Full Title: PV Mapper Final Technical Report
Author(s): David Solan, Dan Ames, and Randy Lee
Publisher(s): U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
Publication Date: November 1, 2014
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The period of performance for the Department of Energy funded project, Sunshot: Development of an Open Source Utility Scale Solar Project Siting Tool (DE-EE005351), ran from September 2011 through September 30, 2014. The outcome of the project exceeded the Statement of the Project Objectives, which included the following:
To develop the tool on an open-source platform;
To integrate the appropriate data sets and layers;
To include a measure of social risk and public acceptance;
To enable customization of variable weights;
To provide a free and accessible platform to download the tool; and
To provide a sustainability plan to ensure future relevance of the tool.
The project team consisted of members from Boise State University, the Idaho National Laboratory, Brigham Young University, and the University of Idaho. Through extensive consultation and meetings with a Project Steering Committee and industry input, the team created PVMapper and PVMapper Site Designer. The open source tools provide an extensible, customized siting comparison software suite from the macro- (comparison of selected sites and land area for utility-scale facilities – PVMapper) to the micro-scale for individual site layouts (PVMapper Site Designer). Both tools are available at http://PVMapper.org/.