A lot of areas in the US are great for solar, but for many of the urban areas, it sucks. Solar in and around LA or Denver? Great! Solar in and around Detroit or Chicago? Awful. I brought out an installer and he literally LOLed when he saw my house. Great trees, wonderful yard, compact house, but hardly any location for solar given the amount of sun we get where I live.
Not to mention the carbon costs of producing solar isn't great.
It’s ok if solar doesn't work everywhere, even in the places where it’s optimal it’s barely being used right now. There’s a lot of work to be done. Even if we just covered the country’s parking lots with solar awnings we’d be producing huge amounts of power.
Ideas such as spend $800k on parking lot shade structures and then attach $200k of solar are inferior compared to buying some pasture land for $4000 and installing $996k of solar panels. Are we trying to solve CO2 emissions or is it more important that you get to see the panels every time you shop at CostCo?
The problem with solar awnings is the cost. It's much more cost-effective to install solar on a field or an open area than a parking lot. Parking lot installations much more expensive because of the additional infrastructure needed.
As we phase out gasoline powered vehicles over the next... like forever, we will have less use for ethanol produced from corn syrup, nevermind we should be reducing corn syrup in food production as well. We should be paying midwestern corn farmers to replace their corn fields with solar panels.
People complain about so much when it comes to green energy. "Oh transmission losses will eat into it so we can't transmit it too far", well why can't we fill nevada with stupidly more solar than we need so we don't care about losses.
sure and we also have plenty of unused space to do so, my intention was to show that rooftop solar isn’t the end all be all - I don’t care where they go, we just need to start putting more out there
It was good for your installer to reject the installation. Around here (Boston area) I've seen multiple North-facing roofs with solar panels. I'm sure the installer still gets paid; it's just that the homeowner never recoups their investment.
there's other types of solar than just residential rooftop solar. large scale solar installations can be built hundreds of miles from the cities they serve.
Not to mention the carbon costs of producing solar isn't great.