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By Joe Edwards
There’s a lot of excitement on Kickstarter and Reddit surrounding ‘new products’ which are easy-to-assemble solar carports large enough to shelter one or two vehicles.
These Chinese-made units are prefabricated and considered innovative because of how they can be delivered in one truck and assembled with minimal construction. Now let’s remember JML Electric built a solar canopy ten years ago.
What is a Solar Carport?
Solar carports are shade-giving structures which collect the sun’s energy while recharging electric vehicles. They’re easy-to-assemble rigs which consumers can put anywhere, over their driveways or in a busy parking lots. Our achievement, as seen in these photos, shades eight cars and is more substantial than the rig being sold on Alibaba.
In terms of battling climate change, solar carports solve lots of problems, especially in commercial settings where they double the income and value of empty parking lots. Large flat black surfaces like parking lots are problematic because the asphalt paving is dense and absorbs intense amounts of heat on hot days. The material stores heat and then radiates it back into the air. The hot ground bakes parked cars and contributes to the urban heat island syndrome which increases evening temperatures in cities all over Canada. Additionally, the asphalt underfoot becomes hazardous in the winter when covered with ice and snow. Solar carports eliminate all those issues. At home, carports can have security cameras and alarm systems and play a dual role protecting vehicles from the elements and human thieves.
Solar Carport built for Baka Mobile
Embedded below is a ten-year-old time lapse video of JML Electric installing solar panels on Baka Mobile’s solar carport. This eight-car public access charging station was developed by renewz® sustainable solutions Inc. and combines equipment from Eaton Corporation and Giulio Barbieri S.p.A. of Italy.
We pioneered new installation procedures while completing this task, and we were excited for the future. But we haven’t had many orders in the ten years that followed.
Baka Communications Inc is one of the largest independent Bell Mobility dealers in Canada. They’re innovators who made the decision to go-green back in 2014 when they contracted JML Electric to build a solar canopy to recharge their fleet of electric vehicles.
Baka is based in Toronto, Ontario, serving customers out of four retail locations. They built this solar canopy to cover the parking lot at their head office. This building is also home to Fleet Freedom tracking solutions, provided by Trak IT Wireless Inc which also operates electric vehicles. A work destination for seventy people, this energy efficient head office is visible to thousands of daily commuters.
Solar Carports and Electric Vehicles Are Made for Each Other
Solar carports are the ideal places to install EV charging stations as these two technologies compliment each other. For the driver seeking a clean solution, solar energy represents the next logical step.
Taking this further, pairing solar power with EV charging stations reduces drivers’ demand on the electrical grid instead of increasing the burden. Additionally, government programs could package EV chargers and solar panels to more thoroughly subsidize the green transformation.
In summary, solar panel carports and EVs are made for each other.
