Mapping Solar Potential of Tartu
Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
As the photovoltaic (PV) systems become more and more popular and developed there
also grows the need for tools that would help to estimate the usability and impact of
such systems on a larger scale. The use case addressed in this work is estimation of
solar energy production on the city scale. This information could help city governments
to easier find ways to increase solar energy production and, hence, improve energy
efficiency of their city. Such information could be obtained by analyzing the rooftops of
the building in the city and, luckily, datasets with detailed city geometry for Estonian
cities are publicly available. With regards to photovoltaic systems, the datasets mentioned
above can be used as a starting point to analyze the roofs, extracting the attributes such
as area, tilt and location for further processing. In this work the author aimed to create
a solution that would allow to estimate the amount of solar power produced by Tartu
or any other Estonian city present in the dataset given by Estonian Land Board. As a
result, author has created a prototype consisting of a processing pipeline that does the
analysis of geometry and estimation of solar power, as well as a web app to visualize
the results. Considering previous work, there have been similar studies which are either
not publicly available, not suitable or outdated. The solution described in this work
uses the latest technology and no paid external services. Additionally, it’s designed to
work with Estonian data out of the box which was not possible to use with some of the
existing tools. Hopefully the developed tool will be further improved and used by local
governments to improve the energy efficiency in various cities of Estonia.
Description
Keywords
Solar Panel, Solar Potential Estimation, Smart City