Urban environment and solar PV performance: The case of the Netherlands

Abstract

The modern urban landscape creates numerous challenges for the deployment of solar Photovoltaic (PV) technology. The large structures that dominate the skyline of every city create compactness, which, in turn, limits the available rooftop area and creates unpredicted shading patterns. The majority of research today relies on modern applications such as geographical information system (GIS) software to evaluate urban morphology; however, this approach is computationally intensive and therefore it is usually limited to a small geographical area. In this paper, we approach this issue from another perspective, utilizing the enormous amount of high resolution PV yield data that is available for the Netherlands. Our results not only correlate performance losses with urban compactness indicators, but they also reveal a significant seasonality effect that can reach 15% in some cases.