The launch of a new solar mapping website from Boston start-up, Mapdwell, shows New York City has the potential to host over 11 GW of solar panel capacity in ‘high-yield’ rooftop projects.
The solar map provides a bird’s-eye view all five boroughs of the city, enabling homeowners and businesses to assess how much electricity can be produced on their rooftops, the financial payoff of going solar and how much their carbon footprint can be reduced.
Called Solar System, the online map was created by a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), key members of which went on to found the spin-off company Mapdwell. Since successfully mapping all 17,000 rooftops in Cambridge, Mass. in 2013, Mapdwell have created highly detailed solar maps of nine U.S. cities. Solar System NYC is the company’s latest – and largest – city launch.
The New York Project identifies more than one million buildings suitable for the installation of solar panels; which, if carried out, would generate more than 13 million megawatt-hours (MW/h) each year in solar electricity.
“This is over $40 billion in local business that could provide enough clean, renewable energy to over 1.2 million American homes while offsetting carbon emissions equivalent to planting 185 million trees”, explained Eduardo Berlin, CEO at Mapdwell. “Market conditions today include lowered hardware costs, tax credits, and incentive programs that make New York a hot solar market.”
Solar System works by building an electricity yield map that calculates the amount of photovoltaic energy that can be generated from roofs over a typical year in a specified area – Brooklyn, for instance. Rooftops are then colour-coded by solar potential: excellent, good, poor, and no solar at all.
While most solar maps assume all roofs are flat, the Mapdwell system takes into account pitched rooftops with shady areas and provides hourly solar radiation and temperature fluctuation updates over a full year.
Finally, an online financial model adds up state and federal tax credits and incentives for PV installations.
Mapdwell’s Solar System was featured in Wired Magazine’s “Most Amazing, Beautiful and Viral Maps of 2013”, and was recognised at this year’s SUSTANIA100 awards as one of 100 leading sustainability innovations from around the world.
