Parking a car at Pearlridge Center could become a cooler experience for shoppers.

Oahu’s second-largest mall is exploring the feasibility of installing photovoltaic solar panels over uncovered parking stalls on the 45-acre property.

The plan is to generate electricity at a long-term stable price for mall tenants, and provide more shaded parking for patrons.

About half of the roughly 6,000 parking spaces at Pearlridge are uncovered.

Fred Paine, Pearlridge general manager, said shaded parking spaces at the mall typically fill up first, so added cover from the hot sun for nearly all parking spaces would be a tremendous customer benefit.

"Providing shaded parking would be fantastic," he said. "It’s something really desired in Hawaii."

The plan is in an early stage of exploration, with three photovoltaic consultants examining the property to see whether such a system is feasible.

Paine said PV power is a focus of Glimcher Realty Trust, the Ohio-based mall owner that bought Pearlridge last year with financial partner Blackstone Group LP. Glimcher in January began a project covering New Jersey’s largest outlet mall, Jersey Gardens, with a 4.8-megawatt PV system satisfying 11 percent of the property’s electricity need.

Covering the 1.3 million-square-foot mall’s rooftop with solar panels makes that system one of the largest single-rooftop PV systems in North America, according to Glimcher.

Paine said Glimcher decided to consider Pearlridge, which has 1.1 million square feet of retail space, for the company’s second mall PV system.

There was, however, a design challenge. Rooftop setups are typical for PV systems on commercial and residential buildings. But mall rooftops at Pearlridge are covered with parking, except for the Macy’s store on which the retailer already installed a PV system.

"The challenge for Pearlridge is we don’t have any roof," Paine said. "It’s all parking."

Canopies of PV panels over parking appears to be a growing trend in alternate design.

An affiliate of Chevron Corp. installed a 414-kilowatt PV system over 177 parking spaces earlier this year at Oceanic Time Warner’s headquarters in Mililani. A 280-kilowatt parking canopy also exists at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa.

If a PV system proves feasible for Pearlridge, it could become the biggest or one of the biggest in the state covering an existing business.

In 2009, an 803-kilowatt project topping a 130,000-square-foot piece of the Kona Commons shopping center on Hawaii island became what the property owner said was the state’s largest rooftop solar project.

Several larger solar farms, or collections of PV panels on undeveloped land, exist or are in the works in Hawaii and typically range from 1 to 5 megawatts.