Comment by Aurornis
15 hours ago
The solar covered parking lots near me are great because they also serve as cover for your car when it’s hot and sunny.
It’s not the most cost effective way to install solar, though. A tall structure designed to put the panels high up in the air and leave a lot of space for cars is a lot more expensive than normal rooftop solar or even field setups. This is basically a way to force some of the cost of clean energy as a tax on parking lots. Which may not be a bad thing for dense cities where parking lots have their own externalities on the limited available land.
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.
In places with a lot of flat empty land, solar farms are a lot cheaper. South Korea doesn't have any flat empty land though..
A better version for shade and city beautification is to force trees around/within the parking lot.
I love seeing trees in more places, but for parking lots in particular they do have some downsides compared to solar panels. They often require more space; they attract birds that that poo on vehicles; and there’s a higher risk of collateral damage during windstorms. Not to mention that solar panels directly produce electricity, of course.
We absolutely should see more trees in many cities, but they introduce their own challenges in parking lots, especially if they’re placed retroactively.
> they attract birds that that poo on vehicles
I think this is a tree density problem. Most cities have a small number of trees, and they’re almost always over cars. These are trees that line streets and parking lots. Without trees, birds just have telephone poles and wires, which are also over the cars.
In San Francisco, we have a lot of trees on most of our streets, and many parks small and big, all full of trees. This means birds spread themselves out everywhere, not just over cars.
I think the true barrier to getting more trees is that individuals tend not to want to pay for and maintain trees. This includes caring for the tree, trimming it when it gets bigger, and cleaning the pollen, leaves, fruits, and branches that fall.
1 reply →
If you don’t want trees near parking cars that essentially prevents trees in cities, since cities are practically one big parking lot.
> they attract birds that that poo on vehicles
The city can simply introduce lizards to manage to bird issue.
3 replies →
Don't try to make sense on Spacker News... they wouldn't lear.
More trees often means less density which leads to worse cities. There is a place for trees, but 'more is better' is not true, especially around a parking lot which has already dropped the density massively. A parking lot is a city dead zone. Trees next to that will just expand that dead zone. It is like in the US where there are ornamental 'parks' at huge intersections. Nobody goes there. They didn't help. Same with parks around government buildings. SF is a great example of wasted space due to this. Generally, you need to minimize parking areas massively and then pack as much city next to them as possible to make up for the services they robbed. In the places where you actually do have exceptionally dense city then you can think about patches of green strategically placed. Getting a diverse, ecosystem like, city is the right approach but there is no hard and fast rule to get there.
Trees can cause a lot of trouble if you don't give them enough space to grow. "Enough space" depends on the kind of the tree, but it's typically similar to a parking space. You can mandate trees, but then you'll get less parking.
> You can mandate trees, but then you'll get less parking.
This implies we want to maximise car parking spaces in a city, when, I think, you'd want to maximise enjoyment of the city.
That's not possible in most of the parking lots of South Korea. It's extremely dense and no space for big enough trees to shade cars.
An even better version is to do away with the parking lot part and just have the trees.
Then how do show owners eat and pay their employees when no customers arrive because parking downtown is such a chore.
Touch a parking lot doesn't have the same ring to it.
Meowr!
/s
A couple other comments warned of bird poop danger. But the smart entrepreneur will add a drive thru car wash next to the parking lot.
People always end up petitioning for them to be cutdown because tree litter inevitably falls on cars. The best solution for cars is dense multistory parking.
Dense multistory parking underground.
In South Korea, you usually don't see parking lots the size of several football fields like in the U.S., even around venues that generally attract a lot of cars, even in suburban areas. Instead, there are several stories of parking lots under every large building. Above-ground space is simply too valuable to waste on parking.
Unfortunately, you can't install solar panels underground.
2 replies →
Why not both?
They both are in competition for surface exposed to the sun. The mall’s parking lot near my place used to have trees. When they installed the solar panel shaders last year they cut down all of them.
2 replies →
Tree shade means bird poop danger.
I recently built a 400sqft porch on my semi-urban duplex.
Two birdnests have set up shop, both in my rafters (one on CCTV). My ceilinghooked bicycle will be decommissioned for this summer's nesters.
Unfortunately, being the only porch/shade: the cats are also prowling... figuring out the rooftop connections.
#PoopPorch2026
Imagine considering some bird poop staining the paint dangerous instead of the air pollution that's slowly killing you.
5 replies →
I wonder if this will make it preferable to build parking structures rather than parking lots.
The lot is always cheaper, as long as the land is cheap. And in most of the US, even land that isn't all that cheap is often best left as a parking lot, economically: You can easily speculate with a parking lot with minimal investment, as the taxes for the empty lot are often low. See all the midwestern cities whose downtowns are 30-40% surface parking.
There are all kinds of bad externalities caused by seas of asphalt that is unused 95% of the time, but few countries are all that interested in using any mechanism to make the property owner pay for them.
I imagine land is more expensive in South Korea than in the US.
4 replies →
That is definitely not going to be easier or cheaper.
They covered most of the parking lots with solar cells a few years back at nearby Michigan State. The economics weren't there, but as a friend who worked there pointed out they viewed it as research.
It's great that when it snows you don't get nearly as much of the white stuff on your vehicle. But when it snows energy production slows to a crawl. We have a lot of snowy days a third of the year.
3 replies →
Yes. I looked it up and I agree.
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.
> 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.
How many square yards of panels would one EV charger need an a typical afternoon / evening?
A Solar panel produces about 250W peak per square meter. A parking spot can thus produce maybe three kW. A whole parking lot is probably enough for one or two chargers.
12 replies →
> 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
There's good points and then there's "let me add some random stuff on top"
> The solar covered parking lots near me are great because they also serve as cover for your car when it’s hot and sunny.
I would like someone better at maths than I am to work out how much petrol this saves drivers because you're getting into a car that's been parked in the shade and not running the air conditioning so hard.
I bet it's at least detectable, even if it's not much.