Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

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.

Because they do things like this (Green belt).

Because they have a population density 5x that of the US.

South Korea 13x more dense than usa. It’s even slightly denser than India.

We're comparing cities though. Seoul and Manhattan are comparable because they both have features that prevents sprawl.

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.

I live in a fairly snowy area. The panels here are steeply angled. Tends to slide off.

Same reason metal roofs are becoming popular in the area recently.

I wonder if there’s any situation where running heaters to keep the panels clear ends up with positive electricity generation. If nothing else it would help after the fact.

I think I'd go with bifacial panels, which can absorb light from their back sides as well as the front. Snow would be a concern at higher latitude, so the panels would be tilted, and if one row were covered with snow it would tend to scatter sunlight toward the back of the row in from of it. Most of the scattered light still ends up as heat which would tend to melt the snow.

Yes. I looked it up and I agree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com