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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: 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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