How much solar is installed on municipal buildings? How much could be installed?
As we discovered in writing ILSR’s Public Rooftop Revolution report—the latest in the Rooftop Revolution series—nobody had the answer, for almost every city we contacted.
But in the course of the research, three cities answered our call to analyze their rooftop solar potential specifically for public property. Kansas City (MO), Minneapolis, and New York City all responded to our call for data, read on below and see our maps as well.
The maps are based on a citywide survey of solar suitability on buildings and it includes city-owned and school district-owned buildings. Of the 250 buildings analyzed, 185 were identified that were suitable for solar (136 city-owned, 49 belonging to the school district). According to the city’s building dataset, “this analysis included roof size, pitch and shading. No analysis was done of the structural capacity or limitations of buildings, which may impact solar suitability in some cases.” Furthermore, no analysis was provided for on-site energy consumption, which can be a limiting factor for solar installations under net metering rules.
Kansas City, Missouri
Our first map is for the city of Kansas City, MO, where an analysis by the regional government agency—Mid-America Regional Council—suggests the city could put 70 megawatts on public building roofs across town.
All told, we estimated that 5,000 megawatts of solar could be installed relatively quickly on the public buildings of 201 cities (of 100,000 people or more) in the states where cities can contract to buy electricity directly from a non-utility company.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Our second map is for the city of Minneapolis, MN, where analysis by Tom Anderson, a Masters student at the University of Minnesota, suggests the city could put 18 megawatts on public building roofs across town.
All told, we estimated that 5,000 megawatts of solar could be installed relatively quickly on the public buildings of 201 cities (of 100,000 people or more) in the states where cities can contract to buy electricity directly from a non-utility company.
New York City, New York
Our third map is drawn from New York City’s public solar potential map showing all buildings in the city. Public buildings can’t be picked out with the software interface, but in conversations with city and City University of New York officials in 2015, ILSR found that public buildings in New York could host approximately 411 megawatts of solar power.
This article originally posted at ilsr.org. For timely updates, follow John Farrell on Twitter or get the Democratic Energy weekly update.
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