Abstract
A basic feature of modern and smart cities is their energetic sustainability, using clean and renewable energies and, therefore, reducing the carbon emissions, especially in large cities. Solar energy is one of the most important renewable energy sources, being more significant in sunny climate areas such as the South of Europe. However, the installation of solar panels should be carried out carefully, being necessary to collect information about building roofs, regarding its surface and orientation. This paper proposes a methodology aiming to automatically parametrize building roofs employing point cloud data from an Aerial Laser Scanner (ALS) source. This parametrization consists of extracting not only the area and orientation of the roofs in an urban environment, but also of studying the shading of the roofs, given a date and time of the day. This methodology has been validated using 3D point cloud data of the city of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), achieving roof area measurement errors in the range of ±3%, showing that even low-density ALS data can be useful in order to carry out further analysis with energetic perspective.
Highlights
Nowadays, buildings are responsible of the 36% of CO2 emissions and 40% of the energy consumption in the European Union (EU), according to the European Commission
Photovoltaic solar energy is widely used in urban environments, as it is a clean and silent source of energy, and it accounted for a 11.6% of the total quantity of electricity generated from renewable energy sources in the EU—that is, 28 countries in 2016 [2]
This work is entirely focused on the first step and its connection with the second, as identifying which areas are suitable for the use of solar energy is essential for the determination of the solar potential [4], meaning that it is necessary to measure position, size, inclination and azimuth of the areas of installation of solar panels, which, in an urban environment, are typically the roofs of the buildings
Summary
Buildings are responsible of the 36% of CO2 emissions and 40% of the energy consumption in the European Union (EU), according to the European Commission. That is why the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive [1] is aiming at nearly zero-energy standards, requiring all public buildings to satisfy this energetic efficiency by 2018 and all buildings by the end of 2020. This work is entirely focused on the first step and its connection with the second, as identifying which areas are suitable for the use of solar energy is essential for the determination of the solar potential [4], meaning that it is necessary to measure position, size, inclination and azimuth of the areas of installation of solar panels, which, in an urban environment, are typically the roofs of the buildings
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