At a similar latitude to yours, northern California’s major hospital chain has been (slowly) solar-roofing its many parking lots since 2008. They claim to provide circa 50% of each site’s power. I’ve noticed a few tech-biz campuses with such solar parking around greater Sacramento, which doesn’t always boast clear skies.
Your taxes pay for much more and much worse shit than this.
By gummit, we’ll have solar panels on the moon before I stand to see my tax dollars go to paving roads with solar panels on Earth!
And lest anyone think I’m mocking posters who have expressed doubt about the NASA parking lot initiative, I actually would rather see my tax dollars going to put solar panels (and other things associated with economic development) on the moon than to projects on Earth that are not economically viable.
When the moon starts to pay off, it’ll pay off big. It’s just a question of to whom, and when.
I also mentioned the F word, which is a key component to solar’s difficulty providing a reasonable ROI on the east coast. I don’t know what the fracking situation is in Cali, but here in Ohio it’s rampant. Natural gas is cheap, and therefore my grid electricity is cheap. Solar is a tough sell.
That’s not to say there aren’t solar projects here, but they’re generally PR or environmentally driven, not financially motivated.
