Photovoltaic potential in a Lisbon suburb using LiDAR data M.C. Brito a,⇑ , N. Gomes b , T. Santos b , J.A. Tenedo ´rio b a IDL, Faculdade de Cie ˆncias da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal b e-GEO, Centro de Estudos de Geografia e Planeamento Regional, Faculdade de Cie ˆncias Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Avenida de Berna, 26 C, 1069-061 Lisboa, Portugal Received 5 December 2010; received in revised form 14 June 2011; accepted 28 September 2011 Available online 5 November 2011 Communicated by: Associate Editor David Renne Abstract A procedure for estimating the photovoltaic (PV) potential of an urban region from LiDAR data using the Solar Analyst tool is described. The total PV potential of the 538 identified buildings is around 11.5 GWh/year for an installed capacity of 7 MW, which cor- responds to 48% of the local electricity demand. It is shown that for a low PV penetration (about 10% of total roof area) the PV potential can be well estimated by considering no shade and local optimum inclination and orientation. For high PV penetration (i.e. covering all roof area available) the PV potential can be well estimated by considering a horizontal surface with the footprint area of the buildings. These results suggest a simple first-approximation estimation of the PV potential of an urban area without the need for a full 3D analysis of mutual shading on a Surface Digital Model. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Photovoltaic potential; LiDAR; Urban; Lisbon 1. Introduction It is widely accepted that photovoltaic (PV) solar energy is an abundant, clean and secure source of electricity. Its deployment in the urban environment and, in particular on roofs, has been strongly supported by governments throughout the world, acknowledging its many advantages including its modular and silent nature, the avoidance of transmission and distribution losses since electricity is gen- erated at the point of use or its high correlation with peak loads in cities where demand is dominated by air condition- ing (Ruther et al., 2008), allowing the combination of energy production with other functions of the buildings (e.g. cladding or heat insulation), lower costs since no high-value land and no separate support structure are required, or even the increase in environment awareness and energy savings behavior associated to residential PV systems (Hondo and Baba, 2010). The development of policies for the successful deploy- ment of PV systems in urban environment, including financing schemes, utility planning or accommodating grid capacity, critically depends on the assessment of the local potential which is determined by local realities, meteoro- logical data, reference technologies, and economic factors (Wittmann et al., 1997). At the city scale, the use of geo- referenced urban fabric models associated to solar radiation tools to determine the incoming solar radiation (insolation) is particularly interesting since it allows the modeling of inclined surfaces, while taking into account shadows from surrounding buildings or other topographic features. The assessment of photovoltaic potential in urban areas has been addressed by many authors and different approaches with different levels of complexity. For exam- ple, Wiginton et al. (2010) determines the available roof area from extrapolation of roof area-population relation- 0038-092X/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.solener.2011.09.031 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mcbrito@fc.ul.pt (M.C. Brito). www.elsevier.com/locate/solener Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Solar Energy 86 (2012) 283–288