What is the solar potential of buildings at city-scale?
City-scale evaluation of buildings’ PV potential is essential to target efforts. Here, we show how accounting for vegetation and weather variability highly affects the results of the evaluation.
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Solar cadastres, or solar maps, are tools to provide decision-makers with information about the suit-ability of a given building surface for the installation of solar power systems, such as photovoltaic or solar thermal. There is currently a gap between detailed simulation tools for single solar installations and those used in large-scale analyses, such as solar cadastres. The latter are usually based on sim-plified solar radiation tools and provide time-cumulated results and up to the building surface.
This work aimed at pushing the boundaries of the analysis in terms of granularity, using state-of-the-art solar radiation and PV performance models, advanced 3D geo-data and weather measurements recorded over lengthy periods of time. In particular, the developed simulation workflow took ad-vantage of the high-resolution 3D point clouds from airborne laser scanning and 3D city models that are widely available in Switzerland, through the Confederation and many cantons.
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An interactive 3D map indicates the priority level of energy refurbishments and/or PV installations in buildings at different spatial aggregation scales (e.g. building surface, building, urban block) expressed as a solar score. It is then possible to easily detect which spatial locations would benefit most from a solar installation and a retrofit intervention. This could help local authorities to target investments where they are most needed, as well as large building owners to prioritize the refurbishment of their building stock.