Kind of. Free satellite data starts at 10m resolution per pixel. You will not get a clear signal on small rooftop solar. Same for balcony solar or other near perpendicular installations.
replyAt 10m the only thing you can reliably detect is large scale deployments. If you want to do better than that you need paid data which is prohibitively expensive at large scales.
Current or most recent data is very expensive, indeed, but researchers as well as governments should have access to data that allows them to measure the rates of change across time and extrapolate them, no?
replyYou can do it quite reliably from aerial imagery at ~7cm resolution or so. For urban areas (if you have access to the data) you can pull out the type of panel and its size and get a reasonably good estimate on power output.
replyAlso doable maybe a bit less reliably with high res satellite (30cm res).
Depending on how remote the area the data can be a bit out of date (years even)
That is false. Temperature moderation is an important issue and in hot locations solar efficiency may be maximized when trees provide partial shade.
replycan't you just track solar panel sales?
replyIn some countries, but not in others. Also, panels sold ≠ panels installed (as I can confirm by looking into my own garage...)
replyPretty much, yes.
replye.g. "Across the Caribbean, people have installed roughly twice as many solar panels as official statistics would suggest. ... China ... has exported far more panels to the Caribbean than have officially been installed."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/caribbean-nation...