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Comment by minroot | Hacker News Reader

man, the parking lot! couldn't they make it underground?

Why? That would probably cost many multiples more than what exists above ground. I am guessing upstate New York and where this plant is located, is not incredibly dense.

I used to work there, and can confirm that there’s plenty of space there for more parking lot, there’s woods in all 4 directions and it sits on an old super fund site (former rocket fuel testing).

When I worked at Malta 5y ago, that parking lot was too small. If you didn't get in at an early hour, you were parking in the gravel lots that are off this picture to the right.

Combine that with the actual size of the Fab, hella lot of walking :)

As for solar panels, the Fab operates 24/7/364 (usually 1 downtime day a year). Which means even with the large amounts of snow that will build-up in the winter, there are always cars in the lot - clearing that is a big job and not sure how to do it with solar panels.

> Which means even with the large amounts of snow that will build-up in the winter, there are always cars in the lot - clearing that is a big job and not sure how to do it with solar panels.

I'm not sure how much sense it'll make in this specific case, but in general, interestingly, with a high albedo (e.g. snow covered or white for some other reason) ground surface, vertically mounted bifacial panels produce very close to equator facing panels with the appropriate tilt. The value of that generation might actually be greater, as it obviously spreads out the profile towards the evening peaks.

For the regular horizontal/tilted ground mounts, NY is quite far north, so you're looking at a mount angle of 43° or so to optimise overall power production, and you can go about 15° more tilt and only lose maybe 1 or 2% of summer production, but increase production in winter when the sun is angled lower. If you go for like 55° to 58° tilt, there's probably not going to be very much snow accumulating on the panels themselves.

Or at least put solar panels on top of it. Provides electricity and shades cars. It should be a norm.

It's the law in France over a certain size of parking lot, which is great.

Intel in Germany is even worse. The parking lot is larger than the plant [1]!

For fucks sake, large commercial (both office and industry) zones should only be permitted when the developers show a viable mass transit solution for their employees. Even if it's just buses, that's still better than thousands of cars.

[1] https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen-anhalt/magdeburg/magd...

Most office complexes have parking lots larger than buildings. People are smaller than cars, commute one person to car, and buildings are often multi story where parking is not.

Hence campuses that are 85% parking lot.

> Hence campuses that are 85% parking lot.

Yeah and that is nuts. We lose ridiculous amounts of valuable land for barely any productive use - every day Germany loses 39 ha for buildings and 8 ha for transportation infrastructure [1], which means streets and parking lots.

Loss of land is an externality that doesn't get priced in anywhere.

[1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/boden-flaeche/bodenbel...

Loss of land does get priced in as prices rise with a lower supply and higher demand. It just takes a while to really feel it.

I mean, they have to buy the land for the parking lot, so it does get priced in.

But we should also have a Land Value Tax to push people toward using it more productively.

The Land Value Tax on that site would still have been incredibly low and probably still justify paving a parking lot. It is a toxic superfund site way out in the boonies. You're not going to develop some kind of dense mixed use town center in that space anytime soon.

Look at Malta, NY on satellite view. Then tell me mass transit makes sense for that location. Tell me a few good bus routes that would actually make sense for people to take instead of driving their car.

Not every spot on Earth is a dense urban area.

There probably is mass transit access to the Magdeburg plant (or the state can guarantee an expansion there)

I'm thinking that "excess parking" is usually due to wanting to secure a site with enough expansion potential but also putting it to use in the most cheap way possible (like, you won't verticalize the parking until needed and that would require more planning, permits, etc)

No we definitely should not enforce a ridiculous regulation like that. Again people like you miss the entire point by thinking everything should exist only in big cities where public transportation makes sense. We need to bring these factories back to small towns and regulations like you’re proposing completely kill that.

> We need to bring these factories back to small towns and regulations like you’re proposing completely kill that.

For an Amazon parcel sorter or a wholesaler distribution facility, sure, there are enough towns with desperate populations that can be exploited (and Amazon in particular is infamous for using that leverage).

But a company like Intel that needs highly educated staff? They won't go to some random village hours away from civilization.

This regulation being proposed would not just effect fabs. I’m originally from southern Illinois, a place with a total of 300k people spread out over a large area. Most towns are <10k and the biggest is 40k. In this area there are a /ton/ of factories making everything from car parts and tires to books to bombs and artillery shells. Most of these factories are outside of towns and there is zero public transportation.

With this in mind do you see the problem with only allowing factories to be built in places accessible to public transportation? The people making such proposals are seriously out of touch with half of the country.

People who work at a wholesaler distribution facility don’t want the same lifestyle comforts as the highly educated? That’s a strange claim. I know lots of highly educated folks who love rural life, and blue collar workers who enjoy urban amenities.

Hours away from civilization? This example fab is 7mi from downtown Saratoga Springs, an absolutely delightful small town.

It is also <30mi from Albany and ~20mi from Troy.

Loads of small towns aren't hours away from "civilization".

Amazon builds warehouses where their customers are. That’s why they have a lot of warehouses in Red Hook, Brooklyn [1] - an industrial neighborhood located off of a major highway within NYC.

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/corporate-accountability/ama...

You should see the Jones Farm parking lots.

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