoline running their car air conditioners in sunny and hot weather.

And, it provides a significant part of the power needed to run their whole business from clean, renewable energy.

Why not do this in every large company and shopping center parking lot in the whole Bay Area?

Why not do it everywhere in California?

Why not do it everywhere?

If we just did it here in California, it would help PG & E and Southern California Edison become able to hit very ambitious renewable energy goals.

It also help will protect the businesses who do it from future increases in the price of natural gas.

So, the evidence this story gives that "solar parking lots" ARE doable and have that much potential for solar energy is a HUGE story.