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Learn how to estimate the solar power potential for a neighborhood or community.
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Collected the necessary GIS data.
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Used GIS software to develop the solar power potential map
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Large-scale solar energy came to Richmond in 2018 with the installation of Indiana Municipal Power Agency’s solar park, and the City expected to increase the number of installations thereafter. In 2019, the City of Richmond joined the Environmental Resilience Institute’s Resilience Cohort to measure, manage, and track the community’s greenhouse gas emissions. After the City conducted a greenhouse gas inventory and developed a climate action plan, they entered the final stage of the cohort program in February 2021 to implement projects from the plan. Leading up to this work, staff decided to get a head start by helping the community understand the amount of energy that could be produced using solar. They decided to develop a solar power potential map.
The creation of Richmond’s solar map was initially based on an ArcGIS lesson, which teaches how to determine the amount of solar radiation a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. receives throughout the year. After completing the online lesson, the GIS coordinator reproduced the same project, on a larger scale, tailored to the City of Richmond.
To produce Richmond’s map, staff with GIS experience collected the yearly solar radiation, LiDAR hillshade, and building footprints from IndianaMap, a website that provides free statewide GIS data.
The City of Richmond did not spend any funding on developing the solar map other than staff time. However, using ArcGIS Pro requires purchasing a license to use their GIS application, which Richmond already had. Prices vary, depending on the type of capabilities and applications needed, between $700 and $3,800 for businesses and $100 for individuals.
While the project was not specifically developed to address equity and justice, the City of Richmond can use this tool to assist low-income and marginalized residents, who are much less likely to have rooftop solar than white residents, access solar energy.
Furthermore, when analyzing the GIS data, the map developer noticed there are higher amounts of impervious surfaces in the city’s low-income areas. Low-income and other marginalized communities will be disproportionately burdened by the rising temperatures and increased precipitation without measures designed to alleviate these impacts in an equitable manner.
The solar power potential map provides useful information the City can use as it tries to increase the community’s solar energy production. The map visually illustrates the feasibility and suitability of adding solar panels across town by identifying the roof’s slope, orientation, and estimated solar radiation per building. For example, the larger roofs in suburban areas had more solar generation potential than those in urban areas because of roof size.
Overall, this project was inexpensive and easily reproduceable. The City of Richmond is excited for the platform to assist neighborhoods transitioning from fossil-fuels to on-site solar energy as a method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions community-wide. In June 2021, the City published the finalized solar map on their website.
The map developer reflected that there were few technical challenges throughout the project. Internet connectivity issues sometimes caused tools to crash and the program to restart, delaying processing time.
Staff also found that while the instructions from the ArcGIS lesson were intuitive enough, previous GIS experience was helpful to replicate the project for the Richmond community. Furthermore, the project can be more or less difficult depending on the amount of detail, geographical scale, and size of the area being analyzed.
Matt Evans, the GIS Coordinator for the City of Richmond, gave the following advice:
"This data provides powerful insight for our local government and individual property owners to better understand the possible solar energy production on rooftops across Richmond. This process is reproducible across Indiana thanks to easily accessible statewide GIS data and should be usable by many communities with GIS capabilities.”
These questions are designed to inspire readers—especially those wanting to learn broadly about climate change solutions—to think critically about the case study on this page and encourage deeper, more meaningful conversations. A list of ERIT case studies that include discussion questions can be found on the Resilient Communities Case Studies page.
Matt Evans
GIS Coordinator
Department of Infrastructure and Development, City of Richmond
mevans@richmondindiana.gov
