Solar roofs on big boxes
The Porter Square strip mall has a strip of solar panels along the facade, but as shown in that Google Maps aerial view, most of the roof is not covered with solar panels.
What if it was covered with solar panels? Rough measurement from that map says the roof is roughly a rectangle 600ft by 87ft. Wider in some places, probably obstructed in others, I'll go with that and say its 52200 sq ft. Multiply that by the cosine of 40 degrees to account for the amonut of roof shaded by a tilted panel. 39987. There's a rather economical Kyocera KD235GX panel which puts out 13.35 watts per square foot. (13 * 39987) = 519831 watts of peak power. Half a megawatt! I heard on the radio that the biggest solar installation in Massachussetts is two-point-something megawatts.
With big flat roofs like these covered in solar we could have substantial generation in our cities. No transmission losses. No new transmission capacity to build. I think the economics for it are almost here, and they would be if we taxed pollution properly.
(yeah, I posted about that solar facade in Porter square before)
What if it was covered with solar panels? Rough measurement from that map says the roof is roughly a rectangle 600ft by 87ft. Wider in some places, probably obstructed in others, I'll go with that and say its 52200 sq ft. Multiply that by the cosine of 40 degrees to account for the amonut of roof shaded by a tilted panel. 39987. There's a rather economical Kyocera KD235GX panel which puts out 13.35 watts per square foot. (13 * 39987) = 519831 watts of peak power. Half a megawatt! I heard on the radio that the biggest solar installation in Massachussetts is two-point-something megawatts.
With big flat roofs like these covered in solar we could have substantial generation in our cities. No transmission losses. No new transmission capacity to build. I think the economics for it are almost here, and they would be if we taxed pollution properly.
(yeah, I posted about that solar facade in Porter square before)