Parking lot Solar Panels/Shade Structure

There are bollards every so often, presumably a safety requirement for the electrical infrastructure, and those take up a nonzero, albeit small, amount of space.

Shades:

Those usually do not reduce the amount of spaces.

At CP, said light posts are situated every 225-ish feet along each row east-to-west, and are separated by what looks like 10 rows north-to-south. So, they're incredibly sparse compared to solar structures' supports. It's probably a few thousand percent difference in terms of quantity.

It's not a huge, insurmountable deal obviously, I'm just pointing out that it's a nonzero amount of space that is sacrificed. And pointing at Legoland as an example, where the entire lot was rearranged from what looked like an inefficient arrangement of diagonal spaces to a more efficient one for the space, isn't a good comparison to what the impact would be at CP, where spaces are already quite dense.

All that said, I'd be in favor of it even if it reduced the number of spaces by a lot. But to say these installs take up no real estate I think is nonsensical.

djDaemon:

So, they're incredibly sparse compared to solar structures' supports.

Understood. But if a light pole does not result in the loss of any parking spaces it seems like that would be possible for the solar supports, regardless if there are more supports.

What I'm saying is that if light poles were as numerous as solar structure supports, there would be a loss of parking spaces. Maybe only a few per couple of acres or whatever, but it wouldn't be zero.

How many days during the season does Preferred Parking fill to capacity? The loss of spots could be taken from that area. Or remove the bus parking, allow only drop off, and make all busses park off site. There are ways they could gain parking spaces back if they needed to. The lot is already larger with the removal of the trees and grass at the back of the lot and the reconfiguration of the spaces in the SE corner of the lot. Heck, they could push the lot out over the beach for a lot more space.

But how will I find my car from Space Spiral?

What is that little tower in the parking lot for, anyway? It's long been our litmus test for how busy the park is on those early-season days.

I can tell you what we used it for, but this is a family-friendly site.
I think CP cops used it to keep an eye on the lot. And the trams. And the weather.

Having parked under the panels at Legoland, I can tell you, unequivocally, the supports do not reduce the number of parking spaces at all. If I had to guess, the supports are maybe 8x14", which easily fits in the cross where four spaces meet.

What changed there was the placement of disability spaces and hotel parking.

I have worked at 2 employers that had solar panels over the parking areas. There was no loss of parking spaces at all.

As I presently reside in the middle of nowhere Florida Panhandle I can tell y'all (panhandle drawl) that there are a few solar panel fields around here that are absolutely massive. Exponentially larger than the CP parking lot.

With that said, I'm wondering how much power is generally generated by, let's say a 3 acre field. If they want to start smaller, perhaps just the area near Gatekeeper, or Blue Streak, or the Water Park lot.Perhaps one reason not to install them would be that they would soon need removal for installation of the latest top secret mega giga diving spiking looping thing.

Disney has two solar plants on their property, and two off. The off-property bits cover about 1,000 acres, and between the all of them, they're covering close to half of their power needs. Since Florida allows net metering, that means they're likely over-producing for much of the day, then drawing from the grid at night.

Legoland's plant also just feeds the grid, but the generation would be enough to power their hotel, if I recall correctly.

I tried parking at Lego land. I couldn’t get out. I got Blocked in.

Jeff:

The off-property bits cover about 1,000 acres, and between the all of them, they're covering close to half of their power needs

Which is kinda crazy considering the amount of acreage they have to install more solar farms that could cover the rest of their needs and more. The large areas they are using now aren't even near anything a tourist would see from within the property either. Hardly noticeable as you drive past them on the 429.

The others aren't even in the same county. But that's the thing about generation, the more distributed it is, the more fault tolerant it is. People who poo poo renewables in general tend to think of generation and storage as a centralized endeavor, the way that old generation is. Obviously, not everyone can have a nuclear/coal/gas plant in their garage, but everyone can put solar on their roof. There are a lot of great neighborhood projects like this as well.

The one thing that could be lost capacity-wise, just for the benefit of reducing collisions with the structure, would be pull-through parking. The "front" parking spaces might need to be angled the other direction so that vehicles approaching from one end can park on either side of the aisle. But that need not reduce the total number of spaces, just the approach needed for filling them.

So, Jeff, since I can't fit either car into the garage, you think I should stick my steam engine in there and hook it to a generator and see what I can do?

(this isn't mine, but mine is at least similar, if not exactly the same)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Jeff:

Obviously, not everyone can have a nuclear/coal/gas plant in their garage

Now you tell me. You have ANY idea how long it takes to get enough Uranium 235 to go off grid?!?!?!

I have been stockpiling smoke detectors for that purpose.

I thought they already talked to you about building another reactor in the garden shed...

So, I am curious as to how solar panels of today differ from those that were made years ago. I know California had a lot of them hit the land fills as they were not able to be recycled. I would assume the tech has reached the point where this can be done?