Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery
With the growth of residential rooftop PV adoption in recent decades, the problem of effective layout design has become increasingly important in recent years. Although a number of automated methods have been introduced, these tend to rely on simplifying assumptions and heuristics to improve computa...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
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Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/148467 |
| _version_ | 1811073691751022592 |
|---|---|
| author | Awwad, Zeyad Alharbi, Abdulaziz Habib, Abdulelah H. de Weck, Olivier L. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Awwad, Zeyad Alharbi, Abdulaziz Habib, Abdulelah H. de Weck, Olivier L. |
| author_sort | Awwad, Zeyad |
| collection | MIT |
| description | With the growth of residential rooftop PV adoption in recent decades, the problem of effective layout design has become increasingly important in recent years. Although a number of automated methods have been introduced, these tend to rely on simplifying assumptions and heuristics to improve computational tractability. We demonstrate a fully automated layout design pipeline that attempts to solve a more general formulation with greater geometric flexibility that accounts for shading losses. Our approach generates rooftop areas from satellite imagery and uses MINLP optimization to select panel positions, azimuth angles and tilt angles on an individual basis rather than imposing any predefined layouts. Our results demonstrate that shading plays a critical role in automated rooftop PV optimization and significantly changes the resulting layouts. Additionally, they suggest that, although several common heuristics are often effective, they may not be universally suitable due to complications resulting from geometric restrictions and shading losses. Finally, we evaluate a few specific heuristics from the literature and propose a potential new rule of thumb that may help improve rooftop solar energy potential when shading effects are considered. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:37:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/148467 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:37:03Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1484672024-01-22T18:13:38Z Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery Awwad, Zeyad Alharbi, Abdulaziz Habib, Abdulelah H. de Weck, Olivier L. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics With the growth of residential rooftop PV adoption in recent decades, the problem of effective layout design has become increasingly important in recent years. Although a number of automated methods have been introduced, these tend to rely on simplifying assumptions and heuristics to improve computational tractability. We demonstrate a fully automated layout design pipeline that attempts to solve a more general formulation with greater geometric flexibility that accounts for shading losses. Our approach generates rooftop areas from satellite imagery and uses MINLP optimization to select panel positions, azimuth angles and tilt angles on an individual basis rather than imposing any predefined layouts. Our results demonstrate that shading plays a critical role in automated rooftop PV optimization and significantly changes the resulting layouts. Additionally, they suggest that, although several common heuristics are often effective, they may not be universally suitable due to complications resulting from geometric restrictions and shading losses. Finally, we evaluate a few specific heuristics from the literature and propose a potential new rule of thumb that may help improve rooftop solar energy potential when shading effects are considered. 2023-03-10T18:17:19Z 2023-03-10T18:17:19Z 2023-02-28 2023-03-10T14:01:47Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/148467 Remote Sensing 15 (5): 1356 (2023) PUBLISHER_CC http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs15051356 Creative Commons Attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| spellingShingle | Awwad, Zeyad Alharbi, Abdulaziz Habib, Abdulelah H. de Weck, Olivier L. Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery |
| title | Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery |
| title_full | Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery |
| title_fullStr | Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery |
| title_full_unstemmed | Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery |
| title_short | Site Assessment and Layout Optimization for Rooftop Solar Energy Generation in Worldview-3 Imagery |
| title_sort | site assessment and layout optimization for rooftop solar energy generation in worldview 3 imagery |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/148467 |
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