But there aren't enough roofs to begin with in the Netherlands and probably large parts of Europe. So seeking alternative places for solar panels before all the roofs are used is a good strategy.
Come on, not true. Most residential homes dont have a solar panel.
Most rental houses dont have a solar panel, and there isnt even an incentive to place one, cause the feed in rate is low, and landlords dont care about the cost of living.
That is a big urban myth. In Europe it doesn't work that way. One of the reasons is that government handouts aren't allowed by the EU. I've worked at a research institute and several smaller companies and I'm well aware of how government funding works (several projects I currently work on receive government funding). As I explained before the funding comes from tax cuts and discounts to have research done at a research institute but before you can take advantage of a tax cut or to get a discount you have to spend money.
That's exacly how it works, seen it in real life. My previous in Belgium, 3/4 of my salary came from the goverment, i was doing "research"for renewable energy. It was a bunch of unpractical projects and it was driven by a lot of wannabe managers. A lot of money is wasted on this. These are typical, small scale projects that set a large target. I was working on one, where the target was to reduce the nation's energy usage by up to 3% (!!!). That's several power plants worth, so they dump millions of EUR in it.
So here are the ways the project could work: Let's schedule the usage of power, when the sun is shining.
Step 1: We only need to find the right appliances that can be controlled and started on wish.
Step 2: We need to define a communication protocol and devices that can control the appliances.
Step 3: We need to convince people to turn on the lights only when the sun is shining. Or to watch TV only during the day.
Renewable energy is great, but these projects are a waste of a good opportunity. The "We have to try everything" is a bad bad bad argument. We have to try things that make sense, and concentrate our efforts on those. P2G, molten salt storage, off shore, and so on.
That 3.5 MEUR that was spent on the stupid SolaRoad, could have been spent as:
- 3500 homes, receiving 100 EUR each year as incentive for installing a new solar panel. About 35MH capacity added to the grid. Generates 1MWh in 2.5 minutes when the sun is shining.
- Or, spend it on a cycle way, generated 1MWh energy over an entire year.