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Berkeley Solar Mapping Portal from CH2M Hill Released

May 5, 2009 | 2 Comments

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California, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] CH2M HILL has completed Berkeley's Solar Mapping Portal, enabling residents and business owners to estimate the solar potential of their rooftops and view existing solar installations. CH2M HILL worked with Berkeley's Office of Energy and Sustainable Development (ESD) to identify all of the solar installations in the city and utilized its S.A.F.E. technology to map Berkeley rooftops for their solar energy potential.

The CH2M HILL solar map reflects elements such as rooftop structures, the slant of the roof, shading from obstructions and takes into account the azimuth of the sun for PV panel placement.

Residents and business owners in Berkeley can now log on, view their rooftops, calculate the available square footage for panels, get an estimated size of a photovoltaic (PV) system that would fit their rooftop, obtain detailed information on tax rebates and choose from a listing of available installers. The CH2M HILL solar map reflects elements such as rooftop structures, the slant of the roof, shading from obstructions and takes into account the azimuth of the sun for PV panel placement.

The Berkeley FIRST program, a solar finance program that assists Berkeley residents in tackling the financial hurdles of installing solar panels, is the city’s flagship solar energy program. It provides property owners an opportunity to borrow money from the City’s Sustainable Energy Financing District to install solar photovoltaic electric systems and repay the financing through property tax bills.

Click here to view the solar map.

Solar Energy

2 Reader Comments

Comment
1 of 2

steve-poppitz-157135

May 6, 2009

This is all well and good BUT, here in Boulder County(Colorado) we already are doing the "Berkeley Plan" before Berkeley.We have raised our bonds.
We have over 500 applicants(on the first round) all with prelim. approvals,
and funding to individual property owners is about to start. Now that is news worthy: no $ down, energy conserv. measures & renew.energy systems with the help of local gov't and local investors.

Comment
2 of 2

Anonymous

May 9, 2009

CH2mHill uses building information from parcel data sources (assessor or vendor). Using square feet of a building is not the same as square feet of a roof for determining capacity for solar panels.

Maps Capital did a survey comparing CH2MHill and ProjectDX (competitor) data from parcel assessor sources with actual roof measurements. The variance was as much as + or - 60 percent and on average 30 percent error. A residential building owner would have an unpleasant surprise when the installer would do a physical site inspection and give different cost estimates.

Obvious differences are

a) two story houses double the living space but not the roof
b) building area is livable space, not roof space (garages, atriums, etc)
c) parcel data is usually 20% lagging construction improvements

To see the impact:

Graph of variance: www.mapscapital.com/images/variance.JPG
Comparison: www.mapscapital.com/files/SolarAerialImaging.pdf

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