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Topic of the Week: Commercial rooftop PV (Part 3): Solar energy for company car park

As part of this week's Topic of the week, we will present a number of (we think) impressive or interesting large-scale rooftop solar installations. Today, we are looking at a company multi-storey car park that generates power from its roof:

The electricity generated by solar car parks is usually still fed into the public grid. Smart companies, on the other hand, will use the opportunity of self-consuming the solar power in the future, thus making themselves less dependent on outside electricity suppliers.
 
Heiko Frey of Goldbeck, the general contractor, and his team of architects, construction engineers, designers and master electricians design and plan around 50 multi-storey car parks a year. So far, three quarters of these are located in Germany, but the international demand from the UK, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland is increasing. The same applies to the demand for photovoltaic roofs, which are currently to be found in around ten percent of buildings.

Speaking of parking under solar modules:
https://www.pveurope.eu/News/E-Mobility/Solar-carports-with-fast-charging-stations

Getting a solar roof is particularly straightforward if clients make the decision in favour of it at an early stage in the planning process. "If we know before we start planning that a client wants a solar roof, we can take weight and wind loads into account right from the start," Frey explains. He is in charge of a team of 40 employees responsible for the planning of multi-storey car parks.
 
A staff car park
 
For example, at the employee car park of Sick AG in Waldkirch, the building was built from the ground up and fitted with solar panels. The system has an output of 375 kilowatts. The solar power generated in this way makes the building energy self-sufficient, and any surpluses will be used by the nearby production plant for sensors.

The employees thus have 1,160 new parking spaces at their disposal. The total investment was 6.8 million euros. The usable area of the six-storey building is 30,000 square metres, making this one of the largest multi-storey car parks in the region. (HS/mfo)

Here, in case you missed them, are Part 1 and Part 2 of this week's series. Tomorrow we will look at a logistics centre with a truely massive solar roof.