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 27 June 2024 with data extracted on 21 June 2024.

• This release is a full national data population for Version 1.0 of the Solar product, described by the Solar Product Guide v1.0.

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)
QLD	Brisbane City	360
QLD	Cairns Regional	151
QLD	Ipswich City	268
QLD	Logan City	81
QLD	Mackay Regional	82
QLD	Moreton Bay City	232
QLD	Redland City	65
QLD	Townsville City	197
SA	Adelaide Hills Council	4
SA	Adelaide Plains Council	50
SA	Alexandrina Council	24
SA	Campbelltown City Council	29
SA	City of Adelaide	15
SA	City of Burnside	25
SA	City of Charles Sturt	61
SA	City of Holdfast Bay	14
SA	City of Marion	56
SA	City of Mitcham	55
SA	City of Onkaparinga	198
SA	City of Playford	101
SA	City of Port Adelaide Enfield	104
SA	City of Prospect	9
SA	City of Salisbury	103
SA	City of Tea Tree Gully	66
SA	City of Unley	14
SA	City of Victor Harbor	24
SA	City of West Torrens	37
SA	Light Regional Council	22
SA	Mount Barker District Council	39
SA	The Barossa Council	5
SA	The City of Norwood Payneham and St Peters	15
SA	The Corporation of the Town of Walkerville	4
SA	Town of Gawler	40
VIC	Ballarat City	154
VIC	Glenelg Shire	79
WA	City of Busselton	98
Total		2881

^ 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

Inclusion of addresses from all G-NAF suppliers within solar_address tables

Currently, the Solar product is associated with a subset of addresses from the Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF). The addresses linked to relate to a select group of data suppliers to G-NAF.

Commencing with the September 2024 release, we intend to extend this association to all address suppliers used in G-NAF. The significant benefit of this enhancement will be the improved alignment of linked address data with the G-NAF dataset which will result in improved relationships, with the most significant improvement being the inclusion of more secondary addresses. The address relationships in the ‘solar_address’ and ‘solar_solar_address’ tables is expected to increase by approximately ~20%.

ACT, Queanbeyan-Palerang and Yass Valley Regions

A Review of the Buildings capture data during processing has led to the removal of the following areas mentioned in the pre-release report.

• ACT

• Quenbeyan-Palerang Regional Council

• Yass Valley Council

These Regions will not be updated in the June Release and will rescheduled to be updated in a future release.

Removal of the ‘Documents’ folder from data packages

Geoscape has moved product descriptions, guides and reports online to https://docs.geoscape.com.au From this release onwards, data packages will no longer include the ‘Documents’ folder.

Issues

New Issues

No new issues.

Resolved Issues

No new resolved issues.

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 Localities counts and the percent change to the previous release have been listed in the table below.

TABLE		ACT	NSW	NT	OT	QLD	SA	TAS	VIC	WA	TOTAL
solar	Additional	0	0	0	0	621,286	828,669	0	34,053	19,619	1,503,627
	Retired	0	0	0	0	545,307	594,220	0	17,856	16,343	1,173,726
	Updated	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Total	130,307	1,763,370	43,459	0	1,960,162	881,115	79,525	1,595,408	1,233,269	7,686,615
	% Change	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	4.03%	36.26%	0.00%	1.03%	0.27%	4.48%
solar_solar_address	Total	299,898	3,329,899	82,963	0	2,471,832	1,116,461	93,957	3,455,539	1,830,586	12,681,135
solar_address	Total	204,050	3,604,072	76,477	52	2,245,748	829,126	241,450	3,174,440	1,207,940	11,583,355
solar_building	Total	240,571	4,277,914	118,337	337	3,149,144	1,423,445	436,195	4,148,123	1,845,262	15,639,328