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.

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