Capital area's parking lots can make solar power for all Korea's EVs: study

A public transit bus garage in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, has photovoltaic panels as canopies that are capable of generating 820 kilowatts of power. Suwon City and the city's solar power social cooperative jointly introduced the panels in October 2021. Courtesy of the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements

Gov't neglects locally available space for producing renewable energy, environmentalist group shows

By Ko Dong-hwan

If most of the existing large outdoor public parking lots in the capital region of Korea had photovoltaic panels installed, their output would be more than enough to operate all electric vehicles in the country, a recent study by an environmental activist group has found.

If photovoltaic panels were installed at 282 large outdoor parking lots across Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, they would have a capacity of 317.7 gigawatts (GW) in total, according to the Seoul branch of the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements (KFEM), Tuesday. This amount is equivalent to 417.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, or 1.4 times the 300 GWh needed to run the 146,000 EVs used in the country as of 2020, as estimated by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Outdoor parking lots are one of the most ideal locations for photovoltaic panels, according to Seoul KFEM: they require no additional site adjustment for installation; power can be directly transferred to vehicles on site; and they offer shade from strong sunlight, while raising public awareness.

Seoul KFEM counted 125,841 parking spots for both regular-sized and large-sized vehicles across 282 biggest parking lots in the capital region, with their overall area calculated as over 1.9 million square meters. Based on comparisons of the total power capacity of existing photovoltaic panels and the size of outdoor parking lots where the panels are installed, the total power capacity feasible from the parking lots is 317.7 GW.

The environmental alliance short-listed the parking lots to calculate by excluding those already equipped with photovoltaic panels, those that are located underground or too small in size.

Electric vehicles are being recharged in a parking lot at the Guro District Office in southwestern Seoul. Solar panels above the vehicles, which the district office installed in 2019, can generate 15 kilowatts of power. Courtesy of the Seoul office of the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements

The environmental alliance's analysis showed that Incheon International Airport's parking lots had the highest potential power capacity in the capital region with 21,205 kilowatts (kW). Kintex, a mega-scale exhibition center in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, had the second-highest potential capacity in the region with 15,421 kW, followed by Seoul Grand Park in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, with 13,783 kW.

Incheon airport has five outdoor parking lots around its two terminals. The airport currently operates 19 solar farms with a total capacity of 10,497 kW. It plans to expand the total capacity to 15 megawatts (MW) by 2025, according to Seoul KFEM. But the activists argue that the airport authority should be more aggressive in taking advantage of the massive amount of solar rays hitting its vast area.

"Incheon airport, for the first time among airports in Asian countries, has announced it will join the RE100 movement and use solar and geothermal power to run itself 100 percent by 2040," said Lee Woo-ri, chief of the Climate Energy Team inside Seoul KFEM. "But despite the goal, areas inside the airport now installed with photovoltaic panels account for only a very tiny proportion. There are many instances of photovoltaic panels installed on canopies in outdoor parking lots at airports in the U.S. and Europe. And there were no reports of inconveniences from the panels so far."

Most of the parking lots without photovoltaic panels were for parks, constituting an overall potential power output capacity of 82,163 kW, or 25 percent of the entire potential capacity. Public parking lots followed next, providing 51,850 kW of the overall potential capacity, while public transit garages and terminals for buses and freight trucks came in third, offering an overall potential capacity of 50,356 kW. Stadiums, airports, exhibition centers, megastores and metro stations also had extensive areas of outdoor parking lots good for photovoltaic panels.

Seoul KFEM has also found that more than 80 percent of the 282 outdoor parking lots were owned by local governments and public corporations, while the others were in private hands.

Activists from the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements' Seoul Office present their study at the group's headquarters in downtown Seoul, Aug. 23, which shows that more outdoor parking lots should be equipped with solar panels as they can provide enough power for all the electric vehicles in the country. Courtesy of the Seoul Office of the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements

"Many local governments have already announced they will utilize existing outdoor parking lots under their control to expand their use of solar power," Lee said. "But the latest study has revealed that despite having a pretty large amount of available space, the authorities haven't installed photovoltaic panels there yet. It led us to conclude that local governments and public corporations haven't realized or aren't willing enough to resolve the problem yet. The solution also requires support from more robust policies that now obviously fall short of their commitment to RE100."

The activists claimed that to encourage the installation of more photovoltaic panels at outdoor parking lots, they should be made mandatory through a revision to Seoul's Green Structures Design Standards. They also proposed more local residents get involved in businesses installing photovoltaic panels in their neighborhoods so that they can share the financial benefits.

"Solar and wind power account for only 4.7 percent of the country's overall energy mix, less than the global average of 10 percent," Lee said. "Particularly in the capital region where power consumption is high, solar and wind power supply only 0.1 percent of the energy mix in Seoul, 0.7 percent in Incheon and 0.8 percent in Gyeonggi Province."

In 2020, Seoul generated 187 MW with solar power, while Incheon generated 164 MW and Gyeonggi 1,289 MW, according to the Korea Energy Agency, a state-run corporation. In 2021, Seoul announced its goal to produce 500 MW of solar energy by the end of this year. Incheon, in 2019, announced that its solar energy capacity would reach 140 MW by 2020 and 750 MW by 2030. Gyeonggi Province set a goal to generate 5 GW from solar power by 2030. Only Incheon has reached its mid-term goal.