Determination of the urban rooftop photovoltaic potential: a state of the art

Abstract

In today’s world, the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to meet the global warming regulations has increased the demand for renewable energy sources. A notable portion of energy consumption is dedicated to urban environments. While solar energy is the most promising sustainable energy, urban environments can be considered as high-potential electricity producers by using rooftop-mounted photovoltaic systems. However, effective guidelines for optimal installation of solar photovoltaics remains a challenge. Although in recent years there has been a vast development of methods as well as improvement in availability of data sources. Since it is not always possible to apply the same techniques, specific approaches are needed for local, regional, or continental scales. It still remains to develop a uniform accurate multi-factor method that uses uniform open data sources to determine urban rooftop’s photovoltaic potential. The aim of this paper is to make a complete systematic review of various developed methodologies published in the current state of the art, and identify vital factors for urban rooftop solar photovoltaic potential assessment as well as to detect the best available methods to create a complete global basis for future studies.