MotorTrend reports https://www.motortrend.com/news/kia-plant-solar-power-hail-protection that the Kia assembly plant in Georgia suffered very expensive hail damage to new cars waiting to be shipped, back in a storm in 2023. The fix is a massive raised solar array of 3.2 million square feet (300,000 meters^2) over the car park/storage area.
The system has about 17,000 solar panels on the columns of a structure that is large enough to protect about 15,000 vehicles from the elements until they are loaded onto trucks or rail cars for delivery. Hail damage costs billions of dollars a year.
The panels are not all connected yet. Construction began in 2024 and the goal was to be done in the first quarter of 2026 but panels are still being installed. It should be finished this spring.
VPS [Vehicle Protection Structures] has provided this kind of protection to dealerships, but this is the first large-scale execution for an assembly plant.
The partnership is also working with Georgia Power to optimize energy production and integrate the power generated by the solar panels into the plant. The panels will be capable of supplying 10 percent of the plant's energy needs. The project also provided credits under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act until that act was terminated.
Pics at the link, sort of like large "pop-up" shelters. To your AC submitter it's quite attractive.
Insuring the solar panels for hail damage seems like it would be cheaper than insurance to cover the same area of cars.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday March 02, @11:48PM (8 children)
I mean, look at all that parking area they have. They could sell recharging services too to their parking customers with EVs.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03, @12:36AM (2 children)
> Shopping centers...
Agreed, but around here they would have to be stronger to support the snow load. Also, when there is a blizzard (snow + high winds), it might be difficult to clear the snow with all those support poles in the way.
For warmer places, I wonder if solar cells reflect some heat (IR), reducing the urban heat island effect from all that black asphalt?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Tuesday March 03, @07:45AM
There's probably ways of dealing with it, provided it doesn't get too cold, but you're absolutely right that beyond a certain point there's just too much snow.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Tuesday March 03, @02:23PM
The white canopy will help most with the heat.
I do wish you could get panels designed to be giant 3x5ft shingles so they're ready to be canopy/shed/carport roofs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 03, @02:40AM (4 children)
Highways in southern cities (like Miami) would benefit tremendously from semi-transparent solar roofs 20' (or whatever is a generous clearance) above the road surface. If nothing else, the cars travelling underneath wouldn't be baking in the sun as they drive - less A/C usage, less fuel consumption, and the electricity generated could feed the metro-rail system...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03, @03:07AM (1 child)
> the electricity generated could feed the metro-rail system...
Don't know how well different departments cooperate in FL. Here in the north east, the chance of the highway department cooperating to make power for the metro is about nil. Each little fiefdom has its own ruler who isn't interested in dealing with any of the others.
Might be related to the usual sequence of repaving a street, a month or so before someone needs to ditch across the new pavement to replace an aging water line or something... No obvious coordination at all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 03, @04:39AM
When I worked at DOT, I learned that the power company gives DOT street light power unmetered as an acknowledgement of the value of easements DOT gives the power company.
Ditches in the new pavement - yeah, that's hard to avoid, completely separate scheduling and very little control of timing on either side. Timing of non-crisis projects is usually based on politically allocated funding which changes multiple times between planning and execution of the projects.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 03, @03:25AM (1 child)
Oh, I don't know, imagining a hurricane blowing into those 20' panels, that's a lot of surface and the wind force scales quadratically with the wind speed... I'm afraid many will require replacing every year or two.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 03, @04:41AM
Hurricane resistant structures are a remarkably small delta in cost from what mostly gets built... Commercial code only went to 120mph winds, and they're pretty accurate about that, so when a 155mph storm hits, it gets ugly fast. Building to 160mph instead of 120 might be an 80% increase in materials cost, but only maybe 15% increase in labor costs, so net increase in construction cost is more like 20%.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Tuesday March 03, @01:44AM
Complete solar panels from China probably were cheaper than any locally sourced roofing material. First 450W panel on the 'bay, 2m^2 for 69€. Try to get a square metre of any other solid carport roofing for under 35€. A square metre of 1,5mm EPDM rubber sheet alone already is €18,50.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday March 03, @06:20AM (4 children)
If you look at the photos, all of the coverage is from non-photovoltaic canopies, there are just token panels on top of the poles holding the canopies up, presumably added to claim (former) tax credits. The panels aren't connected yet, and since no mention is made of armouring for hail impact they're probably not going to handle car-damaging hail much better than the cars would. So it's a giant canopy to absorb hail impact and a tax dodge by bolting panels to the conveniently-located posts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03, @12:54PM
The angle of the photo isn't great, but I got the impression that the panels were covering some of the gaps between the canopies?
As far as tax dodge goes, are there still any tax credits for installing solar (in USA)? I had the impression they are all gone with the current "drill baby drill" administration.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spamalope on Tuesday March 03, @02:05PM (2 children)
They made large canopy structures that require beefy posts.
Since the posts were already required, they extended them upward a bit and added guy stabilized single pole mounts for the panels.
I count 14 largish panels per pole. If they're 400w panels, that's 5,600w per post.
Trans-shipment lots are huge. There is nothing fake about this. Whether it's a good idea 100% depends on how much it costs over simply adding the covers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 03, @02:19PM (1 child)
> Whether it's a good idea 100% depends on how much it costs over simply adding the covers.
Here in UK, where electricity costs are significantly higher than in US, we have landowners abandoning farming to put in solar panels.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday March 04, @12:07AM
You have to look at the other side as well, farming returns $x per unit square, often just above zero or even negative in bad years, while solar pretty reliably returns > $x per unit square for next to zero effort apart from the initial investment.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday March 03, @08:25AM (5 children)
It's an overlooked facet of solar panels that they are large, flat, light structures.
This means they're ideal for rain-cover, for covering canals (to prevent evaporation, etc.), roadways, even your patio. Why is the roof of your conservatory not just solar panels? They're cheap enough now.
They can function as fences, as roofs, as wall panels, provide shade for animals, etc.
And every fuelling station could have them instead of those huge covers they have purely to... protect drivers from rain for the 5 minutes it takes to fuel your car. Barns, sheds, ... Any flat surface could be a solar panel.
And they will protect (to some extent) whatever is underneath them. I have an old roof and I started putting my own solar panels on and now I'm actually more confident that the roof will stay there for longer. I don't get moss on it any more wherever I've put a panel (and the panels don't get moss at all). And it's a layer against rain, sleet, snow, hail, even intense sunshine heating and cracking the old tiles.
Honestly, I don't get why everything isn't just a solar panel nowadays. I'm adding them to my porch walls, I'm putting them over my fence panels (I would love to replace my fence panels with them, but the sizing is all off for the existing posts), I'm putting them on my shed roof, and I'm putting them on my house.
It's a tiny, tiny, house (60 sq m!) but damn... I'm already going to need another solar controller as it is, let alone by the time I'm finished. And the panels I'm using are literally cheaper than fence panels, etc.
I would say that having solar panels on a roof will easily buy me another 10-20 years of roof life. And having a "glass" fence would be far better than some rickety old wooden shite that constantly goes grey in the sun and needs fixing.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 03, @02:16PM (4 children)
For those of us with sloping roofs, solar panels are not cost efficient on north facing surfaces.
In another direction, fake tiles that generate power is a nice idea:
https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/solar-panels/roof-tiles [theecoexperts.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday March 03, @10:47PM
The issue isn't the price of the panels, that's negligible. I just looked up the prices for tiles (after I looked at current panel prices two postings ago). Ordinary roof tiles, basic red from a common vendors, run around 20€/m^2, a bit more posh ones come at 32€/m^2. The panels are 35€/m^2. For 100m^2 roof, the extra cost for the material is between 300 and 1500€. Even if they run at 10% peak, they will pay for themselves in months rather than years.
However, installation and especially sealing is a bitch with what's available. You'd probably need specific rubber profiles both for horizontal and vertical gaps, and decent fitting panels for the edges. Nothing that can't be solved, but once that has happened, roof tile manufacturers will run lobby campaigns how helpless children will cruelly burn to death because, er, electricity.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday March 04, @12:20AM (2 children)
For half of this globe, on the contrary, north facing solar panels are more efficient than the opposite.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04, @12:25AM
> For half of this globe
Sorry, you and your country are inverted, not much anyone can do about it... Being butt hurt won't really help the matter.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 04, @09:30AM
Thanks and good point.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Tuesday March 03, @12:00PM (3 children)
I did a similar project on a personal scale. Works well. My motorhome now has two 550W solar panels instead of a foldable tent. They were not intended for hail protection, but indeed survived pretty well 2-3cm hail. The stuff under them (including laptop and two monitors) did not suffer any damage other than the general moisture that dried without trace. The table is also a solar panel (450W) with detachable ikea table legs. The table panel can still be used for electricity when really needed, but is also acceptable for dining, cooking, board games or computer work. When in storage or in motion, the 3 panels fold together nicely on the side of the van (the "table" panel with its legs inside the cavity between the two "tent" panels) and the whole construct makes some power even when folded.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday March 03, @03:01PM
Interesting. Do your two 550W solar panels meet most of your power needs? Just power the laptop / monitors?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday March 04, @08:24AM (1 child)
I started down the panel route because I was at a crossroads in my life in my 40's and I had two conceivable ways out:
- Buy a house.
- Sell everything I owned, move out of my rented place, buy a campervan, tour Europe until my money ran out.
I wasn't expecting to be able to do the first, but I hedged my bets and for several years bought the items I need to do the latter but only if they wouldn't be a waste in the former.
And that meant that I tested things like solar panels, furniture that broke down to its component parts, all kinds of silicone foldable utensils, etc. etc. etc.
And the panels were just me playing at first but, later, I did actually get a house and thus started adding more and more and more panels and batteries and cables and controllers and fuses and safety and switches and... now I have a solar setup on a house I own.
I even started with 12V, knowing that if I was going to end up in a vehicle that's what I'd want, but that I could combine them to get 24V or 48V (which is what I've done).
I like the idea of a solar panel table, though. That's great. I might steal that idea for my back garden. I hadn't thought of that and I have plenty of spare 120W/170W panels that would function well for that. "Hold on, it's sunny, let me just plug in the garden table..."
I have looked into all kinds of mounts for fences and "balconies" (the mount work just as well for upright surfaces" but I hadn't thought of putting legs on a panel and turning it into a table, and maybe one that folds back against the wall in the winter.
Thanks for that. That's genius. And good luck with your projects.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday March 05, @12:49AM
Me too. Every five years or so my wooden outdoor tables have to be replaced. A solar panel and some legs will be cheaper than any wood or glass table. :)