E leclerc seem to be doing it, Bergerac andvSt Astier have both done it, not seen others though. I think its great, your car is shaded when its hot and you are protected from the rain. Win win IMHO.
It is now planning law for new car parks over 1500m² to have at least half that area shaded by PV.
All info here…
Not only car parks
Super U at Nontron (24) has been covered for a long time but the real star is the lorry park of the Centre Routier at Maisons Blanches on the N10 at the turn off towards Niort. Obviously much higher than the normal ones to allow for the height of the lorries.
It’s certainly happening round here.
The local Super U doesn’t seem to be making any progress. It already has part of the car park covered, not sure if that makes it easier or harder to install solar panels.
I think they can be beautiful. I remember frequently cycling past a set in the hills above Fécamp.
Here, Carcassonne airport recently had a big expansion including two new large carparks covered in solar panels. Estimated annual power production is around 4GWh per annum (yes GWh). Here’s one of them, the smaller one. Not sure, but I think the new terminal building may also have solar panels
The Geant supermarket also has a large solar panel covered carpark, but neither of the two large Leclercs nor the large Carrefour has. The large new shopping centre, Rocadest, seems to have solar panels on it’s roof, but none over the car parks which is extremely disappointing. The hospital has loads of solar panels
Edit: Many communes here have solar farms, and our commune agreed to have one about 18 months ago after a consultation gave around 80% acceptance amongst the population. Its still in the early stages znd will take a few more years before its built. When the previous maire tried to get a wind farm in the commune, it was comprehensively rejected, twice.
And l’ve no doubt that there was disquiet about the noise made by the first windmills. That creaking is not the most attractive of sounds.
Possibly, but I suspect that at 50m distance an old windmill would not be intrusively audible, and it would also stop working when the miller finished for the day.
Takes me right back to Trumpton, ahh, Dusty Miller.
We called these things windmills at first, I understand that that is an error, but couldn’t they come up with something a bit more pronouncable, spellable and likeable?
…but an éolienne is at 500m minimum, maybe soon to be 1km.
That is massively coincidental with my own visit to Sellafield in the 80s - washed out for climbing in the lakes, went on a tour of Sellafield !
Windy Miller
But it was Camberwick Green, not Trumpton. Trumpton was the firemen Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb.
Which is my point. You can be close to a windmill and barely notice it. How far away do you have to be before a turbine is un-noticeable?
It’s not about being unnoticeable, because they’re not. Instead that aspect of the wider debate is whether or not they can be an interesting positive addition to a landscape. When electricity pylons first appeared in England many poets who celebrated this addition to the landscape.
These terrestrial locations are landscapes, already been heavily modified by man’s actions over millennia - they’re palimpsest that record many of modification and it’s an ongoing process. People don’t get as upset about the removal of thousand year old hedgerows as they do about temporary wind turbines, yet it may well be the latter leave that leave the least enduring trace of their presence.
And don’t get me started on the visual pollution and stink of oilseed rape…!
Yes, well, you’re a good bit closer to it than I am. Took me years to remember Grubb, could recite the rest of them off pat.
My first reaction to that is mildly unprintable. Lets just say that they aren’t things of beauty either, but like the turbines may be a necessary evil, but evil none the less.
Oh Joy, so do I,