T3.3 Solar parking lots
Work with utilities to develop installation of solar panels over surface parking spaces and structured parking garages to produce green energy for electric vehicles.
France now requires any new parking lot with more than 80 spaces to include overhead solar. Maryland has a grant program for solar canopy installations on parking lots.
Envision Solar’s EVArc is a transportable permanent EV charging station with rooftop solar and battery storage. (According to their spec sheet, it has a 4.3kW array with single axis tracking. According to the PVWatts calculator, this would generate slightly less than 200 kWhs a month here in the winter, and roughly 700k to 800kWhs a month in the summer. The EPA says the 2020 Chevy Bolt uses 29kWh to go 100 miles, so in the winter this would provide Bolts about enough power each month to go 700 miles or an average of 23 miles a day, and about 2,500 miles a month or 83 miles a day in the summertime. ) Their SolarTree is a considerably bigger version.
According to Forth’s “Right-of-Way Charging: How Cities Can Lead the Way” (p. 15) Charlotte, NC, is using semi-mobile, solar-powered EV chargers to scout new areas for installation. The chargers do not need to be connected to the grid and can be moved from one neighborhood to another to test whether they are appropriate to be used in each location prior to expensive investments in charging infrastructure. San Diego has bought a couple of similar stations, apparently from BEAM; they’re $155,000 each, and the city says they save a good deal of money compared to the costs of installing a permanent grid connected station in an existing parking lot.