Solar

Disclaimer

Geoscape Australia believes this publication to be correct at the time of printing and does not accept responsibility for any consequences arising from the use of the information herein. Readers should rely on their own skill and judgement to apply information to particular issues.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission of Geoscape Australia.

Overview

Solar is a national digital dataset representing photovoltaic solar panel information across urban areas for each state and territory of Australia. The Solar dataset has relationships with the Buildings and G-NAF products produced by Geoscape Australia.

Solar is populated from two different capture sources and the population of the product schema will vary between these as follows:

• Urban (satellite source) - areas with a population greater than 200, or with significant industrial/commercial activity in a visual assessment, digitised from satellite imagery.

• Urban (aerial source) - areas with a population greater than 200, or with significant industrial/commercial activity in a visual assessment, digitised from aerial imagery.

Geoscape Australia welcomes your feedback on the Solar product. We also publish regular product development updates on our website (www.geoscape.com.au).

Release Summary

This product was released to customers on 16 December 2024 with data extracted on 10 December 2024.

• This release is a full national data population for Version 1.2 of the Solar product, described by the Solar Product Guide v1.2.

Any issues that have been identified for this release are described in the Issues section.

This release includes updates for the areas listed in the table below.

Locations of updated areas by State

State	Location	Urban Area (km2)
NSW	Blacktown City Council	132
NSW	Blue Mountains City Council	14
NSW	Camden Council	9
NSW	Cumberland Council	8
NSW	Fairfield City Council	82
NSW	Griffith City Council	28
NSW	Liverpool City Council	194
NSW	Parkes Shire Council	39
NSW	Penrith City Council	247
NSW	Wollondilly Shire Council	23
QLD	Brisbane City	639
QLD	Gold Coast City	437
QLD	Logan City	503
QLD	Moreton Bay City	366
QLD	Noosa Shire	186
QLD	Redland City	181
QLD	Scenic Rim Regional	79
QLD	Sunshine Coast Regional	194
SA	Alexandrina Council	123
SA	City of Victor Harbor	73
VIC	Greater Bendigo City	183
Total		3740

^ Location names are derived from intersection with the most recent Local Government Area dataset.

Spatial files of the updated areas are available upon request via support@geoscape.com.au.

Change Notifications

Solar product in Geopackage format

From the December 2024 release onwards, Geoscape Solar will be provided in an additional format, Geopackage. Both state and national Geopackages are available.

Issues

New Issues

No new issues.

Resolved Issues

ACT, Queanbeyan-Palerang and Yass Valley Regions

A Review of the Buildings capture data during processing led to the removal of the following areas for the June 2024 release.

• ACT

• Quenbeyan-Palerang Regional Council

• Yass Valley Council

These Regions have been updated in the September 2024 release.

Known Issues

Solar polygons cut off at the edge of capture areas

Where a solar polygon is captured that crosses the edge of a capture area, the portion of the solar array that is outside will not be included in the product. This occurs in a small number of instances and will result in smaller than real-world solar_area and daily_estimated_power values.

Incorrect capture of solar polygons

Solar hot water heating, swimming pool heating and other rooftop features such as air-conditioning units can incorrectly be captured as solar polygons. These features are removed from the data where possible as they do not represent photovoltaic solar. Geoscape intends to continue to improve our processes to reduce these occurrences over time.

Solar type accuracy for low-resolution capture

Where a solar polygon is captured using imagery with resolution greater than or equal to 10cm, there is a reduction in the correctness of the solar_type classification. This often causes monocrystalline panels to be assigned with a ‘Thin-film’ solar_type value as individual panels cannot be differentiated in the imagery. Daily estimated power outputs for these records will be lower than the real-world value.

Future Considerations

This section outlines enhancements or changes under consideration, but not planned into a specific release. For further details on future initiatives, please contact Geoscape Support.

Z-values

Geoscape is considering including z-values for the solar table that would provide heights for each vertex of a solar polygon. There is potential for this information to be used to derive other attributes, such as the aspect of the solar panel.

Aspect

Geoscape is considering including an ‘aspect’ attribute that would describe the direction that the solar panel is facing. This attribute could potentially be used to improve estimates of the power generated by the solar array.

Improvements to Daily Estimated Power

Geoscape intends to further improve the daily_estimated_power attribute. For this improvement we would potentially assess the impact of the:

• resolution of the imagery used to capture the solar polygon

• aspect of the solar polygon

• roof_shape of the building related to the solar polygon

• surrounding heights of buildings, trees and other features such as mountains that could potentially shade the solar array and reduce the power output

Adjustments to this estimate will be made from the results of this assessment.

Solar polygons that are not related to a building

Geoscape intends to include solar panel polygons that are not rooftop solar. These panels often relate to solar farms and are currently excluded from Solar as they do not relate to a building. The intention would be to link these solar panels to an address.

Annex A – Release Counts

Additional, retired and total Solar counts and the percent change to the previous release have been listed in the table below.

TABLE	STATISTIC	ACT	NSW	NT	OT	QLD	SA	TAS	VIC	WA	TOTAL
solar	Additional	0	305,264	0	0	662,139	1,097	0	42,383	0	1,010,883
	Retired	0	245,691	0	0	586,900	0	0	28,962	0	861,553
	Updated	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Total	184,083	2,022,032	43,459	0	2,089,116	882,212	79,525	1,682,681	1,233,269	8,216,377
	% Change	0.00%	3.04%	0.00%	0.00%	3.74%	0.12%	0.00%	0.8%	0.00%	1.85%
solar_solar_address	Total	524,868	5,044,843	157,695	0	6,543,217	1,991,325	105,079	4,053,935	2,365,477	20,786,439
solar_address	Total	225,857	4,000,708	87,668	105	2,513,706	896,116	261,799	3,321,378	1,275,470	12,582,807
solar_building	Total	250,344	4,343,478	118,337	337	3,173,878	1,425,543	436,195	4,180,346	1,845,261	15,773,719