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 30 Septmber 2024 with data extracted on 25 September 2024.

• This release is a full national data population for Version 1.1 of the Solar product, described by the Solar Product Guide v1.1.

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)
ACT	Australian Captial Territory	496
NSW	Albury City Council	78
NSW	Bathurst Regional Council	58
NSW	Bayside Council	51
NSW	Blacktown City Council	124
NSW	Blue Mountains City Council	23
NSW	Burwood Council	7
NSW	Byron Shire Council	69
NSW	Camden Council	80
NSW	Campbelltown City Council	41
NSW	Canterbury-Bankstown Council	109
NSW	City of Canada Bay Council	20
NSW	City of Parramatta Council	84
NSW	Council of the City of Sydney	26
NSW	Cumberland Council	69
NSW	Dubbo Regional Council	92
NSW	Fairfield City Council	28
NSW	Georges River Council	36
NSW	Hawkesbury City Council	201
NSW	Inner West Council	35
NSW	Ku-ring-gai Council	72
NSW	Lane Cove Municipal Council	10
NSW	Lithgow City Council	52
NSW	Liverpool City Council	56
NSW	Mosman Municipal Council	9
NSW	North Sydney Council	10
NSW	Northern Beaches Council	71
NSW	Orange City Council	57
NSW	Penrith City Council	124
NSW	Port Macquarie-Hastings Council	51
NSW	Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council	76
NSW	Randwick City Council	36
NSW	Ryde City Council	41
NSW	Strathfield Municipal Council	14
NSW	Sutherland Shire Council	2
NSW	The Council of the Municipality of Hunters Hill	6
NSW	The Council of the Shire of Hornsby	175
NSW	The Hills Shire Council	185
NSW	Tweed Shire Council	255
NSW	Unincorporated - Sydney Harbour Area	32
NSW	Waverley Council	9
NSW	Willoughby City Council	22
NSW	Woollahra Municipal Council	12
NSW	Yass Valley Council	2
QLD	Brisbane City	328
QLD	Bundaberg Regional	208
QLD	Gold Coast City	445
QLD	Moreton Bay City	3
QLD	Noosa Shire	53
QLD	Redland City	22
QLD	Scenic Rim Regional	6
QLD	Sunshine Coast Regional	18
VIC	Baw Baw Shire	66
VIC	Benalla Rural City	28
VIC	Golden Plains Shire	5
VIC	Greater Geelong City	265
VIC	Latrobe City	77
VIC	Surf Coast Shire	3
VIC	Wangaratta Rural City	32
VIC	Wodonga City	61
Total		4726

^ 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

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

Commencing with the September 2024 release, we have extended this association to all address suppliers used in G-NAF. The significant benefit of this enhancement is the improved alignment of linked address data with the G-NAF dataset which has resulted 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 have increased by approximately ~8% and 60% respectively.

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 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	39,129	0	0	59,661	7,605	79,525	382,587	17,512	586,019
	Retired	0	9,305	0	0	13,654	0	0	247,414	0	270,373
	Updated	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Total	129,928	1,706,714	43,459	0	1,855,848	635,206	79,525	1,251,328	1,029,188	6,731,196
	% Change	0.00%	1.78%	0.00%	0.00%	2.54%	1.21%	100.00%	12.11%	1.73%	4.92%
solar_solar_address	Total	298,010	3,239,124	82,959	0	2,337,873	813,349	93,818	2,795,132	1,538,812	11,199,077
solar_address	Total	202,981	3,583,973	76,541	52	2,235,473	812,943	240,737	3,119,614	1,181,368	11,453,682
solar_building	Total	240,653	4,246,052	118,337	337	3,103,461	1,350,208	436,195	4,020,779	1,760,302	15,276,324