Economic and environmental assessment of rooftops regarding suitability for photovoltaic systems installation based on remote sensing data

Abstract

Within the last few years, the increase of the world's energy consumption has substantially impacted the environment. Solar energy initiative is more than ever involved to tackle this issue, especially when deploying PV (photovoltaic) systems over large-scale residential areas. However, not all surfaces in these areas are economically suitable, while some surfaces have low CO2 mitigation. With the availability of high-resolution remote sensing data, the estimation of suitable rooftops for PV systems installation can be performed automatically by estimating the PV potential. This paper presents a novel method for estimating NPV (net present value) of the potential PV systems installed on rooftops by using LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data and PV systems' nonlinear efficiency characteristics. More importantly, the environmental impact is estimated for each rooftop through EPBT (energy payback time) and GGER (greenhouse gas emission rate), based on the life-cycle of a specific PV system. This is combined with NPV in order to find rooftops that are both economically and environmentally viable candidates for PV systems deployment. Results demonstrate a case study LiDAR data for predicting each building's economical and environmental impact, as well as providing an overall view of resulting cumulative CO2 mitigation over large residential area.