(helios.southlondonscientific.com)
I'm wondering if it should fall back to a more general shading approach when no OSM building footprint is available, to avoid false precision? My street has a gap in the houses on the other side from mine, so picking the right location matters for the calculation.
You could also try Inspire Index polygons instead of OSM? These correspond to actual lease/freehold boundaries.
This is my issue with this sort of thing. Am I going to have this kit in 7 years? Or would I upgrade to better stuff at the technology improves?
Panel lifetime is very high. The scope for efficiency improvement is not huge (unless there is a cost breakthrough in multi band photon capture). It's not a car, phone, or computer. It's more like the rest of the house electric infrastructure.
I had my rooftop solar over 10 years ago and basically intend to leave it until some maintenance issue forces action.
(Also, the kit secondhand value is hard to determine but far from zero; 30-50% maybe?)
The panels have a ~25 year warranty though [2] (at which point, they should still produce ~80% of rated output), so it’s entirely possible to just leave them in place. At a certain age (~55-60), these are the last PV panels you’ll need to buy, as they’ll potentially outlive you (assuming developed country life expectancy).
[1] https://magnifina.com/articles/rooftop-solar-yield/
[2] https://www.energysage.com/solar/solar-panel-warranties/
I don't see what your issue is.
Very interesting stuff and quite a large undertaking! I'm often impressed by the quality of the UK's open data.
Please consider making the source code available. I’d love to make something similar for your friends across the pond (in Canada).
Would be nice to add this as an extra data point when comparing. Are you open to collaborating at all?
Also do you actually need a balcony or can you hang these out of a window somehow? Very few houses in the UK have balconies.