Webinar - Solar Energy Assessment for Community Energy Planning

Q (Riccardo Battisti): What about assessments at wider level, e.g. Municipality or Region? Are the same tools you showed suitable and reliable?

A: The toolset presented is applicable at both regional and municipal level. We have conducted multiple projects applying the three-phase approach presented and mapping solar suitability and solar energy generation potential for communities and regions.

Q (Chris Gueymard): I'm mostly interested in your solar resource maps. How are they obtained? How do they compare to other maps?

A: Solar resource maps for historical solar climatology are based on the best available sources of surface meteorology and solar radiation data (including NASA, World Radiation Data Centre, National Climatic Data Centre etc.)

Current solar climatology/resource maps are based on satellite-derived solar radiation data collected using SolarSatData technology developed by Green Power Labs.

Q (Chris Gueymard): Have you publications about the models you use for the maps?

A: We have white papers describing our approach, data and tool set.

Q (Ian Rowberry): How long does this approach take? So many buildings will have no south-facing roof area, or will have no load demand nearby. Can you show that this approach is quicker than simply a site visit for each building?

A: Yes, definitely, if you talk about a community. It is not only quicker, but much more precise and provides you with a tangible answer on solar suitability of every building in the community. Depending on community, initial load/energy demand assessment may also not need a visit to specific building – for instance, in case of university campus its facility management team will have this information.

Q (Nickolai Parker): How long does a solar assessment of this scale take?

A: A community-scale project may take one to three months depending on the scale of the community (campus/town/city) and the amount of detail for individual buildings you need to go into.

Q (Leonard Phillips): Does assessment toolkit address potential PV value, as a function of conversion efficiency and installed system cost, if these parameters are known & can be entered into your model?

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q (Panagiotis Bakas): Your online tool is performing calculations only for the US?

A: Currently for North America but we are going to launch this service for other regions promptly – we have got many requests.

Q (Chris Gueymard): At this moment we have found large difference between such maps in the world. Would you be interested in comparing your results to other sources?

A: Yes, we would.

Q (Guillermo Soberon): Are solar assessment tools available for public use?

A: Currently only SolarRating Online.

Q (Manuel Fortes): Is there data available for Cabo Verde Island?

A: Green Power Labs have not mapped Cabo Verde Island but I am sure there is quality data available.

Q (Ian Rowberry): So is it more suitable for a ''planned-economy'' point of view? I wonder what kinds of communities or agencies will have the power to ''decide which technology to apply where'' when private building ownership issues must be taken into account?

A: There are various types of communities that can easily make this decision. University campuses is one example, municipal or other government properties is another. A distributed commercial chain (like for instance Empire Theatres in Atlantic Canada we did our solar assessment for) is also a typical example of a “community” where decisions can be easily made.

Q (Tom Byrne): what is the effect of snow on the output for solar energy and is that normally taken into account?

A: Properly engineered solar systems will experience a negligible impact of snow. Snow on the ground increases the amount of reflected radiation reaching the panels and thereby increases PV generation potential in vertically mounted panels.

Q (Barry Creamer): does your software apply to concentrated solar power, and are there any particular issues with measuring suitability of CSP?

A: Yes, our technologies specifically address the issues important for CSP/CPV deployment. There are at least three areas where our technologies are helpful:

- Using our high resolution solar mapping and comprehensive GIS knowledge base for project siting - a location with optimal DNI resource is critically important for utility-scale concentrating solar projects;

- Using our satellite-based solar resource monitoring toolset for perspective and retrospective monitoring of solar climatology with high temporal resolution at future projects sites;

- Using our satellite-based solar forecasting service for forecasting solar resource available and energy/power production of concentrating solar plants.

Q (Siddharth Honnihal): Whether solar passive architecture is considered?

A: Presented approach to solar suitability assessment is absolutely applicable to passive solar architecture; it helps to make passive solar energy capture and storage potential tangible.

Q (Chris Gueymard): When you do the shadow analysis, do you model the shadowing effect on the sky diffuse radiation?

A: Yes, absolutely. We consider losses in both direct and diffuse components.

Q (gs lee): Barring shading from new development adjacent to the site, how much does the solar mapping data for a given site and over changes from year to year. For example would the data change so much from year to year that data collected at the time of planning be invalidated by the time the building is completed?

A: The resource data collected at the time of planning though will have variations from year to year will still be absolutely valid by the time the building is completed.

Q (Siddharth Honnihal): Presenters, have you used any software or integrated/interfaced with any energy modeling software?

A: Our SolarSatData software is built as a plug-in to ArcGIS and is compatible with any models included in this package. It is also integrated with our own energy modeling software.