1. Find your home or building of interest's solar energy potential by:
Using the address search bar.
Clicking the locate button to zoom to your current location.
Panning and zooming the map using the mouse.
2. Click on your home or building of interest. The results are displayed in the sidebar on the left of the screen.
Don't see your home or building of interest on the map? Use the draw tools in the left hand sidebar to outline your building's roof and for an assesment of the building's solar potential.
This website was developed as part of the OKI Solar Ready II program. Solar Ready II is funded by a Rooftop Solar Challenge award through the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, which supports efforts to cut red tape, reduce "plug-in " costs, and make solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources. As part of Solar Ready II, OKI partnered with 10 regional planning councils across the country in streamlining local government permitting and planning processes, exploring financing options, and identifying other best practices to better facilitate the installation of solar energy. The purpose of the OKI Solar Map is to provide general information about the estimated annual solar energy potential on building rooftops in the OKI region. The intention of this tool is to provide the user a general understanding of the solar energy available.
IMPORTANT NOTICE The OKI Solar Map is no substitute to an on-site assessment performed by a certified professional. The OKI Solar Map is a remote evaluation tool, based on topographical surveys, information models, and simulation methodologies, and results may be unavailable or inaccurate due to issues including, but not limited to, partial sample obsolescence, excess of vegetation or non-modeled obstructions, incomplete or corrupted databases, incomplete or corrupted GIS layers, undetectable partial obstructions based on survey resolution, and force majeure. OKI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data or the applicability of the information provided by the OKI Solar Map.
Buildings with a total roof area less than 230 sq ft. are considered too small for a PV array.
Buildings with a usable roof area of less than 230 sq ft. are considered to be unsuitable for a PV array as they cannot support a 3kW system. (See Glossary > Usable roof area).
Portions of a roof receiving less than 1,146 kWh/sq meter/year of solar insolation are considered too shaded for solar.
Buildings whose average roof slope is less than 22 degrees are assumed to be flat roofed buildings.
Cost of electricity: We use an average across the residential, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors of 9.16 cents per kilowatt hour for Ohio, 7.54 cents per kilowatt hour for Kentucky, and 8.63 cents per kilowatt hour for Indiana. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2013 Average Retail Price for Electricity.
System Efficiency: Calculations are based on an assumed 15% percent efficiency, which is appropriate for standard crystalline Silicon PV modules.
Shading is considered but is based off of LiDAR data that may not reflect present conditions.
Weather is considered (cloud cover, etc) based off of Typical Meteorological Year data collected at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport.
Aspect - the direction a slope (or roof plane) is facing.
Complex Roof - a building with 6 or more roof planes.
Flat Roof - average slope of the roof is less than 22 degrees. LiDAR - a remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light. (wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar)
PV - solar photovoltaic (PV) systems use photovoltaic cell technology to harness radiant energy from the sun and create electricity. These cells are packaged into panels that are placed on rooftops (or mounted on the ground).
Roof plane - a portion of a roof that is at least 75 sq ft, has one aspect, and is geographically distinct from other portions of the roof sharing that same aspect.
Simple Roof - a building with 5 or less roof planes.
Slope - the steepness of a roof pitch or the angle in degrees past horizontal from 0 to 90 of a roof pitch.
System Size - the maximum potential output of the PV system in kilowatts as determined by the amount of usable roof area and the amount of PV panels that usable roof area can support.
Usable roof area - portions of the roof whose aspect is generally east, south, or west facing (aspects between 67.5 and 292.5 degrees) and receive adequate sunshine throughout the year (receive greater than 1,146 kWh/sq meter/year of solar insolation). A flat roofed building’s usable roof area does not consider aspect but does reduce usable area by a rate proportional to the usable roof area to account for racking hardware and safety clearances around the perimeter of the building. A simple building’s usable roof area sums all roof planes meeting criteria outlined above. A complex building’s usable roof area is the total of the single largest roof plane meeting criteria outlined above.
