Rank the whole estate by installable kWp before you pick the sites to visit.
Rooftop Solar Suitability rates every roof and car park canopy in your portfolio for usable area, orientation and obstruction from very-high-resolution imagery, and sends back kWp per site, not square metres.
- GSD
- ≤0.3 m (VHR)
- Cadence
- Annual
- Platform
- VHR satellite / aerial
- Spectral
- RGB
The job today
Where the desk screen runs out
A tender lands with a long list of retail units or distribution sheds. Someone opens each building in the aerial view, traces the roof, takes off the rooftop units and rooflights, leaves a setback along the parapet and works the rest into kWp. It is careful work and there is one building at a time of it. By the time the bid window closes, the shortlist is the sites you already knew, and the car parks never got looked at.
The desk screen, step by step
Tracing the roof
- Desk screen and walk-down
- You open each building in the aerial view and draw the roof planes by hand.
- With Rooftop Solar Suitability
- Roof planes and canopy footprints come back as polygons for every address on your list, in one pass.
Taking off obstructions
- Desk screen and walk-down
- You mark rooftop units, rooflights and plant one by one and size the clear area around them.
- With Rooftop Solar Suitability
- Obstructions are cut out of each polygon and the setback is applied, so the usable roof area is already net.
Orientation
- Desk screen and walk-down
- You read the azimuth off the outline and note which planes face south and which do not.
- With Rooftop Solar Suitability
- Each plane carries an orientation class and a shading flag from neighbouring plant or buildings.
Turning area into kWp
- Desk screen and walk-down
- You apply your own density rule to the cleared area, site by site, in a spreadsheet.
- With Rooftop Solar Suitability
- Each site has an installable kWp figure, with the roof and canopy shares shown separately.
Building the shortlist
- Desk screen and walk-down
- You pick the sites you know are good, then desk-screen the rest as time allows.
- With Rooftop Solar Suitability
- The whole portfolio comes ordered by installable kWp, so the shortlist starts at the top of a list that covers every site.
The site visit and the design
- Desk screen and walk-down
- Sites that pass the desk screen get a visit, a structural survey and a string layout.
- With Rooftop Solar Suitability
- The same visit, aimed at sites that earned it.
- Still yours
- The site visit, the roof condition and loading survey, the string layout and the PPA terms.
What you get
What comes back for the portfolio
Spreadsheet
Per-site kWp table
One row per site: installable kWp, usable roof area, canopy area and orientation class. Opens in a spreadsheet and goes straight into the shortlist you already keep.
GIS layer
Roof and canopy polygons
The outlines of each roof plane and canopy, with obstructions cut out and the setback applied. Opens in your GIS, so your design engineer can start from them.
Ranked table
Ranked portfolio shortlist
The sites in order of installable kWp, with the flags that explain why a site sits where it does.
How it works
Pilot timeline against your bid cycle
Pick a slice of the estate that matches an upcoming round of PPA bids. Run the pilot on that slice, compare it with the desk screen you have or would have done, then widen it to the rest of the portfolio.
Portfolio in
An address list or a boundary file for the sites in the pilot.
Imagery pass
We pull the latest clear VHR pass for each site, satellite or aerial.
Roofs and canopies scored
Planes and canopies are outlined, obstructions and setbacks taken out, orientation classed and area sized to kWp.
Table and polygons out
You get the ranked kWp table and the polygons, ready for the shortlist.
Yearly re-rank
One new pass a year updates the ranking where roofs have changed.
Limits
What the old method still does better
A person at a desk with the building in front of them can see a plant room or a roof light that sits under a plane we read as clear. A site visit sees the roof surface, its condition and what it is made of.
Not a design
Installable kWp is a siting estimate. It is not a string layout, a yield figure or a structural check.
Roof condition and loading
Membrane wear, structural load and the age of the roof cannot be seen from above and are not rated. That survey comes after the shortlist.
Resolution floor
At 0.3 m a pixel is about a foot across. Rooftop units, rooflights and canopy edges are large enough to see. Small vents and pipework do not, and are not traced.
Clouds and the yearly pass
Optical imagery needs a clear pass. A site under cloud can wait for the next window. The rating is a snapshot of the last pass, not a live feed.
Roofs and canopies only
Ground-mount, floating and agricultural sites are a different job and not covered here.
Who it's for
Switch if
- You are an origination or development team ranking a retail or logistics estate before PPA bids
- Your desk screen is the bottleneck between the tender and the shortlist
- You are a property owner deciding which of your buildings to offer to a developer first
Stick with the desk screen if
- You have a handful of sites and know them all
- You need a design-grade layout or yield for a single building
- You are rating the roof's condition or loading rather than its area
FAQ
Questions before a pilot
Does this replace the desk screen?
For the first pass over a portfolio, yes. The site visit, the structural survey and the design still happen, on the sites that make the shortlist.
How do we check it against our own numbers?
Send a few sites you have already traced, without your figures, and compare our outlines and kWp with yours.
Is installable kWp a design?
No. It is an estimate of what the usable area could take, for ranking. The string layout is yours.
What happens if a site is under cloud?
Optical imagery needs a clear pass. The site waits for the next one, and the rest of the table is not held up.
Does it cover car parks as well as roofs?
Yes. Parking canopies and covered bays are outlined and sized alongside the roofs.
How current is the rating?
As current as the last pass over that site. Roofs that have changed since the last pass are picked up at the next one.
Will it open in our systems?
It comes as a spreadsheet and as a GIS layer. We don't write into your CRM or design tool.
Who owns the imagery and the results?
Ownership and licence terms are agreed in writing when you start the pilot. If your legal team needs them earlier, ask.
How is it bought and priced?
It depends on how many sites and which imagery is used. Tell us the size of the portfolio and we will scope the pilot to it.
Get your portfolio ranked.
Send us a slice of the estate and we will show you what a pass returns.
Start a pilot