“With electricity prices currently still elevated, many businesses are turning to on-site renewables to try to keep costs down in the long run.”
An interesting article by the BBC on how the UK should be making the most out of its existing infrastructure to develop new solar energy sources.
Car parks are being widely adopted across the continent for solar installations, but rollout in the UK has been much slower despite ambitious net zero targets. The UK currently has c.15GW of solar capacity in total and requires 40GW by 2030 to meet net zero targets, according to Solar Energy UK.
“Where we can co-locate solar photovoltaics alongside infrastructure that would be there anyway, like a car park, it enables us to get double use out of the land surface,” says Sara Walker from Newcastle University.
The steel supports required for many solar canopies do add to the cost, and evidence shows is often cheaper to simply put solar panels on the roof of large buildings, such as supermarkets. Something which ROOF is developing with Tesco.
It is estimated that rooftop solar results in electricity costing about 9p per kWh currently, versus 14p or 15p per kWh from panels in car parks.
At Atrato Onsite Energy, we welcome large scale commercial carport projects and can support owners and tenants with competitive financing.
