A company is pitching the concept of deploying GPUs in parking lots powered by solar panels in a behind-the-meter-type arrangement.

Founded in 2023, Belgian startup Tonomia is working with UK hardware provider Panchaea to offer what its calling eCloud; a distributed AI platform housed in solar canopy systems in parking lots.

Solar panels in parking lots – known as canopy or carport solar – are often used to power electric vehicle charging ports. Tonomia is also looking to use the energy generated by these installations to power GPUs for its own cloud platform.

Tonomia suggests covering parking lots in Europe and the US with solar panels could help meet the growing energy needs of the grid, and that by adding IT hardware on-site that can be connected to one cloud, it would provide revenue opportunities to landlords and reduce strain on the grid.

The company aims to combine servers into its existing eParking Solar Modules alongside its lithium or sodium-ion battery systems. Tonomia says its canopies can generate 600W each in Europe and 750W in the US (due to the larger parking spaces).

The waste heat from these eParking clusters could also be used to heat nearby buildings, the company suggests.

Tonomia says it can offer GPUs from Nvidia and AMD via its partners SuperMicro, MITAC, or Panchaea. The configuration of each cluster is tailored to the specificities of our business model and AI factories setup.

“There are over 350 million surface parking spots in Europe. The vast majority of them sit empty 80 percent of the time,” Ben Baldieri, technical sales lead at Panchaea, said on LinkedIn this week. “Tonomia’s turning those lots into dual-purpose assets: solar carports + AI infrastructure nodes.”

He suggested each parking bay could generate up to 20kWh per day, which could translate to £8 ($10.74) per bay per day, based on GPU inference yields of £0.40 ($0.53) per kWh. Electric vehicle charging and grid demand-response could also generate additional revenue.

“It’s distributed, sustainable, sovereign compute, and it ticks all the boxes key stakeholders want,” he added: “Cities want low-visual-impact power; enterprises will want edge compute closer to the user; and regulators want low-carbon infrastructure with data residency built in.”

In an interview with Forbes France, Tonomia founder Mustapha Belhabib said the company developed the eCloud offering from its original eParking product after it was “approached by players in the artificial intelligence sector, interested in our ability to produce energy locally.”