A Solar Atlas for Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Electricity Resource Assessment

While photovoltaic energy gathers momentum as power costs increase and panel costs decrease, the total technical and economic potentials for building integrated solar energy in Denmark remain largely unidentified. The current net metering feed-in scheme is restricted to 6kW plant size, limiting large scale
application. This paper presents a solar atlas based on a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of all 2.9 million buildings in the country, combined with a building register. The 1.6 m resolution DEM has been processed into global radiation input, solar energy output and production costs for roof areas of individual buildings. Size of roof areas is included for a technology assessment and a quantitative stakeholder analysis. The resulting costs of supplying up to 40 TWh of electricity annually have been calculated by means of levelised production costs at various interest rates. The continuous assessment of solar electricity generation potentials by marginal costs, ownership and plant type presented in the paper may be used for defining long term policies for the development of photovoltaic energy, as well as political instruments such as a multi-tier feed-in tariff.