Bittersweet Team 2020
SolarSolve
51% of Americans cannot put solar panels on their roof for a variety of reasons—maybe they rent, reside in an apartment, or live in neighborhood with a strict homeowner’s association. Community solar is becoming an increasingly popular option for that 51%. Neighborhoods and counties can pool their money and pay for clean energy generated by solar panels in a nearby open field. However, finding sites for these community solar arrays is difficult and painstaking. Team Bittersweet set out to design a website that would search and rank potential community solar sites in Maryland using GIS data like topography, floodplains, tree coverage, etc. They did not finish the website due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they were able to create a weighted map of Maryland with clustered sites to aid analysts in pinpointing optimal community solar sites.
Related Tech Notes
- SolarSolve by Oliver Marsden
Project Poster
