GeoCommunity Live

Start date: 21 September 2011
End date: 22 September 2011
Location: East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham

Antony Scott, Senior Associate at Sustain will be speaking on Assessing Solar PV Potential for Social Landlords on Day One of the AGI GeoCommunity Live Conference.

Full details of the conference can be found here.

Safeguarding our future: Solar PV Analysis for Social Landlords
This paper describes a service to provide building-level assessments of solar energy potential for social housing landlords, supporting the development of a business case for solar PV, taking advantage of the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) provisions, and providing an installation list to drive implementation.

Solar energy potential is calculated from high resolution aerial photography and stereophotogrammetry. The usable roof surface is digitised, potential shadowing assessed, and aspect and gradient estimated. Roof polygons are then analysed to determine the maximum number of solar PV panels or tiles that can be fitted.

This output dataset is analysed to derive solar irradiation data for each roof, taking into account location, properties and size, and the final deliverables include estimates of electricity savings for tenants and reduction in emissions, providing evidence and costings for the impact on fuel poverty and carbon reduction.

Two data layers are produced: one representing roofs considered suitable for solar PV, and a second showing installed panels. Where landlords do not have a GIS capability, the data can be delivered as a database, and in a secure web-based mapping interface. Data is shown at the individual roof level and aggregated to appropriate higher levels of geography, and embedded graphics in pop-ups provide a quick visualisation of solar energy potential. Web delivery uses an open source toolset, and allows additional map layers, such as area-based fuel poverty statistics, to be included where appropriate.

The paper will describe the methodology in detail, and will demonstrate the application in use with a case study. The full paper can be found here.