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Solar energy plays a crucial role in helping cities to decentralize energy production and thus decarbonize the energy mix. Reliable resource assessments are needed to support the deployment of solar power systems, especially in cities of developing countries where large solar potential remains untapped. The aim of this work is to assess the potential of rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) in three populated cities in Ecuador's mainland (Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca) and in the Galapagos Islands. The assessment involves (i) the estimation of the available rooftop area based on geographic information system data, (ii) the calculation of energy yield based on hourly satellite-derived irradiance and meteorological data, and (iii) the economic feasibility assessment in terms of levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) compared to representative electricity tariffs. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to assess the variability of the estimated technical and economic potential with respect to changes in the input parameters. The results reveal a total available rooftop area of about 144 km2, mainly concentrated in urban parishes. The estimated energy yield is 16.94 ± 3.38 TWh/a, which could cover almost twice the annual energy consumption in 2019 of the study areas. The economic assessment shows that the LCOE ranges between 7.65 and 21.12 USD cents/kWh. However, the comparison of LCOE against representative residential tariff suggests that rooftop PV technology is not cost-competitive under most of the financial scenarios. The findings from this study will be of interest for local authorities and other decision makers to design policies and financing strategies to increase the penetration of rooftop PV and thus exploiting the large potential assessed in the study areas. The described methodology can be used for assessing the potential in other regions of Ecuador and thereby support the diversification and decarbonization of the energy mix in the country.

[EN] Cities are expected to be protagonists of the energy transition and, among other challenges, the decarbonation of the residential consumption could greatly benefit from photovoltaic generation in the built environment. To assess its potential, the present study analyses the possibility to cover the electric demand of the city of Valencia with rooftop-installed PV panels. Specific types of buildings has been selected to study the potential of each one of them with respect to their demand and with a specific production/consumption model. The total potential energy production for the city of Valencia is estimated to be enough to satisfy the demand of domestic electricity. The economic investment scenario has been analysed (best- and worst-case scenarios), and the corresponding environmental benefits have been studied. The results of the present article are encouraging in the context of a global energy transition, necessary in the present times to keep human consumption within the planetary limits., This study has been supported by Climate-KIC¿s Pathfinder Programme (Task ID TC2018A_2.1.5-PRO_P066¿1B) and by the Cátedra de Transición Energética Urbana (Las Naves-UPV)

Energy efficiency, sustainability, and renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly relevant topics in today’s world. Buildings are one of the largest consumers of energy in society, and as such, improving their energy efficiency by reducing unnecessary energy loss and utilizing solar power is crucial. This paper comprehensively analyzes a neighborhood with buildings characteristic of the researched area by applying empirical and theoretical methods and calculations that have been proven in numerous individual cases. The main contribution of this paper is its demonstration that implementing methods to increase the energy efficiency of buildings and utilizing the potential of solar power can result in significant savings in energy consumption, increase the energy sustainability of the analyzed buildings, and substantially reduce the negative environmental impact. The novelty of this study lies in the location and multiple software applications for data analysis. The data and conclusions obtained in this paper serve as a foundation and path towards sustainable development in the field of energy efficiency for buildings in this and similar areas. Heat loss was calculated by analyzing households in the urban neighborhood of Nova Kolonija. All analyzed houses exceeded the maximum allowed annual required energy for household heating (75 kWh/m2). After the reconstruction and implementation of the proposed measures to increase energy efficiency, all houses met the requirements and entered a higher energy class, C. Energy for heating was reduced from 9294.68 kWh/a to 4641.84 kWh/a, representing a reduction of 50.03%. Simulations were conducted regarding solar rooftop power plant installation of 5655 Wp capacity. Software that was used included: a Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS), Photovoltaic System software (PVsyst 7.3.), and Photovoltaic Design and Simulation software (PV*SOL). The results of the analysis indicated that the average amount of electricity produced is 6186.98 kWh, which meets 98.12% of households’ annual electricity consumption of 6278.41 kWh. The paper contributes to the existing body of literature and provides significant insight for both practical implications and future studies.

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) is a promising technology to decarbonize urban energy systems via harnessing solar energy available on building envelopes. While methods to assess solar irradiation, especially on rooftops, are well established, the assessment on building facades usually involves a higher effort due to more complex urban features and obstructions. The drawback of existing physics-based simulation programs are that they require significant manual modeling effort and computing time for generating time resolved deterministic results. Yet, solar irradiation is highly intermittent and representing its inherent uncertainty may be required for designing robust BIPV energy systems. Targeting on these drawbacks, this paper proposes a data-driven model based on Deep Generative Networks (DGN) to efficiently generate stochastic ensembles of annual hourly solar irradiance time series on building facades with uncompromised spatiotemporal resolution at the urban scale. The only input required are easily obtainable fisheye images as categorical shading masks captured from 3D models. In principle, even actual photographs of urban contexts can be utilized, given they are semantically segmented. The potential of our approach is that it may be applied as a surrogate for time-consuming simulations, when facing lacking information (e.g., no 3D model exists), and to use the generated stochastic time-series ensembles in robust energy systems planning. Our validations exemplify a good fidelity of the generated time series when compared to the physics-based simulator. Due to the nature of the used DGNs, it remains an open challenge to precisely reconstruct the ground truth one-to-one for each hour of the year. However, we consider the benefits of the approach to outweigh the shortcomings. To demonstrate the model's relevance for urban energy planning, we showcase its potential for generative design by parametrically altering characteristic features of the urban environment and producing corresponding time series on building facades under different climatic contexts in real-time., Energy and AI, 12, ISSN:2666-5468

Urban areas can be considered high-potential energy producers alongside their notable portion of energy consumption. Solar energy is the most promising sustainable energy in which urban environments can produce electricity by using rooftop-mounted photovoltaic systems. While the precise knowledge of electricity production from solar energy resources as well as the needed parameters to define the optimal locations require an adequate study, effective guidelines for optimal installation of solar photovoltaics remain a challenge. This paper aims to make a complete systematic review and states the vital steps with their data resources to find the urban rooftop PV potential. Organizing the methodologies is another novelty of this paper to create a complete global basis for future studies and improve a more detailed degree in this particular field.

Solar energy is one of the most promising sustainable energy, and urban environments can be considered high-potential energy producers by producing electricity from rooftop-mounted photovoltaic systems. Electricity production from solar energy and the needed parameters to define the optimal locations require an adequate study; however, effective guidelines for optimal installation of solar photovoltaics remain a challenge. This thesis aims to develop a uniform accurate multi-factor method that uses uniform open data sources to determine urban rooftop's photovoltaic potential.

Many municipalities and public authorities have supported the creation of solar cadastres to map the solar energy-generation potential of existing buildings. Despite advancements in modelling solar potential, most of these tools provide simple evaluations based on benchmarks, neglecting the effect of uncertain environmental conditions and that of the spatial aggregation of multiple buildings. We argue that including such information in the evaluation process can lead to more robust planning decisions and a fairer allocation of public subsidies. To this end, this paper presents a novel method to incorporate uncertainty in the evaluation of the solar electricity generation potential of existing buildings using a multi-scale approach. It also presents a technique to visualise the results through their integration in a 3D-mapping environment and the use of false-colour overlays at different scales. Using multiple simulation scenarios, the method is able to provide information about confidence intervals of summary statistics of production due to variation in two typical uncertain factors: vegetation and weather. The uncertainty in production introduced by these factors is taken into account through pairwise comparisons of nominal values of indicators, calculating a comprehensive ranking of the energy potential of different spatial locations and a corresponding solar score. The analysis is run at different scales, using space- and time-aggregated results, to provide results relevant to decision-makers.

Previous research has assessed the potential of solar energy against possible demand; however, the sustainability issues associated with the use of large-scale photovoltaic deployment in urban areas have not been jointly established. In this paper, the impact of photovoltaic energy in the total urban energy mix is estimated using a series of indicators that consider the economic, environmental and social dimensions. These indicators have been previously applied at the country level; the main contribution of this research is applying them at the urban level to the city of Cuenca, Ecuador. Cuenca is close to the equatorial line and at a high altitude, enabling this area to reach the maximum self-supply index because of the high irradiation levels and reduced demand. The solar potential was estimated using a simple methodology that applies several indexes that were proven reliable in a local context considering this particular sun path. The results demonstrate that the solar potential can meet the electric power demand of this city, and only the indicator related to employment is positive and substantially affected. The indicators related to the price of energy, emissions and fossil fuel dependency do not change significantly, unless a fuel-to-electricity transport system conversions take place.

The use of 3D city models combined with simulation functionalities allows to quantify energy demand and renewable generation for a very large set of buildings. The scope of this paper is to determine the solar photovoltaic potential at an urban and regional scale using CityGML geometry descriptions of every building. An innovative urban simulation platform is used to calculate the PV potential of the Ludwigsburg County in south-west Germany, in which every building was simulated by using 3D city models. Both technical and economic potential (considering roof area and insolation thresholds) are investigated, as well as two different PV efficiency scenarios. In this way, it was possible to determine the fraction of the electricity demand that can be covered in each municipality and the whole region, deciding the best strategy, the profitability of the investments and determining optimal locations. Additionally, another important contribution is a literature review regarding the different methods of PV potential estimation and the available roof area reduction coefficients. An economic analysis and emission assessment has also been developed. The results of the study show that it is possible to achieve high annual rates of covered electricity demand in several municipalities for some of the considered scenarios, reaching even more than 100% in some cases. The use of all available roof space (technical potential) could cover 77% of the region’s electricity consumption and 56% as an economic potential with only high irradiance roofs considered. The proposed methodological approach should contribute valuably in helping policy-making processes and communicating the advantages of distributed generation and PV systems in buildings to regulators, researchers and the general public.

The goal of this project is to assess the potential of PV tilted arrays on flat roofs. Multiple evaluations according to different performance indicators are compared to find the optimal potential of three roofs situated in the urban environment of Neuchatel.