3D Model for Solar Energy Potential on Buildings from Urban LiDAR Data

One of the most promising sustainable energy that can be considered in urban environment is solar energy. A 3D model for solar energy potential on building envelope based on urban LiDAR data was developed in this study. The developed algorithm can be used to model solar irradiation with high spatio-temporal resolution for roofs, facades, and ground surfaces simultaneously based on urban LiDAR data taking into account the vegetation. Global solar irradiation was then obtained for each point on the buildings and ground surfaces with a spatial resolution of 1m2 and a time resolution of 1 hour. The algorithm has been implemented in Matlab and the results were generated for two different test areas in the city of Geneva in Switzerland. The results show that even in a dense urban area, the upper parts of south-east to south-west oriented facades receive 600 to 1000 kWh/m2/year of solar input which is suitable for active solar installations. The results also show that south oriented facades can get higher solar input during winter months than the low inclined roof surfaces. This shows facades have a significant impact on the solar potential of buildings in an urban area, particularly for a sustainable energy planning application.

A machine learning methodology for estimating roof-top photovoltaic solar energy potential in Switzerland

Dan Assouline, Nahid Mohajeri Pour Rayeni, Jean-Louis Scartezzini

Solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment on existing building roof-tops has proven to be one of the most viable large scale resources of sustainable energy for urban areas. While there have been many studies on roof-top integrated PV systems at building and neighborhood scale, estimating the PV energy potential through the available roof surface area in large scale, however, remains a challenge. This study proposes a methodology to estimate the roof-top solar PV potential for existing buildings at the commune level (the smallest administrative division) in Switzerland. In addition, while several studies suggest physical models to assess the photovoltaic solar energy potential, the current study proposes a computational data-based learning approach, using the following four steps: (1) monthly estimation of the main solar irradiance components (global horizontal, direct normal, diffuse horizontal) for the entire Switzerland, that is, the total amount of solar energy available from the Sun (2) processing of training and testing population and building data at a commune level, (3) estimation of the available roof-top surface (AR), average roof tilted angle (), and average shading coeffcient (S) for buildings in the urban areas, for each commune, (4) combination of the available roof-top surface area for each commune with the solar potential along with other parameters so as to estimate the actual solar PV potential. The first step is achieved through a Support Vector Regression (SVR), using solar irradiance satellite data with an average RMSE of 1.68 W/m2. In the second step, GIS have been used to aggregate the data at a commune level. In the third step, a supervised learning algorithm using SVR has been used so as to estimate AR, β, and S in existing buildings, which can be extremely difficult data to obtain at a large scale. We use (i) population and building density data, (ii) land use data, and (iii) building typologies as input features. Aggregated values for AR, β and S for 46 communes in Geneva canton are used as a training output (labeled data) for the learning process. Finally, in the fourth step, by combining solar irradiance and building parameters predictions, we estimate the solar PV potential at the national scale.

LESO-PB, EPFL2015

Towards a GIS-based Multiscale Visibility Assessment Method for Solar Urban Planning

Pietro Florio

Urban areas are facing a growing deployment of solar photovoltaic and thermal tech-nologies on building envelopes, both on roofs and on façades, essential for the realization of the Swiss Energy Strategy 2050. This process often occurs regardless of the desirable archi-tectural integration quality in a given urban context, which depends on socio-cultural sensitivi-ty and on the visibility of the solar modules from the public space. Visibility and visual impact are recurrent decisional factors in spatial planning processes, with practical implications in-cluding touristic and real estate promotion, outdoor human comfort, way finding, public feeling of security and advertisement. In this thesis, the definition of visibility under a geometrical, physical and psycho-physiological perspective is explored, several quantitative indicators being described and test-ed. The objective is to provide a scale-dependent methodology to assess the visibility of build-ing envelope surfaces exposed to solar radiation, which could host solar modules, in urban areas. A visibility index is determined for inclusion as a variable in a multi criteria method, cover-ing areas from the strategic broad territorial scale to the district level, including neighborhoods and clusters of buildings. Accomplished research includes the estimation of public visual inter-est on the basis of crowd-sourced photographic databases, complementing geometry-based parameters such as cumulative viewsheds and solid angles. At each scale, the visibility index is systematically overlapped on an urban sensitivity layer issued from land use and on a spatial representation of the solar energy generation potential, at an appropriate level of detail. Results indicate that stakeholders can reasonably expect to harvest a serious amount of solar energy by means of building integrated solar systems without crucially affecting public perception. In the study area located in the city of Geneva (Switzerland), more than 50 m2 / building of non-visible envelope surface receiving sufficient solar radiation for an economically viable solar re-furbishment is available over half of the buildings. Solar thermal collectors or PV panels in-stalled on scarcely visible surfaces, mainly situated in courtyards, far from the streets or in deep urban canyons, could cover about 10% of the annual heating demand or alternatively, the same share of electricity needs on a district basis. At the same time, plenty of highly visible areas remain available for high-end solar deployments, which could also serve pilot and demonstration purposes.

EPFL2018

Optimisation of Urban Form by the Evaluation of the Solar Potential

Marylène Montavon

What will the cities of tomorrow look like? This is a crucial question because in the four and a half billion years of its existence, the Earth has never been so threatened, as it is today. Since 2008 half of the world's population has lived in towns – more than 70% in rich nations. Three quarters of CO2 emissions are produced in towns, 75% of the world's energy is consumed in towns. The battle for our climate, for the continuation of our species and all other life, will be largely waged in cities. Will it be possible to create the ideal ecological town? The objective of this study is to compare actual and theoretical urban forms in order to explore the diverse effects of daylighting and solar potential on densely built-up sites. Indeed, the search for ideal solar orientations has been a persistent problem from the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th. Even today, for all our scientific knowledge and empirical experience of solar energy, making the correct choice has still not crossed the boundary from an enigmatic, tricky art into the field of an exact science. As a first step, six existing urban sites in Switzerland and Brazil, as well as two projects in the United Kingdom, a few generic models and a utopian city, were modelled and analyzed. The goal was not merely the construction of new, exemplary districts but also the transformation of existing towns. The findings have been used to assess the potential of façades and roofs located in urban areas for active and passive solar heating, photovoltaic electricity generation and daylighting. The results obtained from these different case studies revealed large variations of the potential for solar energy collection on the buildings' façades and roofs. Ideally, these investigations are expected to help architects and town planners understand how to optimise solar collection on buildings design. In addition, a study was made of the Contemporary City of Three Million Inhabitants created by Le Corbusier. According to the latter, the Contemporary City could increase the urban capacity and at the same time improve the urban environment and the efficiency of the city. Therefore the present study extracted the solar potential of this utopian city in order to assess Le Corbusier's propositions. Since 1922, Le Corbusier's studies have influenced architects and town-planners in their choice of orientations and urban forms: it was therefore crucial to discover if this reliance on Le Corbusier was justified. Solar irradiation and illuminance values obtained through numerical simulations form the core part of the method. The method adopted for the entire set of computer simulations consisted in modelling — via a computer-aided drawing piece of software, namely AutoCAD — the digital model of each building or group of buildings prior to exporting them to an urban performance analysis software (PPF/RADIANCE software package). Spatial distributions of solar irradiation and daylight fluxes over the overall building façades and roofs were calculated using ray-tracing simulation techniques to determine the appropriate placement of different solar technologies (passive and active solar, photovoltaic and daylighting). Performance indicators were used to assess the solar utilisation potential of the urban sites (e.g. statistics of sky view factors and daylight factors) in order to determine the optimal solar strategies for a given urban context. In addition, various works and sun-related recommendations that have appeared mainly since the end of the nineteenth century, together with the various scientific models and software tools pertaining to this topic, are presented in this study.

EPFL2010