Researchers from Yale found that parking lots across Connecticut could host 7 GW of solar capacity and produce 9,000 GWh of electricity in their first year of operation.

Analysis from Yale University has found that more than one-third of the state’s electricity could come from solar-covered parking lots.

Adding this potential to Google Project Sunroof rooftop’s solar data increased the availability of solar siting to roughly 85.5% of the state’s electricity provided solely from solar carports and rooftops.

The authors examined only parking lots with at least 100 standard-sized parking spaces, and covering a minimum area of 29,400 square feet. Those criteria cut the number of potential sites to 16,900; later filtering lowered the total still more to 8,416. The authors then spot-checked 100  sites, and designed solar power plants for them. They speculated that, on average, 35% of the chosen sites were good candidates for solar panels.

The authors found that the final 8,416 sites across the state could generate 9,042 GWh of electricity within their first year of operation. The total capacity of these sites was 7,021 MWdc of solar power.

Priced at $3.00 per Watt to install, the solar canopies would generate approximately $21 billion in construction activity.

The report was funded by social justice and clean energy group People’s Action for Clean Energy (PACE). In addition to the technical analysis, the report also found that a majority of the parking lots were located in areas that were either low income or non-white.

Building solar power in low-income areas offers multiple benefits beyond simply generating kilowatt hours. One benefit would be increasing job development in areas adjacent to people looking for local employment. A second might be that local generation of clean electricity could potentially allow for shutting down of gas power plants, which tend to be located in low-income and non-white communities.

Earlier analysis showed that solar power could power 100% of the energy and electricity in the United States using a relatively small amount of land. Additionally, research suggesting that getting to 80% of our electricity from wind+solar is relatively straightforward.

The knowledge that we can get 85% of all electricity from solar power on already developed rooftops and carports alone should be a huge positive for the environmental aspects of solar power.

And, just maybe, optimistic solar salespeople should reach out to the Yale authors to ask about their list of 8,416 sites, which are waiting for a cold call and a proposal.

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More articles from John Fitzgerald Weaver

While it is easily possible to generate as much electricity from solar panels as is used through the year, intermittency and the fact the sun does not shine at night would require a huge amount of expensive storage across a while range of time frames to make up the difference between when power is generated and when it is needed. A combination with wind, hydro, deep geothermal power generation and anaerobic digestion of food waste and sewage plus possibly some nuclear would offer a far more realistic solution.

This is a no brainer! It took Yale to figure this out?!?. Charger, solar along major routes where commuters are parking and transmission lines run along the highway?!? Imagine that! Park and rides should be first targets for solar and only if they are exposure limited should they not be first sought after. Now someone’s going to come a brilliant “study” that they are also prime candidates for community solar! 🙄. Meanwhile, new Jersey mandates all new wharehouse space be prebuilt to receive solar. How many more government studies will reveal the obvious. Like solar along highways!

I’m sure everyone was thinking this. The obvious use for this power is Electric vehicle charging while we park. With some creative rental agreements utilities could rent capacity on them to draw power from when people park at night in their homes. People will rarely need their full range every day after all.

G. Tulie, since electric use rises during the day, solar is viable to produce for the hours of hightened use. Mapping the use graphs will give indications of where and how electricity is now used, also following trends in countries with EV uptake gives advance info on how things will probably trend as EV adoption happens in the USofA. Obama had the Corps of Engineers (army) list unpowered dams capable of hydro and came up with 800. These are only the larger ones. All of which could be quickly converted to fast response hydro storage and new owners be put in place to convert, manage and upkeep them so the taxpayer doesn’t have to…. Was it done… Nope… Government ineptitude! Use the low hanging fruit first! Yes, baseload by geothermal would be great, but distant payoffs are not corporate candy. You’d think that geo+solar+wind would already be a thing everywhere possible, but NIMBY jerks want everyone else to do the right thing. Make the NIMBIES pay costs of delay before they file lawsuits then maybe we can get somewt.

While this research and article seem to be obvious, they don’t talk about the real issue of cost, who pays and who makes money. Each of these installations would cost quite a bit and who is going to pay for that investment? The seemingly “obvious” choice is the land owners, such as a local Stop & Shop… an investment of $5M(wild guess) to put in a solar car port. Cost for EV charging equipment is astronomical, somewhere around $200K/ea, so 100 parking space equates to $20M. So now we are at an investment of $25M and the owner hopes to make the money back from charging charges at … $10/avg charge??? That’d be 2.5M charges without overhead costs. Perhaps they can sell excess back to the local utility/grid? Using the study numbers of 8416 sites able to generate 9042GWh of energy per year, averages each site able to generate approximately 1074GWh/yr or or 1,074,382kWh/yr. Eversource charges about $0.23/kWh, and assuming you could get that price, so even if you were able to sell it ALL back to Eversource, it would only generate $247,107/yr. Now I’m not saying it’s all about the money – I got solar to save me money over 20years AND to reduce carbon emissions. But those are some tough numbers for a business to swallow to “feel good”.

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