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GIS based site selection for solar panel

GNR 605 Course Project

Submitted by :

Saail Narvekar

Uddesh Sahu

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Submitted to:-

Prof. S. Durbha

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Problem Statement

IIT Bombay is deploying solar panels in the campus; develop a GIS

application that will enable them to find out the most suitable places for the

installation of solar panels and develop a smart grid. Make assumptions about

the necessary sensors.

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Literature Review

Visited SEIL lab, IITB.

Detailed report by Li, D. (2013). describes a detailed report about using GIS and Remote Sensing Techniques for Solar Panel Installation Site Selection.

The methodology proposed in the paper considers many factors related to environmental, economic, and technical (energy production) concerns for selecting site for solar panels.

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Literature review

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Photovoltaic system:

  • PV systems consist of PV solar panels installed on rooftops or mounted on posts in the ground.
  • These systems operate by sunlight/photons striking a PV cell.
  • Do not require energy and can be scaled up easily

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Block diagram of PV system

Ref: report by Li, D. (2013)

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Literature review

Site selection criteria

Li, D. (2013), Summary of solar panel installation

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Literature review

Li, D. (2013), Summary of solar panel installation

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Literature review

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Efficiency of solar panel: 15-20% efficient

Light wavelength/frequency:

Very small amount of photons are used to convert light to electrical energy.

Positioning and angle:

Solar panels are most efficient when faced to southern hemisphere for India

Temperature, Climate, Shades:

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Datasets required and used

  • IITB campus shape file

Digited from the IITB map using Open Street Map

  • DEM 12m - resampled to 5m

https://search.asf.alaska.edu/

  • Solar data

Interpolated data from https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/#MR

Solar irradiance value was almost same through out campus

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Datasets

  • Open street map
  • Campus population data

http://seil.cse.iitb.ac.in/ - data insufficient

  • Power usage data in the campus - not received

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Software used

QGIS

Google earth

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Methodology

  • Created IITB boundary shape file
  • Created vector polygon for roof top of the building
  • Used clipped DEM data for campus map
  • Slope and Aspect was calculated
  • Reclassified slope and aspect
  • Overlayed slope and aspect
  • Clipped overlay for roof top
  • Exported the file to android app with all the layers and google satellite map.
  • Search and get the exact location from the android application,

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Results

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Campus Boundary - shape-file

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IIT B buildings layers

Results

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Clipped Slope

Results

Clipped Aspect

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Re-classified slope

Re-classified Aspect

Results

Slope classes

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Class I -

0°-10° slope

Class II - 10°-20°

Class III- 20°-30°

Aspect classes

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Class I -

0°-45° and 315°-360°

Class II- 45°-90° and 270°-315°

Class III - 90°-270°

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Results

  • Highly suitable sites
  • Medium suitable sites
  • Less suitable sites

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Results

Visualization in android application

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Challenges

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Data for population, power usage and shadow was not available.

Satellite data with good resolution <1m was not available.

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Conclusion and Future scope

  • Suitable site was analyzed using the available data.
  • More analysis could be possible if required data is available.
  • Shadow analysis could be simulated in software and could be used in the analysis.
  • Aerial drone based sensor data could of great use.
  • Machine Learning based classification approach could be used to classify sites.

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References

Li, D. (2013). Using GIS and remote sensing techniques for solar panel installation site selection (Master's thesis, University of Waterloo).

Al Garni, H. Z., & Awasthi, A. (2017). Solar PV power plant site selection using a GIS-AHP based approach with application in Saudi Arabia. Applied energy, 206, 1225-1240.

Uyan, M. (2013). GIS-based solar farms site selection using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in Karapinar region, Konya/Turkey. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 28, 11-17.

Mamun, M. A. A., Islam, M. M., Hasanuzzaman, M., & Selvaraj, J. (2021). Effect of tilt angle on the performance and electrical parameters of a PV module: comparative indoor and outdoor experimental investigation. Energy and Built Environment.

https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/estimate-solar-power-potential/

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