Comments on: Senate Bill introduced to incentivize solar carport deployment in California

By: RV

RV — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 17:28:18 +0000

“Big Box” stores roofs need to be incentivized or coerced to be covered in solar panels. It is a huge amount of real estate that is wasted otherwise, and would require adding less additional structuring to obtain the goal. In addition, the parking lot and rooftop panels could be designed to collect rain water. Most of the roofs in big box stores that I have visited in So Cal need renewal anyway, since they ALL seem to leak water in the slightest rain. The electricity produced by this means, as well as residential solar panels is especially helpful to the grid since it is produced near where it is needed, thereby reducing strain on the grid. The short sighted government of California needs to fully reward individuals and businesses for producing such clean electricity instead of REDUCING the reward under the fall guise of “Equity”, when it is simply a veiled handout to the electric companies and labor unions.

By: Dwight Rose

Dwight Rose — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 22:10:52 +0000

The other benefit of this solar canopy concept is that it will also shade the asphalt in these areas also to keep the temperatures lower allowing a quicker cool down at night. It would be interesting to see how much of a temperature reduction this would have if all 101 square miles in LA county alone was covered.

By: Solarman

Solarman — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 21:50:58 +0000

“Los Angeles County has an estimated 101 square miles of parking lots that could produce an estimated 6.5 GW of power if they were covered by solar canopies. Given Los Angeles County is home to about 25% of the state’s population, that could mean almost 26 GW of solar could be available through these solar canopies.”

The extra large scale energy storage is generation agnostic and a more subtle plan to use this energy storage for overnight energy shuttling and storage should also be implemented so any generation any time from any resource can be more efficienty used, if not “right now” then store, time shift and dispatch later.

““This is one of the many tools we’re going to need to use to hit our targets of using 90% clean energy by 2035 and achieving 100% carbon neutrality by 2045,” Becker said. “In my view, this is relatively low-hanging fruit. We’ve got the land available — now the challenge is to make better use of it.””

The really big question right now is while “moving towards this mandate” of decarbonization, and average electricity rates quickly approaching $0.35/kWh, how high will electricity rates go to meet that last 10% decarbonization by 2045? It could be possible $0.40/kWh, $0.50/kWh or even up to $1/kWh by 2045, who will be able to afford this cost in the desert southwest where summer electricity would cost something on the order of $6,000/month just to keep one’s home comfortable enough to sleep during those four hottest months of the year.