Our energy-generating plants are often remote, large and centralized. This leaves them open as easy targets in a terrorist attack. It also necessitates long-distance wires and other infrastructure as support. The areas where they are placed, whether at San Onofre or Del Diablo Atomic Generating station or Mojave solar collectors, are often environmentally sensitive lands that could be put to better public uses.
We have many local areas that would be ideal for solar panel electric generation in a decentralized way without disturbing remote, often environmentally sensitive lands. Our public and semi-public parking lots beg for shade in the summer. They are spread out all over our neighborhoods, close to electrical end-use, yet dispersed and decentralized to avoid large-scale exposure to terrorism.
Temperatures in our black-top parking lots for shopping centers, Park and Rides, work and recreational areas often soar in the summer months to the point we remind folks not to leave animals or children in cars that could bake them. Using these parking lots to generate electricity by suspending solar panels above and between lighting poles in these lots would create partial shade, generate electricity that could be fed into the general use grid and save on air conditioning costs and energy in adjacent stores and buildings because of the lower parking lot temperatures.
Right now, we encourage private groups, whether home-owners, businesses or stores, to generate energy on their own, at their own cost, for some tax breaks and energy cost swapping, when they generate enough to give excess to the general-use grid. We should be taking a more general approach. Electric generating companies could more easily invest in these parking-lot solar generators, give a small discount for electricity used to the landowner and have full use of the balance of the electricity, control of the production and access for repairs and maintenance.
A good plan would be to use lightweight, strong metal to arch the solar collectors overhead, above and supported by the present lighting systems in parking lots. This would cause minimum interruption of public or private use of the lot and keep construction costs low. There would be a need for engineering that would protect property owners by ensuring that occasional high winds with gusts would not jeopardize the structures. But I think the engineering problems could be easily worked out, if attention to that aspect was made part of the plan.
Once the general method was established, cookie-cutter structures on all nearby parking lots would be quick to accomplish. Decentralized energy generations would be a security plus. Shade and lower air conditioning use would add to the worth. Financial focus could be on upgrading degenerating infrastructure for wires/underground electric transfer in our towns and cities instead of letting them rot while long-distance high tension wires are strung across parks, such as was recently proposed in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, to accommodate remote and out-of-country electrical transfer. The electric companies would keep control of energy generation and gain credits for green energy without huge delays for large plants.
If, on the other hand, it’s left to individual homeowners and businesses to provide the green energy while electric companies hold huge, pollution-producing plants, it will drain utility income each time an individual takes generating electricity into their own hands. Would it not make more sense for the electric companies to retain ownership of dispersed electrical generating locations?
” Ellen Feeney is a resident of Mira Mesa.