Raising the Roof : Making Contemporary Housing Developments Solar Ready

Abstract

With a growing population and the inevitable increase in demand for energy, cities planners and developers need to design communities that are sustainable and resilient to meet the ever growing challenges of the 21st century. Solar energy is a viable attribute to our current energy production and, as this research indicates, provides an opportunity to move towards a renewable energy system. Solar ready homes can help bridge the transition from non-renewable to renewable energy sources, by provide infrastructure that has the ability to exploit solar resources. The overall objective of this research is to quantify the potential solar energy generated from roofs in a typical contemporary housing development built in southern Ontario through simulations. Further analysis showed that small simplified modification to the original roof typography can increase solar electrical production in some cases as high as 47%. Furthermore, by pooling the solar electrical production of a cluster of homes that represent a block in a typical contemporary neighbourhood, simulation were conducted and showed that significantly portion of the blocks electrical consumption could be offset through roof top solar generation.