U.K. District Gets Solar Parking Meters
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA 
on 09. 5.07
Photo credit: sampanalbum
More than 50 new parking meters are being installed in the Mendip District of Somerset in southwest England—and half of them will be solar powered.
The meters are part of a £170,000 investment by the local council after vociferous public demand for more user-friendly machines. (Some of the current parking meters are a good two decades old.)
Britain's first solar-powered meters were installed in Nottingham in 2001, but the machines were plagued by gloomy weather, which often resulted in drivers getting away with free parking. Yay, technology! ::BBC News and ::The Telegraph
See also: ::Seen In New York: Solar Powered Parking Meters
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Solar powered parking meters are fairly common in Germany and the Netherlands. Main reason is that in a lot of cases laying cables in the urban environment is more expensive than integrating a PV-panel. in the parking meter.
Problems like in Nottingham are a result of bad design (PV-panel or battery to small) or bad installation (in the Netherlands I have seen PV-panels facing North or facing walls). They should be prevented because a few beginners mistakes gives the technology a bad image for decades to come.
OK, maybe I'm just silly in the head, but what's wrong with the venerable old mechanical meter which still serves us well in most of our cities?
This is the most stupid, useless, pointless situation for integrating solar photovoltaics. As mentioned before, what's wrong with the old mechanical meter? And what is the payback period for a solar panel on a parking meter collection perhaps $0.50 per hour? And aren't there an infinite number of better uses for PVs?
How does the mechanical meter power the LCDs?
Some of the electronic meters (grid and solar powered) I have seen are a big improvement over a simple mechanical meter. One I used was at a beach where one meter was used per 50 spaces because you entered your parking space number. Some can make change, and some even can except credit cards, or monthly pass cards for frequent parkers.
We've had these in Copenhagen for some months now, except they're not meters, but solar-powereed parking fee machines. You pay - either with a credit card or with coins - and you get a printed ticket for you car window. Easy peasy not only for users but for the city too, because they didn't have to pay for expensive digging and cables for the machines to work with credit cards - the connection is wireless and there are no cables anywhere. It's genius, and I've never had or heard of any problems with them. Yay Cph!
I think its slightly erroneous to say that solar meters in the UK have been 'plagued by gloomy weather, which often resulted in drivers getting away with free parking'. Glasgow for one has had fully functioning solar powered meters since at least 2001, and I guarantee that I have not once had any free parking in Glasgow!
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Reread the sentence; I was referring specifically to Nottingham.