Posts tagged with PARKING GARAGES

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The Etiquette of Electric Car Ownership

By Felicity Barringer
A solar-powered electric charging station in Hamtramck, Mich. At some charging stations, plugs are not always so easy to come by -- unless you unplug someone else's car.. ReutersA solar-powered electric charging station in Hamtramck, Mich. At some charging stations, plugs are not always so easy to come by — unless you unplug someone else’s car.”
Green: Living

Imagine, for a minute, you pull into a gas station near your workplace in the morning with your gas warning light on and a long drive ahead of you after work. You drive toward the pumps hoping to fill up, but every one of them is occupied — and the drivers of all the other cars have wandered off to chat or buy something in the convenience store, so that every hose is in use.

Except that some of the cars’ tanks have filled up since they sauntered away.

Now, imagine that this isn’t a momentary situation but that the other drivers will not return for hours.

Do you:

(a) Resign yourself to not doing the drive after work?
(b) Go in search of the other drivers and ask to use their hoses?
(c) Take a hose out of someone else’s gas tank and put it in your own?

Welcome to the brave new world of electric car ownership, which can often mean encountering such a dilemma in places like Sacramento’s city hall parking garage, where the single row of charging spaces is nearly always full on weekdays — mostly with electric cars, but sometimes with what the electricati are calling “I.C.E.’s” (for internal combustion engines).
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The Parking Lot as ‘Solar Grove’

By John Collins Rudolf
A parking garage with photovoltaic panels at the University of California at San Diego.Envision Solar A parking garage with photovoltaic panels at the University of California at San Diego.
Green: Living

One day early in 2004, Robert Noble, an architect specializing in sustainable design, asked himself why parking lots in the United States weren’t covered in solar panels and used to generate clean energy. A few firms had been building carports with solar panels for some time, but none had acquired a major presence or branched out much beyond the residential market.

“Parking lots are this wasteland – they’re the last thing that gets attention,” Mr. Noble said in an interview. “Here’s a market the size of Alpha Centauri that’s never been tapped.”

In 2005, Mr. Noble founded Envision Solar, now the country’s leading developer of solar carports. The company’s signature product is “solar groves,” 1,000-square-foot canopies that shade parking lots while generating clean power from an array of photovoltaic panels.
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