I like getting in a car that’s not roasting hot. One thing the companies and organizations are doing is installing solar canopies in parking lots. It’s what Tesla did in the lot over the row of superchargers at Gigafactory Texas. And those canopies give cars shade.
There are millions of acres / ares of parking lots where solar canopies can be installed, and serve the *three* purposes of power generation, charging and shading vehicles. I believe that the complaint that “”The EVs will overload the grid”” will be proved a baseless myth when solar canopies are installed over parking lots.
The researchers need to do a study to find out the factors which determine the usage factor for larger charging stations – how much solar generation capacity is needed for a moderately large charging site with 20 or more stalls. This is based on the average amount of kWhs needed for charging over a long period. The idea is the grid will source the fast charging needs, and over the daytime, the solar canopies will make up for it, thereby averaging out to a net demand of zero on the grid.
This would be a minimum. The site could have many more solar canopies and generate power for the grid. It could be part of a VPP – virtual power plant. Even better, the site could have BESS – battery energy storage systems. They would be charged during the daytime and supply power to the grid during the evenings.
The plan is to make the large charging sites self-sufficient and minimize the load on the grid. And with foresight to install additional solar, the canopies would be generating enough power to pay over time for the charging and canopies.
