The Rapid Rise of Solar Architecture Integration
Solar power is the key to America’s green energy future and independence. It provides an all-but-inexhaustible supply and can integrate into the built environment without requiring much, if any, additional land use.
The rapid rise of solar architecture integration is a natural response to arguments that such infrastructure is ugly and detracts from the surrounding area’s aesthetic. When done right, solar structures can lend beauty and value to unexpected places.
Improvements in Solar Architecture Integration
When many people picture solar architecture integration, they visualize rows of rooftop panels or fields filled with them. While such designs will continue to play roles in integrating solar architecture, technological advances are rapidly changing what’s possible.
1. Stronger Panels
Solar panels have increased efficiency by 10% in the past five years alone. Improved efficiency equates to smaller panels and less space necessary to generate the energy required to fuel homes, buildings, and electric cars.
2. Sun Tracking
Have you ever watched a sunflower over the day? Sun-tracking solar panels mimic their behavior, rotating to track the sun and improving efficiency by ensuring direct sunlight exposure for the maximum number of daily hours. This innovation minimizes land use needs for large solar installations, such as those that could power neighboring townhomes, condominiums, or apartment complexes.
3. Inverter Technology
Under fossil fuel energy models, power flows one way, from the generating station to consumers. That means a disruption in the system can knock out lights for millions, and sending powers over damaged lines is dangerous.
Inverter technology allows diverse power stations — multiple miniature “solar farms” — to supply power to the grid instead of a singular generating station.
Technicians can isolate the damaged area while they repair it. Meanwhile, the lights stay on, as this diversification allows for the distribution of excess energy collected elsewhere to locations that need it.
Methods of Solar Architecture Integration
Solar continues to increase in popularity in the United States. Experts predict that 45% of the nation’s energy will come from solar by 2050. That means architects, city planners and designers have work to do in creatively integrating solar architecture.
The nation needs power for multifamily dwellings, businesses, government buildings, and necessities like traffic lights. Building solar farms sufficient for the task would take enormous swaths of land. Fortunately, integrating solar architecture into structures people already use can supply the necessary juice. Here’s how.
1. Covered Parking
Few people complain about parking lots as eyesores like they do solar farms, but these huge swaths of asphalt and concrete cover much of the American landscape. Currently, they make climate change worse. These surfaces trap, retain, and absorb heat, raising surrounding area temperatures and contributing to urban heat islands.
However, covering lots with solar panels can provide shade and reduce temperatures while providing benefits, such as:
> A clean, renewable energy source for neighboring businesses.
> A potential revenue source in electric car charging while customers shop.
> Protecting staff and customer vehicles and health by preventing paint fading, dashboard cracking, and unhealthy temperatures upon entering the car.
> Added security, as such structures provide ample space for mounting LED lighting and cameras for nighttime surveillance and safety.
It isn’t only businesses that can take advantage. For example, many condominium developments already offer covered parking to tenants. Covering such rooftops with solar panels could provide complimentary EV charging — an attractive perk — and power common area amenities like pool pumps or fitness facility lights.
2. Covered Outdoor Seating
Well-meaning advice to “go outside and touch grass” rings hollow when merely sitting in the sun produces sweat and poses the risk of heat stroke. Climate change has extended extreme temperatures across increasingly longer seasons, making it difficult — if not downright dangerous — to reap the health benefits of spending time outdoors.
Covering parts of outdoor recreational areas with solar panels provides refuge from the sun. These structures can offer much-needed shade above picnic tables and pavilions or along pedestrian pathways. Covered outdoor areas can also increase after-hours security with lighting and cameras.
3. Covered Freeways and Bike Lanes
While the idea of covering a freeway with solar panels may sound futuristic, it exists. In South Korea, such a structure covers an enclosed bike path directly in the middle of a major traffic corridor.
Such innovations reduce the baking heat from the asphalt below. Additionally, they facilitate green transportation. Many people would commute by bicycle — if safe infrastructure enabled them. Redesigning the nation’s roadways while integrating solar architecture could revolutionize travel, facilitate exercise, and give a little more room to those who prefer not to commute by car.
4. Solar Windows
Downtown high rises often house office complexes, which contain various electronic equipment. Although solar windows aren’t yet as strong as standard photovoltaic panels, they provide enough juice to run computers and printers. Ports along window frames allow workers to plug in and enjoy an outdoor view.
5. Solar Outdoor Fixtures
You’re probably familiar with solar outdoor light fixtures such as fence posts and stakes to illuminate pathways. Today’s improved technology takes this idea to a new level. For example, some areas have begun integrating solar-powered traffic lights and street lights, reducing their city’s dependence on fossil fuels.
6. Solar Charging Stations
Even areas that don’t cover their entire parking lot in solar panels can raise revenue and slash emissions with solar charging stations. For example, several parks in Raleigh, NC, have installed portable stations that move between locations to let residents try them.
As such stations can be portable or fixed, they offer several potential revenue streams. Entrepreneurial sorts could invest in one and start a business providing portable charging to EV owners, especially those stranded. Communities and private owners with a bit of extra property space could install a fixed one and increase their profits by charging for use.
7. Community Gardens
Anyone who has tried raising plants in a hot region knows that too much sun can be worse than too little. However, a thoughtful integration of solar architecture around a community garden project provides the right balance of sun and shade. It can also offer the necessary juice to operate drip systems with plenty left to contribute to the larger grid.
Thoughtful Solar Architecture Integration
Solar power offers energy independence and a clean, reliable power source for the nation’s future. Mindfully integrating solar architecture into spaces already used by humans negates the need for large swaths of land for solar farms. It diversifies the grid, keeping everyone safer, and beautifies the surrounding environment while preserving it for future generations.
Jack Shaw is the senior editor of the men’s lifestyle magazine Modded and has written extensively about electric vehicles, sustainable practices, and maintaining a green lifestyle through your everyday actions. His writing can be found in Green Living Journal, Packaging Digest, EcoHotels, and more. Connect with him via his LinkedIn.