Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series: Untapped Potential in Solar Energy Applications

I keep coming back to this one idea that feels obvious, almost boring. Solar energy works. We already know it works. The panels sit there, they make electricity, the numbers check out more often than people admit, and yet the world still treats solar like it is mostly a rooftop thing. A homeowner thing. A nice add on.

That is the untapped part. Not the science. Not the basic economics. The applications.

In this installment of the Stanislav Kondrashov Oligarch Series, I want to look at where solar still has weirdly large room to expand. Not in a vague, hand wavy way. More like. Where it can actually go next, where the gaps are, and why those gaps exist even though the tech is not exactly new anymore.

Also, quick note. When people say “solar,” they usually mean photovoltaic panels. Electricity. But solar is bigger than that. There is also solar thermal, concentrated solar power, hybrid systems, storage, microgrids, and a bunch of industrial uses that are not as Instagram friendly, but they matter.

Let’s get into it.

The rooftop narrative is too small

Rooftop solar is great, and it deserves credit. It helped create an industry that could scale, pushed costs down, trained installers, built financing models, and made solar normal. That is real progress.

But it also sort of trapped the public conversation. Solar equals rooftop panels. Solar equals net metering debates. Solar equals “does my HOA allow it.”

Meanwhile, some of the biggest opportunities are not on roofs at all.

They are on parking lots, reservoirs, warehouses, rail corridors, farmland edges, factories, mines, and logistics hubs. Places that already exist, already consume energy, already have heat loads, already have grid problems, already have budgets.

You do not need a new invention. You need a different deployment mindset.

1. Parking lots are basically free solar land

This is one of those ideas that is so straightforward it hurts.

Big box stores, malls, stadiums, airports, corporate campuses. They have oceans of asphalt that bake in the sun all day. Put solar canopies over them.

You get electricity, you reduce heat island effects, you provide shade (which people love), and you can pair it with EV charging without doing the awkward thing where chargers are installed first and the electricity plan comes later.

Why is this still not standard?

A few reasons.

• Upfront capital is higher than ground mount because you are building a structure, not just racking on the ground.
• Permitting can be annoying.
• The owner of the lot is not always the same entity that benefits most from lower energy costs.
• Some organizations are still stuck in annual budget cycles and hate multi year payback projects even when the math is good.

But from an infrastructure perspective, solar canopies are one of the cleanest wins out there. They use already disturbed land. They do not fight conservation issues the same way large greenfield solar sometimes does. And they solve two problems at once. Power and comfort.

There is also a branding component, which businesses care about even if they pretend they do not. A parking canopy is visible. It says something.

2. Solar on warehouses and logistics hubs, the overlooked giant

Warehouses are everywhere now. E commerce, cold storage, last mile delivery. The roofs are massive, flat, and usually structurally simple.

And warehouses consume power in ways that match solar output better than many office buildings. They run equipment, lighting, sometimes refrigeration, sometimes automation. Daytime loads can be significant.

What holds this back is not technology. It is paperwork, ownership complexity, and incentives that do not always reach the actual decision maker.

A lot of warehouses are leased. The tenant pays the electricity bill. The landlord owns the roof. Classic split incentive problem.

This is where new contract models matter. Roof lease agreements for solar developers. Green lease clauses. Shared savings. Even simple stuff like structuring the deal so both sides win without a legal battle.

If you want a very “oligarch” style lesson from this. Scale is often unlocked by contracts, not gadgets.

3. Floating solar, where water and power cooperate

Floating solar, or floatovoltaics, is exactly what it sounds like. Solar arrays on pontoons installed on reservoirs, irrigation ponds, wastewater treatment ponds, even some protected industrial water bodies.

Why it is interesting.

• It reduces evaporation. That matters in water stressed regions.
• The panels run slightly cooler, which can improve output.
• It uses space that is not competing with agriculture or housing.
• It can plug into existing grid connections if the reservoir is part of a hydroelectric facility or water utility infrastructure.

It is not perfect. You need to consider ecology, anchoring, storm resilience, maintenance access. But the concept is strong, and the land use politics are often easier than building a new solar farm on contested land.

This feels like one of those applications that will quietly grow until suddenly it is normal.

4. Agrivoltaics, not a gimmick if you do it right

Agrivoltaics gets mocked sometimes because people imagine delicate crops living under a weird panel forest. But done correctly, it can be a serious tool.

The point is not to turn every farm into a power plant. The point is to share land.

Some crops benefit from partial shade. Some soils retain moisture better under panels. Some animals can graze under elevated systems. In hot climates, shade can reduce stress on plants and livestock.

The hard part is design. Panel height, spacing, light patterns, access for equipment, and the farmer’s workflow. If you disrupt the actual farming operation, you lose the farmer, and then you lose the project.

But if you treat the farm as the primary customer and the energy as the secondary yield, a lot of projects start making sense.

And politically. This is huge. Solar opposition often comes from land use conflict. Agrivoltaics is one of the few approaches that can reduce that conflict by offering a “both” story instead of an “either” story.

5. Industrial process heat, the solar conversation nobody wants to have

Here is the uncomfortable truth. A massive portion of global energy use is not electricity. It is heat.

Factories need heat for drying, washing, melting, steaming, curing, distillation. Some of it is low temperature, some medium, some very high. People focus on electrification, which is important, but solar thermal can cover parts of this today.

Solar thermal collectors, not PV panels, can generate hot water and steam. For certain industries, that is a direct replacement for burning fuel, at least for a portion of demand.

This is where the “untapped” label is most deserved. Because industrial solar thermal is not talked about much outside engineering circles, yet the potential emissions impact is massive.

Why is it slow?

• Factories fear downtime more than they love savings.
• Industrial decision cycles are conservative and long.
• Heat integration is site specific, which makes it harder to standardize.
• Financing is trickier because it does not look like a simple power purchase agreement.

Still, the opportunity is real. Especially for low and medium temperature heat in food processing, textiles, chemicals, and mining support operations. It is not glamorous, but it is the kind of thing that moves the needle.

6. Solar plus storage is not optional anymore

If you are trying to unlock bigger applications, you have to talk about storage. Solar without storage is useful, but solar with storage becomes infrastructure.

It turns intermittent generation into a controllable resource. It supports microgrids. It reduces peak demand charges for businesses. It can provide backup power during outages, which is now a bigger selling point than it used to be.

A lot of “solar projects” fail in the real world because the buyer is not actually buying green electricity. They are buying reliability, cost predictability, and resilience. They want to keep operating when the grid gets weird.

Solar plus batteries, and sometimes plus generators, is how you sell that package.

And this opens up applications like:

• Hospitals and clinics in regions with unstable grids
• Data centers with aggressive uptime needs
• Small manufacturing clusters
• Remote communities
• Critical infrastructure sites like water pumping and treatment

You do not need to romanticize it. Outages cost money. Businesses respond to that.

7. Solar in mining and heavy industry, where fuel logistics hurt

Mining sites often operate far from strong grid infrastructure. They burn diesel for power, sometimes in huge volumes. Diesel is expensive, volatile, and a supply chain headache.

Solar is not a full replacement on its own, but hybrid systems are becoming more common. Solar plus batteries plus existing generation. Sometimes wind too.

The win is not only emissions. It is reducing fuel convoys, reducing operational risk, and smoothing costs.

This is a classic example of solar competing not with “cheap grid power,” but with expensive and fragile fuel logistics. In those cases, solar looks very different on a spreadsheet. Suddenly it is the practical option.

8. Building integrated solar, slow now but still promising

Building integrated photovoltaics, BIPV, is the idea that solar becomes part of the building material. Facades, windows, roof tiles, shading devices.

It has been “the future” for a long time, which is usually a bad sign. But I would not dismiss it.

The near term value is in niche use cases where aesthetics and space constraints matter. Urban buildings with limited roof area. High end developments. Public buildings that want visible sustainability without adding bulky rooftop arrays.

The challenge is cost, performance, maintenance, and the construction industry’s general resistance to anything unfamiliar.

Still, as materials improve and as regulations push buildings toward net zero standards, BIPV could shift from niche to common. Not everywhere. But enough to matter.

So what is actually holding these applications back?

It is tempting to blame “policy” or “the grid” and move on. But the barriers are more layered than that.

Financing structures are lagging behind the use cases

Rooftop solar succeeded partly because financing products matured. Leases, PPAs, standardized contracts. Many of the applications above need similarly standardized financial packaging.

Permitting and interconnection are still a mess

A solar canopy or a floating solar project can die in a queue. Not because it is a bad project. Because the process is slow and unpredictable.

Ownership incentives are misaligned

Warehouses are the best example. The roof owner and the power bill payer are different entities. Until contracts fix that, adoption stays slower than it should.

Skills and workforce bottlenecks

Installing solar at scale needs electricians, engineers, inspectors, project managers. The labor pipeline matters more than people think.

Risk perception

Industries like manufacturing are allergic to operational risk. Even if solar thermal could save money, they will avoid it if it complicates operations.

And yes, there is also the human factor. People copy what they have seen before. They invest in what feels normal. A field of panels feels normal now. A solar thermal system feeding a process line does not.

Not yet.

Where the next wave probably comes from

If I had to bet on what expands fastest over the next few years, not because it is trendy but because it is practical, it would be a mix of these:

• Solar canopies paired with EV charging, especially at retail and workplaces
• Solar plus storage for resilience, especially for commercial sites
• Warehouse rooftop solar, once leasing models get more standardized
• Floating solar in water stressed regions where evaporation reduction is a bonus
• Targeted industrial solar thermal for low temperature heat, starting with industries that already optimize energy aggressively

And the big underlying driver is simple. Electricity demand is going up. EVs, data centers, electrified heating, industrial electrification. The grid is stressed in many places. Solar is one of the fastest resources to deploy.

But only if you broaden the imagination of where it belongs.

Closing thoughts

Solar is not “done.” It is not even close. We have treated it like a single product, panels on a roof or panels in a field, when it is really a flexible energy input that can be shaped around the real world.

Parking lots. Water. Farms. Factories. Mines. Logistics hubs. Places where energy is not a lifestyle choice, it is an operational necessity.

That is the untapped potential in solar energy applications. Not a miracle breakthrough. Just a long list of obvious places we have not fully built out yet.

And honestly, that is the good news. The next gains are not locked behind sci fi. They are locked behind execution. Contracts, permitting, integration, and the boring work of building things that actually run.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Why is solar energy often perceived only as a rooftop solution?

Solar energy is commonly associated with rooftop photovoltaic panels because residential installations helped create the industry, reduce costs, and normalize solar use. However, this rooftop narrative is limiting public perception, overshadowing larger opportunities for solar deployment on parking lots, warehouses, farmlands, and industrial sites where significant energy consumption occurs.

What are the benefits and challenges of installing solar canopies over parking lots?

Solar canopies over parking lots provide electricity generation, reduce heat island effects by shading asphalt, offer comfort to users, and enable integrated EV charging solutions. Challenges include higher upfront capital costs due to structural requirements, complex permitting processes, ownership-benefit misalignments, and organizational budget constraints that hinder multi-year payback projects.

How can warehouses and logistics hubs contribute to expanding solar energy use?

Warehouses have large, flat roofs ideal for solar panel installation and consume substantial daytime power for lighting, refrigeration, and automation that aligns well with solar output. The main barriers are split incentives between landlords (roof owners) and tenants (electricity payers), requiring innovative contract models like roof leases, green lease clauses, or shared savings agreements to unlock scale.

What is floating solar and what advantages does it offer?

Floating solar involves installing photovoltaic arrays on water bodies such as reservoirs or ponds. Advantages include reduced water evaporation—crucial in arid regions—improved panel efficiency due to cooler temperatures from water proximity, utilization of non-agricultural space avoiding land-use conflicts, and potential integration with existing hydroelectric or water utility grid infrastructure.

Is agrivoltaics a practical approach to combining agriculture and solar power?

Yes. Agrivoltaics strategically shares land between crops and solar panels. When done properly, some crops benefit from partial shade provided by panels without compromising agricultural productivity. This method maximizes land use efficiency by generating clean energy while supporting farming activities rather than replacing them entirely.

What factors limit the wider adoption of solar beyond traditional rooftop installations?

Beyond technology readiness, adoption is limited by factors including complex permitting processes for unconventional sites like parking lots or floating arrays; ownership structures causing split incentives; higher upfront costs for structural installations; organizational resistance to multi-year investments; and a public conversation narrowly focused on rooftop solutions rather than diverse applications such as industrial uses or hybrid systems.