Google's New Tool Says Nearly 80 Percent of Roofs Are Sunny Enough for Solar Panels

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603866/googles-new-tool-says-nearly-80-percent-of-roofs-are-sunny-enough-for-solar-panels/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Google’s New Tool Says Nearly 80 Percent of Roofs Are Sunny Enough for Solar Panels[/font]

[font size=4]The company’s Project Sunroof lets you look up your house and helps you decide whether to invest in your own clean power plant.[/font]

by Michael Reilly | March 15, 2017

[font size=3]If you’ve ever thought about getting solar panels on your house but worried about whether it was worth it, Google may now have just the thing to help you decide.

In a new expansion of its Project Sunroof, the company has built 3-D models of rooftops in all 50 states, looked at the trees around people’s homes, considered the local weather, and figured out how much energy each house or building can generate if its owners plunk down for some panels.

Top among the findings is that nearly 80 percent of all buildings the team modeled are “technically viable” for solar panels, meaning they catch enough rays each year to make generating electricity feasible. That sounds pretty good, and a post on Google’s blog goes on to highlight the rooftop-solar potential for several cities. Houston comes out on top, with as much as 18,940 gigawatt-hours of free energy from the sun just waiting to be generated each year (Google says that a gigawatt-hour translates to about a year’s supply of electricity for 90 homes).

Sunroof lets you search for your house, suggests how large a solar array you might consider putting on your roof, and estimates how much energy it will generate—as well as how much it would cost to lease or buy the panels.

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[unblock]

1. sorry, project sunroof hasn't reached that address yet.

bookmarking, for... eventually....

[drray23]

2. Same here.

I guess if you are not in california you dont count.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Here's the map

https://blog.google/products/maps/shedding-light-solar-potential-all-50-us-states/

(As you can see, they haven’t done all of California yet either.)

[drray23]

4. That does not seem correct.

I am in virginia smack dab into the orange area. Maybe they focused on towns and cities. My house is on a rural road.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. I suspect you are correct

i.e. They have not checked out your rural road.

[NNadir]

5. So what? It still remains, as of 2017, a trivial and essentially worthless form of energy.

Half a century of similar cheering and speculation hasn't been meaningful.

The solar industry doesn't produce enough energy, I suspect, to power all the computers and servers on the planet dedicated to saying how great it is, or more properly, could be if and only if this or that happens.

This or that has a record over half a century of not happening.

The solar industry didn't become significant; it isn't significant; and it won't be significant.

[hunter]

7. I'm skeptical about some of the solar panels my neighbors have had installed.

It seems the solar companies with their various leasing scams schemes will install panels on any roof that's not actually facing due North.

There's a lot of arm waving about production curves and such, but that's not of any benefit to the individual household.

And if trees are shading your panels a few hours each day that's not good either.

If I ever install solar I'm going to own it outright and it's going to be facing south.

But for now I've still got a few more things I can do to reduce our electrical demand.

No, I haven't yet convinced my wife we don't need a refrigerator. She pays no heed to my personal experiences as a kid and young adult living without a refrigerator.

Practically speaking there's no reason to "save" leftover food in a refrigerator if you've got dogs and goats. As vegetarians and mostly-vegetarians, we don't even need the dogs and goats; a compost heap will do. Food for the garden.