Parking Solar Panels Over Parking Lots

West Hartford Clean Energy Commission talks benefits of canopy solar

Despite the media attention – including in the pages of CT&C – alternative forms of energy are still making headway into our electric grids. California, the leader in solar energy production, produces just 16% of their energy from solar. Connecticut is much smaller than California, though, leaving less space to put up the vast arrays needed. In West Hartford, they are getting creative about where they can put the panels.

This past March, Bernie Pelletier, Chairman of the West Hartford Clean Energy Commission and of People’s Action for Clean Energy (PACE) gave a presentation about solar canopies – like those that are placed over parking lots and carports.

Some of the benefits are obvious – producing solar energy is a no brainer in 2023. But there is a less obvious benefit to these arrays that requires outside the box thinking.

California has two things that allow it to generate the amount of solar it does. One is sunshine, but the other is open space to place the arrays. From a study cited by a Yale Environment 360 blog, over 50% of solar is placed in deserts, 33% in croplands, and 10% in grasslands or forests. And just 2.5% of U.S. solar power comes from urban areas.

According to that blog, “undeveloped land is a rapidly dwindling resource.” Parking lots on the other hand are an abundant resource of land that has been “stripped of much of its biological value.”

Of particular interest in West Hartford was “63 parking lots and other ‘degraded’ sites (land not suitable for agriculture or other productive land use) for solar canopies.”

There are costs associated with canopy-style arrays, of course including installing them in the first place. But there are even more benefits than the two mentioned at first glance. In addition to electricity generation on sites that would otherwise not be productive, but as we move to electrify our vehicles, it would be an obvious way to charge them while we shop or park. Even less obvious, it would protect cars from the elements – and on super-hot days it would prevent cars from being overheated, requiring them to use more energy to cool the car down.

Connecticut as a whole ranks 13th in the nation for carbon intensity from electricity generation according to the Washington Post. With 57% from natural gas and 38% from nuclear. Because we are so developed, there are few places left we can put in solar arrays. It’s time to start thinking outside the field.