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.
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 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.
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.
Some more context as someone living in Korea right now, "cheap" cars in Korea are quite rare, especially in Seoul. Having a car is somewhat of a luxury and not needed for daily life. So I think this is trying to move some of the cost of clean energy towards those who can afford it.
I really want America to get on board with this. Getting people to not drive is a nearly impossible task given how slow cities move to change the codes, so if we have to have parking lots, put them to use.
If you want America on board, get the people on board. Tell them why it's a good idea to stop driving their car. I'm not saying this to be snarky, but that's what it's going to take.
In Phoenix, Arizona, there are solar panels over the parking lots at since of the grocery stores. Makes a huge difference in survivability when you get back to the car.
(Without huge infrastructure dedicated to car welfare, Phoenix is uninhabitable.)
It seems inefficient to put solar panels over parking areas as it requires significant amount of structure which costs a lot more than shade it creates is worth. Especially compared to how much less structure is needed on more remote solar farms.
Maybe I'm just using American mindset where there is lots of open land that is good for solar generation? Perhaps not true in Korea?
>It seems inefficient to put solar panels over parking areas as it requires significant amount of structure which costs a lot more than shade it creates is worth
If you're putting up structures to shade cars from bright sun anyway then it doesn't take a lot of legislative pressure to enforce "the thing you put up has to be solar panels".
Not familiar with SK, but in principle this parking shade had better be panels works. This is doable within both governmental, social and financial frameworks in countries that get decent sun. Whether SK qualifies as "decent sun"...idk...seems borderline to my unqualified eye
Building solar panel installations in remote locations still requires linking that back to the main grid, and all the in-between infrastructure needed to transform and transmit that power. Building it in an urban location allows you to tap into the existing grid without much added public investment, similar to how some power grids will purchase power from homeowners as an added incentive for doing a home solar install.
Correct. There really isnt “more remote” in Korea because it’s such a small nation geographically speaking. You’re never more than a few hours from the farthest border.
I'm an American, and it seems like a great use of land to me. This
sort of a policy is particularly sensible in areas where it's hot, and
there are extensive parking lots next to places that are mostly active
during the day.
Instead of just having a heat island, you generate power to run AC in
the associated buildings, and you also get shade for the parked cars.
I recently was at the Vegas airport, and what struck me was the parking lot.
It was the same parking lot I saw many years ago. But this time, instead of feeling sorry for the owners of the cars that were obviously getting cooked up, that whole are was shaded in bajillion solar panels.
It seemed like such an obvious win-win for everyone, I expect it to catch on fairly quickly.
it seems wildly efficient to use the massive amount of dead space we cede to cars. Without cars, parking lots are just massive heat sinks that trap and hold heat. Might as well do something with them to make it a little bit better. It also has the added benefit of creating shade for people in the summer and cover during rain.
In a city the best place to put them first is roof tops. Rooftop solar has minimal structural requirements relative to parking lot canopies.
I think this might be partially an indirect tax on parking lots inside a dense city. It raises the cost of using land for parking, but does so in a way that provides shade and clean energy at the same time.
Ground level solar in a big city doesn't make much sense, they'll be getting a lot of shade- which significantly reduces the power generated. They've made new panels that are better with partial shade, but it's still crazy.
High rises are expensive to build. The reason they are built in the first place is that land is even more expensive, and expensive land militates for parking garages rather than open parking lots.
Low rise or high rise, (near) ground level (sub)urban PVs are going to run hotter because of the heat island and disrupted breeze, so panel efficiency and lifespan will take a non-zero hit too
South Korea is pretty mountainous so yes, available land is much less compared to America where we have square miles upon square miles of open land. South Korea is little less the size of Kentucky.
South Korea has a population density of 507/km² [1]
For comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area has a population density of 430/km² [2]
I doubt they have vast tracts of undeveloped land. And while solar panels can replace agricultural land or wooded areas, doing so isn't always a big political win.
South Korea has tons of undeveloped land. Just look at an aerial imagery map. It’s just that it’s quite mountainous and heavily forested. (Not that I think we should tear down the forests for this - surface parking lots are already an inefficient use of space)
It seems inefficient to not put solar panels over a parking lot. I'm not sure how shade is a major consideration here or how light weight solar panels are a large expense compared to the cost of space in a city. Parking garages are often net negatives to cities and parking lots are generally major negatives to cities since they drive density down and reduce foot traffic (which reduces economic churn). At least this way the city gets another small use out of that area in the form of some local electricity generation. Density and variety of use are major factors in urban health.
Something like 70% of the Korean peninsula is mountainous, and a lot of the space between mountains is taken up by cities and farms. This puts flat land at a bit of a premium
It adds utility to an arguably less useful use of space (shut up, I used use two words in a row and twice here), minimizes transmission costs and losses (the power is needed right there in the parking lot or where the people parking there are going to), and doesn't displace other land use (farms or nature).
Maybe some WX nerds on HN can answer, but uh... would this help with reducing convection cells that appear above large parking lots? I can look at radarscope during summer and see them roiding up over really large parking lots in my region. Do solar panels help reduce this 'heat island' effect?
I believe solar carports of that size need to be constructed with steel, and South Korea has a significant steel oversupply issue now, so this provides a way to keep the industry going.
However I am curious about the "NO USE FRANCE" text at the end of this article. Is this a licence issue or something? Would love it if someone with insight would be able to comment!
In terms of the formatting/brevity, Reuters was originally a wire service. They'd cover news in foreign locations and send it by telegraphic wire to local newspapers that would license the content.
Telegraphs charged by the word and didn't have letter case. Cryptic in-band signals like "NO USE FRANCE" are a relic of that time.
Since the link OP posted is to the B2B part of Reuters, I'm assuming they still haven't modernized this system.
It doesn't seem to be about photographing people, other pictures don't feature people and still have the "NO USE FRANCE" tag. It seems like all pictures by Chris Jung have the "NO USE FRANCE" tag.
My best guess is that Chris Jung has some kind of an exclusivity contract for publishing in France. Looking at his website, he publishes in "Paris Match", a French magazine, so it may be related.
This is a great idea, whether full of cars or empty, a lot of heat is absorbed by the parking lots. Just covering them means the concrete below cannot heat up.
This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich”
) government should have mandated years ago.
The best time was years ago, the second best time…
We see the results of initiatives like this in BC, Canada.
About 10 years ago they passed a law that when any government building is getting a renovation of any kind, public EV chargers must be built in the parking lot.
The result is that every single town without exception has EV chargers now. The future is coming, despite some doing their best to slow it down.
> This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich” ) government should have mandated years ago.
If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.
If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Does South Korea do mandated parking minimums like I hear is common here in the US? That would tell whether this is a tax on business property in general, or a tax on driving / personal mobility specifically.
Should we explicitly subsidize the kitchen equipment restaurants need in order to comply with food-safety regulations instead of mandating it? How about the mandatory sinks in the bathrooms of businesses (or even the mandatory toilets) - subsidize those instead of mandating them e.g. through OSHA?
Thinking about it from an individual (not business) point of view, the upfront capital won’t be repaid for 10-years or more and does little to change the value of the lot. The lot value is probably most dictated by location and capacity. Solar does nothing to affect location, and may even harm capacity. Parking lot customers might choose a lot of its shaded, but ultimately it’s a captive market due to location.
If I owned the lot, I could take on no-risk (which may be why the lot was purchased to begin with), or take on a 6-figure investment that could bankrupt me if the demand for the lot vanished. (I suppose in that case you’d at least be making money on selling power back to the grid.)
> If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Or, as happened in actual reality, you tell the owners they have to put it in place. Imagine that - the two weirdly specific things you came up with aren’t actually the only two options. Who would’ve thunk.
Even if no more energy infrastructure is destroyed from the moment of this post, the Iran war will do more to speed this up than decades of science, I think.
The idea of an 'owner' doing whatever they want on 'their' property is ridiculous. They bought that land with restrictions and an understanding that it was part of a regulatory framework. Should an 'owner' be able to set up an industrial chemical plant in the middle of a city without any regulation? How about an open pit mine? A gun range with no regulation? Should I be able to create a massive speaker system pointed at your house next door to drive you away with no consequences? All actions are actually interactions. Everything someone does on their property has impacts to others. We give 'owners' a lot of leeway but that shouldn't be unlimited. Requiring things like solar on roofs, or gutters on roofs, or restricting roof uses, etc etc are all valid concepts. It can, and should, be debated how far those regulations should go but 'get your government off my land' is never a good argument.
Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by highly concentrated power, limited political pluralism, and the suppression of dissent, often enforced by a charismatic leader or elite group
.
A mandate is an authoritative command, order, or authorization to act, typically given by a higher authority, such as voters, a court, or a governing body
.
So in the sense that a mandate is passed by government, and governments are sometimes authoritarian? If your logic is stronger than that you'll need to explain it to me. I'm not saying Asian countries are not authoritarian, I take no stance on that, I just genuinely don't understand how mandates imply authoritarianism.
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.
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.
That is definitely not going to be easier or cheaper.
Yes. I looked it up and I agree.
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.
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.
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.
Some more context as someone living in Korea right now, "cheap" cars in Korea are quite rare, especially in Seoul. Having a car is somewhat of a luxury and not needed for daily life. So I think this is trying to move some of the cost of clean energy towards those who can afford it.
I really want America to get on board with this. Getting people to not drive is a nearly impossible task given how slow cities move to change the codes, so if we have to have parking lots, put them to use.
If you want America on board, get the people on board. Tell them why it's a good idea to stop driving their car. I'm not saying this to be snarky, but that's what it's going to take.
In Phoenix, Arizona, there are solar panels over the parking lots at since of the grocery stores. Makes a huge difference in survivability when you get back to the car.
(Without huge infrastructure dedicated to car welfare, Phoenix is uninhabitable.)
It seems inefficient to put solar panels over parking areas as it requires significant amount of structure which costs a lot more than shade it creates is worth. Especially compared to how much less structure is needed on more remote solar farms.
Maybe I'm just using American mindset where there is lots of open land that is good for solar generation? Perhaps not true in Korea?
>It seems inefficient to put solar panels over parking areas as it requires significant amount of structure which costs a lot more than shade it creates is worth
If you're putting up structures to shade cars from bright sun anyway then it doesn't take a lot of legislative pressure to enforce "the thing you put up has to be solar panels".
Not familiar with SK, but in principle this parking shade had better be panels works. This is doable within both governmental, social and financial frameworks in countries that get decent sun. Whether SK qualifies as "decent sun"...idk...seems borderline to my unqualified eye
Building solar panel installations in remote locations still requires linking that back to the main grid, and all the in-between infrastructure needed to transform and transmit that power. Building it in an urban location allows you to tap into the existing grid without much added public investment, similar to how some power grids will purchase power from homeowners as an added incentive for doing a home solar install.
Correct. There really isnt “more remote” in Korea because it’s such a small nation geographically speaking. You’re never more than a few hours from the farthest border.
I'm an American, and it seems like a great use of land to me. This sort of a policy is particularly sensible in areas where it's hot, and there are extensive parking lots next to places that are mostly active during the day.
Instead of just having a heat island, you generate power to run AC in the associated buildings, and you also get shade for the parked cars.
I recently was at the Vegas airport, and what struck me was the parking lot.
It was the same parking lot I saw many years ago. But this time, instead of feeling sorry for the owners of the cars that were obviously getting cooked up, that whole are was shaded in bajillion solar panels.
It seemed like such an obvious win-win for everyone, I expect it to catch on fairly quickly.
But, isn't the albedo of a solar panel farm still way dark? It means the radiation is still being captured rather than reflected back up.
it seems wildly efficient to use the massive amount of dead space we cede to cars. Without cars, parking lots are just massive heat sinks that trap and hold heat. Might as well do something with them to make it a little bit better. It also has the added benefit of creating shade for people in the summer and cover during rain.
So often though, they are obstructed by nearby buildings.
maybe in some areas, but in the suburbs? they will get plenty of light covering the parking lot of a wal mart or target.
In a city the best place to put them first is roof tops. Rooftop solar has minimal structural requirements relative to parking lot canopies.
I think this might be partially an indirect tax on parking lots inside a dense city. It raises the cost of using land for parking, but does so in a way that provides shade and clean energy at the same time.
Ground level solar in a big city doesn't make much sense, they'll be getting a lot of shade- which significantly reduces the power generated. They've made new panels that are better with partial shade, but it's still crazy.
High rises are expensive to build. The reason they are built in the first place is that land is even more expensive, and expensive land militates for parking garages rather than open parking lots.
Most parking lots in big cities are not surrounded by high-rises.
Low rise or high rise, (near) ground level (sub)urban PVs are going to run hotter because of the heat island and disrupted breeze, so panel efficiency and lifespan will take a non-zero hit too
Well also when they are they are small parking lots. This regulation specifically is for big public parking lots.
Also the "surrounded by high rises" locations are more likely to be built as parking garages in the first place.
South Korea is pretty mountainous so yes, available land is much less compared to America where we have square miles upon square miles of open land. South Korea is little less the size of Kentucky.
South Korea has a population density of 507/km² [1]
For comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area has a population density of 430/km² [2]
I doubt they have vast tracts of undeveloped land. And while solar panels can replace agricultural land or wooded areas, doing so isn't always a big political win.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
South Korea has tons of undeveloped land. Just look at an aerial imagery map. It’s just that it’s quite mountainous and heavily forested. (Not that I think we should tear down the forests for this - surface parking lots are already an inefficient use of space)
It seems inefficient to not put solar panels over a parking lot. I'm not sure how shade is a major consideration here or how light weight solar panels are a large expense compared to the cost of space in a city. Parking garages are often net negatives to cities and parking lots are generally major negatives to cities since they drive density down and reduce foot traffic (which reduces economic churn). At least this way the city gets another small use out of that area in the form of some local electricity generation. Density and variety of use are major factors in urban health.
Something like 70% of the Korean peninsula is mountainous, and a lot of the space between mountains is taken up by cities and farms. This puts flat land at a bit of a premium
Yes, build far away and wait 30 years for transmission lines to be built or to be connected to the grid.
Building where people live means (near) zero transmission infrastructure.
It adds utility to an arguably less useful use of space (shut up, I used use two words in a row and twice here), minimizes transmission costs and losses (the power is needed right there in the parking lot or where the people parking there are going to), and doesn't displace other land use (farms or nature).
If you have 80 or more slots, you have to generate at least 100 KW.
As someone who has lived in Korea, this will be great for the apartment complex parking lots.
That said, I don't think it's aggressive enough. Why not scale with the number of parking spaces?
Maybe some WX nerds on HN can answer, but uh... would this help with reducing convection cells that appear above large parking lots? I can look at radarscope during summer and see them roiding up over really large parking lots in my region. Do solar panels help reduce this 'heat island' effect?
Top of my head thought:
Depends on the colour of the cars and pavement. A PV will send ~20% of the light energy hitting it down the wire, the rest = heat.
PVs don’t really reflect back much light for obvious reasons.
The increased surface area might help it radiate more heat at night on a clear day, unless the panels are flat and then it’s no change really.
I believe solar carports of that size need to be constructed with steel, and South Korea has a significant steel oversupply issue now, so this provides a way to keep the industry going.
Great initiative.
However I am curious about the "NO USE FRANCE" text at the end of this article. Is this a licence issue or something? Would love it if someone with insight would be able to comment!
It might be because there's a person in the photo, and France is very strict on photographing people.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...
In terms of the formatting/brevity, Reuters was originally a wire service. They'd cover news in foreign locations and send it by telegraphic wire to local newspapers that would license the content.
Telegraphs charged by the word and didn't have letter case. Cryptic in-band signals like "NO USE FRANCE" are a relic of that time.
Since the link OP posted is to the B2B part of Reuters, I'm assuming they still haven't modernized this system.
It doesn't seem to be about photographing people, other pictures don't feature people and still have the "NO USE FRANCE" tag. It seems like all pictures by Chris Jung have the "NO USE FRANCE" tag.
My best guess is that Chris Jung has some kind of an exclusivity contract for publishing in France. Looking at his website, he publishes in "Paris Match", a French magazine, so it may be related.
That makes more sense.
This is sane and sensible and honestly all buildings should have some shape of panels on them…
This is a great idea, whether full of cars or empty, a lot of heat is absorbed by the parking lots. Just covering them means the concrete below cannot heat up.
I was going to say, there must be some research on how much/little this impacts the urban heat island effect.
This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich” ) government should have mandated years ago.
The best time was years ago, the second best time…
We see the results of initiatives like this in BC, Canada. About 10 years ago they passed a law that when any government building is getting a renovation of any kind, public EV chargers must be built in the parking lot.
The result is that every single town without exception has EV chargers now. The future is coming, despite some doing their best to slow it down.
> This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich” ) government should have mandated years ago.
If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.
If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Does South Korea do mandated parking minimums like I hear is common here in the US? That would tell whether this is a tax on business property in general, or a tax on driving / personal mobility specifically.
Should we explicitly subsidize the kitchen equipment restaurants need in order to comply with food-safety regulations instead of mandating it? How about the mandatory sinks in the bathrooms of businesses (or even the mandatory toilets) - subsidize those instead of mandating them e.g. through OSHA?
Thinking about it from an individual (not business) point of view, the upfront capital won’t be repaid for 10-years or more and does little to change the value of the lot. The lot value is probably most dictated by location and capacity. Solar does nothing to affect location, and may even harm capacity. Parking lot customers might choose a lot of its shaded, but ultimately it’s a captive market due to location.
If I owned the lot, I could take on no-risk (which may be why the lot was purchased to begin with), or take on a 6-figure investment that could bankrupt me if the demand for the lot vanished. (I suppose in that case you’d at least be making money on selling power back to the grid.)
> If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Or, as happened in actual reality, you tell the owners they have to put it in place. Imagine that - the two weirdly specific things you came up with aren’t actually the only two options. Who would’ve thunk.
Even if no more energy infrastructure is destroyed from the moment of this post, the Iran war will do more to speed this up than decades of science, I think.
Well, destroying the entirety of the Gulf certainly is one way to make the world go renewable. Many are going to struggle, though
power right where its needed, plus shade for your vehicle. this is the way.
Solar Freaking Roadways!
well it’s certainly better than covering farmland with them like has been happening around here
Authoritarian Asian countries being authoritarian as usual.
Wouldn't mind putting up panels if I could sell and use the power. But fuck governments telling property "owners" what they can or can't do.
Every government tells property owners what they can and cant't do. Find one that doesn't, and you'll have found a failed state.
The idea of an 'owner' doing whatever they want on 'their' property is ridiculous. They bought that land with restrictions and an understanding that it was part of a regulatory framework. Should an 'owner' be able to set up an industrial chemical plant in the middle of a city without any regulation? How about an open pit mine? A gun range with no regulation? Should I be able to create a massive speaker system pointed at your house next door to drive you away with no consequences? All actions are actually interactions. Everything someone does on their property has impacts to others. We give 'owners' a lot of leeway but that shouldn't be unlimited. Requiring things like solar on roofs, or gutters on roofs, or restricting roof uses, etc etc are all valid concepts. It can, and should, be debated how far those regulations should go but 'get your government off my land' is never a good argument.
A mandate for renewable energy is authoritarian now? What? This is a great initiative.
The key is in the presence of the word "mandate".
Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by highly concentrated power, limited political pluralism, and the suppression of dissent, often enforced by a charismatic leader or elite group .
A mandate is an authoritative command, order, or authorization to act, typically given by a higher authority, such as voters, a court, or a governing body .
So in the sense that a mandate is passed by government, and governments are sometimes authoritarian? If your logic is stronger than that you'll need to explain it to me. I'm not saying Asian countries are not authoritarian, I take no stance on that, I just genuinely don't understand how mandates imply authoritarianism.
The sensibility of a policy and the power dynamics of it’s application are orthogonal.
Yes, it is.