Digital Solution to Estimate Solar Power Potential of Rooftops in City of Belgrade

Global warming is one of the main issues of today. The work to slow it down or even better stop it is getting more and more intense all over the world. Many countries are moving towards replacing the use of traditional fossil fuels with clean energy alternatives. Solar energy is a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels and has a low impact on the environment. It has been increasingly used recently because the price of solar panels has decreased, and the cost of electricity has increased significantly. In Serbia, rooftop solar power plants were a rarity until 2022, but the adoption of an appropriate regulatory framework enabled citizens to produce green energy for self-consumption. In order to increase the use of solar energy in Serbia, a solar 3D urban model of the part of the municipality in Belgrade was developed for the calculation and visualization of the solar energy potential of buildings rooftops. We received LiDAR data from the city of Belgrade, on the basis of which we created a 3D model and calculations. We have used Digital Surface Model (DSM) and Building Footprints layer to create solar radiation layer which takes into account the position of the sun throughout the year and at different times of day. The model accounts for the obstacles, such as nearby trees and buildings that may block sunlight, as well as the slope and orientation of the rooftops. Suitable roofs in terms of surface area, slope and orientation were selected and it was obtained that this part of the municipality in Belgrade can produce almost 20000 MWh per year.