by Angela Guess
A recent article reports how one company is using Big Data to expand the reach of solar power. The article begins, “Solar rooftops only work in specific environments: an area with enough sun, a roof with the right tilt, a state or city with strong subsidies. But a company called Geostellar is using big data tools to help its solar installer customers deliver more solar panels to more rooftops in places where it actually makes economic sense. Later this year, the company plans to release an open API — so developers can build applications on top of it — and eventually, the company plans to launch a consumer-facing site.”
The article continues, “Year-old Geostellar pulls together at least 25 different types of data into its platform, including information about weather, shadows, roof slope, closest transmission lines, property values, land use, electricity rates, solar subsidies, and solar hazards. In addition, the company is constantly adding in more data sets like information about brownfields — a sudden hot area for solar installers — and data from pertinent recent legislation.”
It goes on, “All that data goes into a system solar installers and utilities can use to search for useful data to target solar customers. For example, a solar installer could search Geostellar’s system for the locations of rooftops of a certain size in New Jersey or California and hone a mailing list down to the best potential candidates. The system can also estimate the amount of solar power, in kilowatt-hours/per year, that any rooftop would be able to produce if it had panels on it.”
photo credit: fabiocomparelli
