Google Plants Solar Trees: What are Solar Trees? Well, think of the typical parking lot. Rows of parking slots for cars, and scattered around the lot are trees. The trees might be giving some benefit from shade, but what else? As much as I like trees, parking lots seem like an innapropriate place, because the trees aren't close enough together to form a forest, plus the parking lot blocks the rain from reaching their roots, etc.
Instead Google is launching a project to install solar panels in their parking lots. The panels are on structures that put the panels above the lots, providing shade, and capturing sunlight to make electricity. According to the article their parking lots (and some panels on rooftops) will provide enough space to provide 30 percent of the power requirements of Google's headquarters complex.
To give you an idea of how this would work, I invite you first to use maps.google.com to inspect some typical office complexes. Enter "N 1st St & W Montague Expy, San Jose, CA 95134 and click it to the hybrid map. This location is the heart of Silicon Valley but is typical of office complexes worldwide. What I want you to look at is the relative percentages of rooftop, building, and parking lots. There's a very high proportion of flat areas, either the parking lots or rooftops.
Solar panels in the parking lot would require a structure to be built, simply some poles and an open roofing, that can hold the panels safely above the cars. This is a simple engineering exercise to design. The tricky part would be orienting the panels for southward exposure, but again that's just engineering. Essentially this is a "carport" with the roof made by solar panels.
Google isn't designing this on their own, but is working with an engineering company Energy Innovations. I found this company but their site doesn't discuss the "Solar Tree" projects so I am not sure this is the right company.
Searching for "Solar Trees" I found the 'Solar Grove' project by Kyocera that provides a great picturing of the solar carport idea.
UPDATE December 20, 2006
TreeHugger: Google's Solar Trees Due To Bloom This Spring has more information including a link to the proper company.
Re: Solar power in the parking lot
In the not-too-distant future, we're extremely likely to see all sorts of solar panels installed in places that are regularly exposed to sunshine. With manufacturing costs for solar panels having come down to below $1 per watt, electricity generated from solar power is close to being competitive with other sources of energy in states with plenty of sunshine.
Since electric cars will soon start to revolutionize the automobile market, green and decentralized power generation makes even more sense.
California which is literally running out of liquid resources has great potential to lead the world in sustainable power generation and smart energy use.
http://www.whatmattersweblog.com/2009/02/28/california-running-out-of-water-and-cash/
Re: Solar power in the parking lot
I don't remember now what I knew at the time of writing this. However I live near enough Google's campus that I've been able to inspect the structures first-hand, and have also found similar installations at a public works compound in Palo Alto, and at a new parking garage in Mountain View.
Each are structures which hold solar panels above a parking lot. The panels are high enough to allow large trucks access to the lots. The panels do provide shade. And in the case of Google, some of the structures have power cords hanging from the 'roof' which you could pull down and plug into a car or other EV. Google has recently been promoting plug-in hybrid vehicles, and have put their money where their mouth is by providing a recharging station that could be used by a plug-in hybrid vehicle.
Post new comment