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 March 2024 with data extracted on 20 March 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)

NSW

Cowra Shire Council

31

NSW

Eurobodalla Shire Council

45

NSW

Kempsey Shire Council

132

NSW

Mid-Coast Council

19

NSW

Port Stephens Council

59

NSW

Wingecarribee Shire Council

58

QLD

Livingstone Shire

4

QLD

Rockhampton Regional

71

SA

The Rural City of Murray Bridge

51

VIC

Banyule City

62

VIC

Boroondara City

36

VIC

Brimbank City

64

VIC

Cardinia Shire

77

VIC

Casey City

284

VIC

Darebin City

42

VIC

Frankston City

84

VIC

Glen Eira City

11

VIC

Greater Dandenong City

135

VIC

Hume City

295

VIC

Kingston City

87

VIC

Knox City

108

VIC

Macedon Ranges Shire

27

VIC

Manningham City

127

VIC

Maroondah City

61

VIC

Melton City

213

VIC

Merri-Bek City

41

VIC

Mitchell Shire

49

VIC

Monash City

81

VIC

Moonee Valley City

26

VIC

Moorabool Shire

39

VIC

Nillumbik Shire

106

VIC

Stonnington City

5

VIC

Surf Coast Shire

24

VIC

Whitehorse City

64

VIC

Whittlesea City

181

VIC

Wyndham City

142

VIC

Yarra Ranges Shire

241

WA

City of Armadale

154

WA

City of Bayswater

35

WA

City of Belmont

40

WA

City of Bunbury

54

WA

City of Canning

65

WA

City of Cockburn

131

WA

City of Fremantle

20

WA

City of Gosnells

108

WA

City of Joondalup

94

WA

City of Kalamunda

117

WA

City of Kwinana

113

WA

City of Mandurah

94

WA

City of Melville

53

WA

City of Nedlands

18

WA

City of Perth

16

WA

City of Rockingham

171

WA

City of South Perth

20

WA

City of Stirling

108

WA

City of Subiaco

6

WA

City of Swan

230

WA

City of Vincent

11

WA

City of Wanneroo

239

WA

Shire of Capel

16

WA

Shire of Dardanup

21

WA

Shire of Harvey

33

WA

Shire of Mundaring

90

WA

Shire of Murray

36

WA

Shire of Peppermint Grove

1

WA

Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale

113

WA

Town of Bassendean

10

WA

Town of Cambridge

20

WA

Town of Claremont

5

WA

Town of Cottesloe

4

WA

Town of East Fremantle

4

WA

Town of Mosman Park

4

WA

Town of Victoria Park

18

Total

5,454

^ 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

ESRI Shapefile width increase - Cancelled

In the previous release report, we mentioned that the width of numeric fields within Esri Shapefiles would increase by one for this current release. A recent bug fix in our packaging application has been applied to make this change not necessary.

Removal of the ‘Documents’ folder from data packages

From November 2023, Geoscape will be progressively moving product descriptions, guides and reports online to https://docs.geoscape.com.au

Commencing with the May 2024 release, data packages will no longer include the Documents folder.

Issues

New Issues

No new issues.

Resolved Issues

No 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.

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

379

56,656

0

0

28,335

11,460

0

1,043,843

1,161,339

2,302,012

Retired

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

715,960

960,534

1,676,494

Updated

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Total

130,307

1,763,370

43,459

0

1,884,183

646,666

79525

1,579,211

1,229,993

7,356,714

% Change

0.29%

3.32%

0.00%

0.00%

1.53%

1.8%

0.00%

26.2%

19.51%

9.29%

solar_solar_address

Total

299,903

3,326,486

82,959

0

2,373,858

837,672

93913

3,460,901

1,823,583

12,299,275

solar_address

Total

203,575

3,595,975

76,491

52

2,238,249

813,266

241209

3,167,329

1,206,150

11,542,296

solar_building

Total

240,571

4,277,914

118,337

337

3,116,530

1,354,955

436,195

4,134,690

1,842,647

15,522,176