Understanding Future Uses of Roofspace and Defining An Early Path to Profitable Roof Estate Investing
February 6th, 2011
Via the Google Earth blog, an interesting article on using Google Earth as a tool to calculate potential viability of rooftops to support various possible uses. For example:
“..The fact that the rise of alternative energy and the rise of Google Earth are happening at the same time has led to some amazing Google Earth visualizations of potential alternative energy use, particular with solar power. We’ve seen a 3D rendering of the solar panels at the Googleplex and the US Solar Jobs Map, which shows the potential for hundreds of thousands of new solar-related jobs in the next few years.
We also showed you the Berlin Solar Atlas Project, which allows you to view the “solar potential” for over 14,000 roofs in the city. Today’s story is very similar, but on a much wider (though less detailed) scale.
Coming from the University of California – San Diego is the “California Solar Irradiance Map“, which shows the entire state of California and the amount of energy a horizontally oriented solar panel could expect to receive over the course of a year.
Beyond the overview map that you see above, you can zoom down and get specific data for thousands of individual points on the map, the most important of which is likely the “monthly mean irradiation” that shows how much energy could be generated at different times of the year.
To try it for yourself, download their KMZ file
. To see the individual placemarks, be sure to turn on the “Placemark Data” folder inside of the KMZ.
If you’re interested in a more global solar insolation picture -
http://sites.google.com/site/permaculturesydneywest/resources/files/global_insolation_2007.kmzThis is a fixed version of the one at http://sites.google.com/a/theclimateproject.org/google-earth-internship/
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Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”
And, if you like that (and live in New Zealand) you might like something the company I work for put out a little while ago. SolarView draws a diagram of the horizon around a point you specify using Google Maps, and then overlays the path of the sun at certain times of the year along with figures of how much energy you could theoretically collect from it. You can also enter the angle your panels are pointed at to match your roof angle. It also takes into account predicted atmospheric conditions (not day to day weather patterns but general air quality).
http://solarview.niwa.co.nz