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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.
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(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...
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(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.
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(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.
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(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%.
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