[Talk-GB] Solar Panels

[Gregory Williams]

Steven,

Definitely still mapping them. I see that Jeremy mentioned my
comparison site below. The rate of mapping has slowed a bit since the
quarterly project a while back, but is still making good progress.

As to the PV vs solar thermal, it's not always possible to tell from
aerial imagery. Solar thermal installations tend to be quite small,
typically the size of one or two PV modules. So installations appearing
larger than this in aerial imagery are more likely to be PV. Also, I
think that solar thermal installations tend to be more southerly
facing, whereas PV installations can have a bit more flexibility
(though are still most effectively the more southerly they face).

Ultimately a ground survey is best. Perhaps you could add a note for
installations where you're not certain. Then, even if you're not local,
another local mapper could go and check.

Regards,

Gregory

On Sun, 2022-01-09 at 17:53 +0000, Steven Hirschorn wrote:
> So I've read through the Wiki pages now and besides a mention
> somewhere to distinguish between thermal and photovoltaic panels, I
> don't see any advice on how to tell them apart from aerial imagery?
> The Overpass query above (thanks!) shows a few thermal panels though
> even on a single roof, similar looking panels can have been tagged as
> a mixture of thermal and PV. eg on this
> roof: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=21/51.6480733/-0.5313908
> and here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=21/51.6480733/-0.5313908
> Is there a tell-tale sign that something is thermal rather than
> photovoltaic? Or if I tag them all as PV will someone check them?
> 
> 
> On Sun, 9 Jan 2022 at 12:19, Jeremy Harris <jgh at wizmail.org> wrote:
> > On 09/01/2022 10:14, Steven Hirschorn wrote:
> > > While working on tagging other things, I often see rooftop solar
> > > installations that aren't tagged yet. I did a quick search
> > > through old
> > > talk-gb messages but still have a couple of questions:
> > > - are we still mapping them?
> > 
> > See http://osm.gregorywilliams.me.uk/solar/
> > 
> > Useful overpass query: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s//10iv
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