NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy

Operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy

Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308

Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic 

Technical Potential in the United 

States: A Detailed Assessment

Pieter Gagnon, Robert Margolis, 

Jennifer Melius, Caleb Phillips, and 

Ryan Elmore

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Technical Report

NREL/TP-6A20-65298

January 2016
NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy

Operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy

Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

15013 Denver West Parkway

Golden, CO 80401

303-275-3000 • www.nrel.gov

Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic 

Technical Potential in the United 

States: A Detailed Assessment

Pieter Gagnon, Robert Margolis, 

Jennifer Melius, Caleb Phillips, and 

Ryan Elmore

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Prepared under Task No. SS13.1040

Technical Report

NREL/TP-6A20-65298

January 2016
NOTICE

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iii

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Solar Energy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy’s

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under contract number DE-AC36-08GO28308. 

The authors would like to thank Mike Gleason, Carolyn Davidson, Sean Ong, Rebecca Hott, Steve 

Wade, Eric Boedecker, Paul Denholm, Donna Heimiller, Michael Bolen, Laura Vimmerstedt, and 

Paul Donohoo-Vallett for their reviews and input. We would like to thank Adnan Zahoor, Britney 

Sutcliffe, and Julian Abbott-Whitley for their assistance in processing data. Lastly, we would like to 

thank Jarett Zuboy for his diligence and attention to detail while editing this report. 
iv

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List of Acronyms

AC alternating current

ACS American Community Survey

ANOVA analysis of variance

CBECS Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey

DC direct current

DHS U.S. Department of Homeland Security

EIA U.S. Energy Information Administration

GIS geographic information system(s)

GW gigawatt

GWh gigawatt-hour

kW kilowatt

kWh kilowatt-hour

Lidar light detection and ranging

NCES National Center for Education Statistics

NLCD National Land Cover Database

NREL National Renewable Energy Laboratory

PV photovoltaic

RMSE root-mean-square error

SAM System Advisor Model

TMY3 Typical Meteorological Year 3

TWh terawatt-hour

W watt

ZIP code Zoning Improvement Plan code
v

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Executive Summary 

This report quantifies the technical potential of photovoltaic (PV) systems deployed on rooftops in 

the continental United States, estimating how much energy could be generated by installing PV on 

all suitable roof area. The results do not exclude systems based on their economic performance, and

thus they provide an upper bound on potential deployment rather than a prediction of actual 

deployment.

Although methods have been developed to estimate rooftop PV technical potential at the individual 

building level, previous estimates at the regional and national levels have lacked a rigorous 

foundation in geospatial data and statistical analysis. This report helps fill this gap by providing a 

detailed data-driven analysis of U.S. (national, state, and ZIP-code level) rooftop PV availability 

and technical electricity-generation potential. First, we use light detection and ranging (lidar) data, 

geographic information system (GIS) methods, and PV-generation modeling to calculate the 

suitability of rooftops for hosting PV in 128 cities nationwide—representing approximately 23% of

U.S. buildings—and we provide PV-generation results for a subset of these cities. Second, we 

extend the insights from this analysis of areas covered by lidar data to the entire continental United 

States. We develop two statistical models—one for small buildings and one for medium and large 

buildings—that estimate the total amount of roof area suitable for hosting PV systems, and we

simulate the productivity of PV modules on the roof area to arrive at the nationwide technical 

potential for PV.

Our analysis of the trends in the suitability of rooftops for hosting PV systems reveals important 

variations in this key driver of rooftop PV technical potential that have not been captured by

previous approaches. Figure ES-1 shows the results—from our statistical modeling grounded in 

lidar data—for the percentage of small buildings that are suitable for PV in each ZIP code in the 

continental United States. In the figure we can identify regional trends in the suitability of small 

building rooftops, with high densities of suitable small buildings in California, Florida, and the 

West South Central census division. Such trends are also critical to estimating PV technical 

potential at finer resolution, and our report illustrates this with a high-resolution analysis of 11 

representative cities.

Figure ES-2 shows the annual energy generation potential from rooftop PV as a percentage of each 

state’s electricity sales in 2013. The estimates of energy generation are based on the rooftop 

suitability of small, medium, and large buildings as well as specific roof orientations, local solar 

resources, PV system performance assumptions, and building footprints.1

 1 Because the medium and large building estimates are available only at the state level, the combined results are 

presented at that level.
vi

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Figure ES-1. Percentage of small buildings suitable for PV in each ZIP code

Figure ES-2. Potential rooftop PV annual generation from all buildings as a percentage of each 

state’s total electricity sales in 2013
vii

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure ES-2 shows that California has the greatest potential to offset electricity use—its rooftop PV 

could generate 74% of the electricity sold by its utilities in 2013. A cluster of New England states 

could generate more than 45% because these states’ low per-capita electricity consumption offsets 

their below-average solar resource. Washington, with the lowest population-weighted solar resource 

in the continental United States, could still generate 27%. Some states with below-average solar 

resource (such as Minnesota, Maine, New York, and South Dakota) have similar or even greater 

potential to offset total sales compared to states with higher-quality resource (such as Arizona and 

Texas). 

The difference between Florida and other South Atlantic states illustrates the interplay between 

variables that affect technical potential. Florida can offset 47% of its total consumption despite 

having an average household consumption of 130% of the national average. This is largely 

explained by significantly below-average electricity consumption outside of the residential sector, 

which makes the state’s total per-capita electricity sales slightly lower than the national average. In 

contrast, the other South Atlantic states range from a potential 23% to 35% of electricity offset 

owing to lower average rooftop suitability (see Figure ES-12

), slightly lower quality solar resource,

and higher per-capita total electricity sales.

Table ES-1 shows our aggregate results.3 The total national technical potential of rooftop PV is 

1,118 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity and 1,432 terawatt-hours (TWh) of annual energy 

generation. This equates to 39% of total national electric-sector sales, and it is significantly greater 

than a previous National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimate of 664 GW of installed capacity 

and 800 TWh of annual energy generation (Denholm and Margolis 2008). The difference can be 

attributed to increases in module power density, improved estimation of building suitability, higher 

estimates of the total number of buildings, and improvements in PV performance simulation tools

that previously tended to underestimated production.

Although only 26% of the total rooftop area on small buildings (those with a footprint smaller than 

5,000 ft2

) is suitable for PV deployment, the sheer number of buildings in this class gives small 

buildings the greatest technical potential. Small building rooftops could accommodate 731 GW of 

PV capacity and generate 926 TWh/year of PV energy, which represents approximately 65% of 

rooftop PV’s total technical potential. Medium and large buildings have a total installed capacity 

potential of 386 GW and energy generation potential of 506 TWh/year, which represents 

approximately 35% of the total technical potential of rooftop PV.

These results are sensitive to assumptions about module performance, which is expected to continue 

improving over time. For example, this analysis assumed a module efficiency of 16% to represent a 

mixture of various technology types. If a module efficiency of 20% were assumed instead, which 

corresponds to current premium systems, each of the technical potential estimates would increase 

by about 25% above the values stated in this report. Furthermore, our results are only estimates of 

the potential from existing suitable roof planes, and they do not consider the immense potential of 

ground-mounted PV. Actual generation from PV in urban areas could exceed these estimates by 

 2 Figure ES-1 shows suitability results for only small buildings because more than 99% of medium and large buildings 

have at least one roof plane suitable for a PV system.

3 Because the relative magnitudes of the results are a strong function of the square footage used as a cutoff between 

building classes, these results should not be presented without that information.
viii

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installing systems on less suitable roof area, mounting PV on canopies over open spaces such as 

parking lots, or integrating PV into building facades. 

Because our results are estimates of technical potential, they do not consider what would be 

required to use all the potential PV-generated energy. In practice, the integration of a significant 

quantity of rooftop PV into the national portfolio of generation capacity would require a flexible 

grid, supporting infrastructure, and a suite of enabling technologies.

Table ES-1. Estimated Suitable Area and Rooftop PV Technical Potential by Building Class

Building Class

(Building Footprint)

Total Suitable 

Area (Billions 

of m2

)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential 

(TWh/year)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential (% of 

National Sales)

Small (< 5,000 ft2) 4.92 731 926 25.0%

Medium (5,000–25,000 ft2) 1.22 154 201 5.4%

Large (> 25,000 ft2) 1.99 232 305 8.2%

All Buildings 8.13 1,118 1,432 38.6%

Many opportunities exist for expanding on the data, methods, and results from this report. Our base 

data set can be combined with numerous other data sets—such as insolation data, market data, and 

end-use electricity consumption data—to provide more precise and actionable information than has 

been available previously. To that end and to encourage municipalities, utility providers, solar 

energy researchers, and other PV stakeholders to use the data for their own purposes, we have 

posted supporting data and documentation of the methods we used to perform our analysis on the 

NSRDB Data Viewer website.

4 The models developed here also can be applied generally in areas 

where lidar data may not be available, both for making estimates of rooftop areas for arbitrary 

geographies and in stochastic simulations where statistically representative buildings are needed.

 4 See maps.nrel.gov/pv-rooftop-lidar.
ix

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction........................................................................................................................................... 1

2 Literature Review.................................................................................................................................. 3

3 Processing Lidar Data To Estimate Rooftop Area Suitable for PV Deployment............................ 4

3.1 Input Data...................................................................................................................................... 5

3.2 Shading.......................................................................................................................................... 7

3.3 Tilt................................................................................................................................................. 8

3.4 Azimuth......................................................................................................................................... 8

3.5 Application of Suitability Criteria................................................................................................. 9

4 Analyzing the PV Potential of Lidar-Covered Cities ....................................................................... 11

4.1 Classification of Suitable Roof Area by Orientation and Building Size ..................................... 11

4.2 Trends in Rooftop Suitability for Different Building Sizes ........................................................ 12

4.3 Trends in Rooftop Tilt and Azimuth ........................................................................................... 12

4.4 Simulation of PV Productivity on Suitable Rooftop Area .......................................................... 12

4.5 Results for Select Cities: Small Buildings .................................................................................. 14

4.6 Results for Select Cities: All Buildings....................................................................................... 18

5 Modeling to Extend Small-Building PV Suitability and Technical Potential Estimates 

Nationwide........................................................................................................................................... 21

5.1 Modeled Estimates of National Small Building Rooftop Suitability .......................................... 21

5.2 Estimated National PV Technical Potential from Small Buildings............................................. 22

5.3 Model Validation......................................................................................................................... 27

6 Modeling to Extend Medium- and Large-Building PV Suitability and Potential Estimates 

Nationwide........................................................................................................................................... 30

6.1 Modeled Estimates of Total Developable Area from Medium and Large Building Rooftops 

Nationwide .................................................................................................................................. 30

6.2 Estimated National PV Technical Potential from Medium and Large Buildings ....................... 30

7 Estimated National PV Technical Potential for All Buildings ........................................................ 34

8 Conclusions and Future Research Directions ................................................................................ 38

8.1 Data for Public Use ..................................................................................................................... 39

8.2 Future Work ................................................................................................................................ 39

References................................................................................................................................................. 41

Appendix A: Rooftop Tilt and Azimuth Model........................................................................................ 43

Appendix B: Small Building Suitability Model ....................................................................................... 48

B.1 Predictive Regression Model......................................................................................................... 53

B.2 Spatial Correlation ......................................................................................................................... 57

B.3 Regression Kriging ........................................................................................................................ 59

B.4 Prediction of the Number of Buildings.......................................................................................... 62

Appendix C: Rooftop Plane Area Model................................................................................................. 63

Appendix D: Combined Suitable Area Model......................................................................................... 69
x

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List of Figures

Figure ES-1. Percentage of small buildings suitable for PV in each ZIP code................................................. vi

Figure ES-2. Potential rooftop PV annual generation from all buildings as a percentage of each state’s total 

electricity sales in 2013................................................................................................................ vi

Figure 1. Types of renewable energy potentials................................................................................................ 1

Figure 2. Major steps for determining the suitability of roof area for PV ......................................................... 4

Figure 3. Lidar data coverage ............................................................................................................................ 6

Figure 4. Example of hourly shading and sunlight availability ......................................................................... 7

Figure 5. Example of average daily hours of sunlight ....................................................................................... 8

Figure 6. Nine azimuth classifications............................................................................................................... 8

Figure 7. Rooftop azimuths included in final suitable planes data set............................................................... 9

Figure 8. Tilt classes........................................................................................................................................ 11

Figure 9. Percent of small buildings with at least one plane suitable for PV by ZIP code in 11 select cities.. 16

Figure 10. Small building average relative production for 11 select cities...................................................... 17

Figure 11. Percentage of small buildings suitable for PV in each ZIP code in the continental United States. 22

Figure 12. Average rooftop PV production per small building at the ZIP-code level ..................................... 23

Figure 13. U.S. solar resource.......................................................................................................................... 24

Figure 14. Small building average relative production at the state level ......................................................... 25

Figure 15. Histogram of error process for each azimuth and tilt category for small building 

area predictions........................................................................................................................... 28

Figure 16. Annual rooftop PV generation potential for medium and large buildings ..................................... 31

Figure 17. Total annual energy generation potential from rooftop PV for all building sizes.......................... 37

Figure 18. Potential rooftop PV annual generation from all buildings as a percentage of state total 2013 

electricity sales............................................................................................................................ 37

Figure A-1. Fraction of suitable rooftop planes in each tilt and azimuth category for small, medium, and 

large buildings............................................................................................................................. 44

Figure A-2. Fraction of flat suitable rooftop planes for small, medium, and large buildings.......................... 44

Figure A-3. Fraction of small buildings with flat planes grouped by locale type............................................ 45

Figure A-4. Probability distribution functions for each combination of azimuth and tilt for small buildings. 45

Figure B-1. Distribution of suitable percentage among small buildings (within states).................................. 48

Figure B-2. Suitable percentage among small buildings (within states) and 95% confidence intervals ......... 48

Figure B-3. Distribution of the percentage of small suitable buildings by ZIP code....................................... 49

Figure B-4. Percentage of small buildings containing a flat area with at least 10 m2 suitable for PV, by 

census division and aggregated locale description...................................................................... 50

Figure B-5. Census divisions........................................................................................................................... 54

Figure B-6. Spatial autocorrelation of percentage of buildings that are small and suitable for PV, with data 

aggregated into ZIP codes, both before and after regression fitting ........................................... 58

Figure B-7. Fitted semivariogram using an exponential semivariogram model (top) and residual error of 

regression Kriging model (bottom)............................................................................................. 60

Figure B-8. Performance of Regression Kriging model for Colorado............................................................. 61

Figure C-1. Distributions of plane sizes and plane numbers for small buildings ............................................ 63

Figure C-2. Exponential fits............................................................................................................................. 64

Figure C-3. Observed size of suitable planes for buildings with 1–32 planes in lidar data ............................. 67

Figure C-4. Distribution of large building suitable areas (total usable rooftop area) in lidar data compared to 

model-calculated mean (green line) and assumed constant value in prior NREL studies (red 

line) ............................................................................................................................................. 67

Figure C-5. Distribution of medium building suitable areas (total usable rooftop area) in lidar data compared 

to model calculated mean (green line) and assumed constant value from prior NREL studies 

(red line)...................................................................................................................................... 68
xi

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List of Tables

Table ES-1. Estimated Suitable Area and Rooftop PV Technical Potential by Building Class ................viii

Table 1. Assumptions for PV Performance Simulations ............................................................................ 13

Table 2. Technical Potential of Rooftop PV from all Building Sizes within Boundaries of Cities 

Completely Covered by Lidar Data ....................................................................................... 19

Table 3. Estimated Rooftop PV Technical Potential for Small Buildings by State .................................... 26

Table 4. Relative Error for Each Tilt/Azimuth Combinationa .................................................................... 28

Table 5. Estimated Rooftop PV Technical Potential of Medium and Large Buildings by State ................ 32

Table 6. Total Estimated Technical Potential (All Buildings) for Rooftop PV by State ............................ 35

Table 7. Nationwide Estimated Suitable Area and Technical Potential by Building Class........................ 38

Table A-1. National Average Tilt/Azimuth Distribution for Planes on Large Buildings........................... 46

Table A-2. National Average Tilt/Azimuth Distribution for Planes on Medium Buildings....................... 46

Table A-3. National Average Tilt/Azimuth Distribution for Planes on Small Buildings........................... 46

Table A-4. Principle Component Loadings for Tilt/Azimuth..................................................................... 47

Table B-1. Suitable Percentage of Small Buildings by Locale/Division .................................................... 51

Table B-2. Model Tuning and Performance, Final (Reduced) Model Marked with an Asterisk................ 55

Table B-3. Examples of Outliers in Unweighted Regression ..................................................................... 56

Table B-4. ANOVA on Weighted Model ................................................................................................... 56

Table B-5. ANOVA on Reduced (Final) Model......................................................................................... 56

Table B-6. Predictive Accuracy of Predicted Variables for National Potential Model .............................. 62

Table C-1. Building Planes: Small Buildings............................................................................................. 63

Table C-2. Building Planes: Medium Buildings......................................................................................... 65

Table C-3. Building Planes: Large Buildings............................................................................................. 66
1

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1 Introduction

Technical potential is a metric that quantifies the generation available from a particular 

technology in a given region; it considers resource availability and quality, technical system 

performance, and the physical availability of suitable area for development. An assessment of 

technical potential provides an established reference point for a renewable technology. For 

example, in 2012, an analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) calculated 

the technical potential of 10 technologies for the United States (Lopez et al. 2012). 

Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between technical potential and three other types of potential 

often used to discuss energy technologies: resource potential, economic potential, and market 

potential. Resource potential, the largest of the three types, is the entire amount of energy in a 

particular form for the region under consideration. Technical potential, which is the topic of this 

report, estimates how much of that total resource could actually be captured, given physically 

available area and technology performance without considering economics. Economic potential 

is then the quantity of the possible generation that would result in a positive return on the 

investment of constructing the systems (Brown et al. 2015). Lastly, market potential estimates 

the quantity of energy expected to be generated from the deployment of a technology into the 

market, considering the impact of factors such as policies, competition with other technologies, 

and the rate of adoption on the actual deployment of a technology.

Figure 1. Types of renewable energy potentials

Source: Brown et al. 2015
2

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This report focuses on quantifying the technical potential of photovoltaic (PV) systems deployed 

on existing suitable roof area in the United States.

5 Rooftops provide a large expanse of untapped 

area for solar energy generation, and onsite distributed generation could potentially reduce the 

costs and losses associated with the transmission and distribution of electricity. Several existing 

tools and methods can be used to estimate the solar energy potential of a single home or building, 

and these tools are being actively developed to enable firms to market solar systems to individual 

building owners. Although there have been some detailed city- and state-level estimates (Bright 

and Burman 2010; Frantzis et al. 2007; Zhang et al. 2009), a limited number of national-level 

assessments of rooftop PV technical potential have been published to date (Chaudhari et al. 

2004; Denholm and Margolis 2008; Paidipati et al. 2008). Further, most previous estimates have 

relied on rough engineering rules of thumb in estimating the fraction of rooftop area suitable for 

hosting PV systems.

To help fill these gaps, we provide a detailed data-driven analysis of U.S. (national, state, and 

ZIP-code level) rooftop PV suitability and technical electricity-generation potential. First, we use

light detection and ranging (lidar) data, geographic information system (GIS) methods, and PVgeneration modeling to calculate the PV suitability of rooftops for 128 cities nationwide—

representing approximately 23% of U.S. buildings—and we provide PV-generation results for a 

subset of these cities. Next, we extend the insights from this analysis of areas covered by lidar 

data to the entire continental United States. We develop two statistical models—one for small 

buildings and one for medium and large buildings—and we populate them with geographic 

variables that correlate with rooftop PV suitability. We evaluate the accuracy of the models by 

comparing model estimates of rooftop suitability with analysis results in areas covered by the 

lidar data. Finally, we convert rooftop suitability into PV generation potential, sum the estimates 

for small, medium, and large buildings, and present nationwide results for rooftop PV technical 

potential. Our results could benefit a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including local 

municipalities, solar energy researchers, planners, utility companies, and policymakers.

 5 The technical potential of rooftop PV is the amount of energy that could be generated by installing PV modules on 

all the roof area suitable for development. In contrast, resource potential would include all solar energy falling on 

rooftops, economic potential would include all energy generated if all economically viable sites were developed, and 

market potential would estimate energy generation considering factors such as maximum system sizes set by 

utilities.
3

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2 Literature Review

A thorough literature review of more than 70 documents by NREL (Melius et al. 2013) 

identified the existing methods for estimating the fraction of rooftop area suitable for PV

deployment. These include three main approaches: constant-value methods, manual selection, 

and GIS-based methods. 

Constant-value methods for estimating rooftop suitability simply assume a certain percentage of 

building rooftop area is suitable for hosting PV. For example, a series of reports by Navigant and 

NREL (Chaudhari et al. 2004; Denholm and Margolis 2008; Frantzis et al. 2007; Paidipati et al. 

2008) estimated that 22%–27% of residential rooftop area and 60%–65% of commercial rooftop 

area was suitable for PV. These values were applied to the total building stock to arrive at an 

estimated area available for PV deployment. This method is easy to use and provides results

quickly, which makes it attractive to many researchers. However, it often has had little validation 

and does not consider specific nuances in the buildings, such as heating, ventilating, and air 

conditioning systems on large commercial buildings or differences in the tree canopy in 

neighborhoods with newer housing versus neighborhoods with older housing.

Alternatively, at the finest resolution, manual selection evaluates buildings individually to 

determine the total suitable area and potential energy generation. In this method, sources such 

as aerial photography, Google Earth, and NREL’s PVWatts® Calculator provide visual clues to 

rooftop PV installation locations (Ordonez et al. 2010; Bright and Burman 2010; Zhang et al. 

2009; Anderson et al. 2010). Manual selection provides the most precise estimate of the total 

rooftop area available for PV, but it is time consuming and cannot be replicated easily on a large 

scale. 

The most robust methods for large-scale estimation of suitable rooftop area are based on GIS. 

These methods are more precise than constant-value methods, and they can handle much larger 

data sets than manual selection allows. Melius et al. (2013) provide examples of the many ways 

GIS-based methods have been used to derive rooftop suitability (e.g., Hofierka and Kanuk 2009;

Compagnon 2004; Santos et al. 2011), and they develop and validate a suitability-estimation 

method based on the best practices found in the literature. We use this method for our analysis of 

lidar -covered cities, as shown in Sections 3 and 4.
4

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3 Processing Lidar Data To Estimate Rooftop Area 

Suitable for PV Deployment

In this section, we present an overview of our approach to estimating the rooftop area that is 

suitable for PV. The major steps are illustrated in Figure 2. The inputs to the analysis are lidar

and building footprint data sets. These data are processed to determine the shading, tilt, and 

azimuth of each rooftop at a horizontal resolution of 1 m

2

. A set of criteria is then applied to 

determine what roof area is suitable for PV deployment. These results can then be aggregated to 

determine the total quantity of rooftop area suitable for PV systems at the building, ZIP code, 

utility service territory, state, or national levels of resolution. The following subsections provide 

details of each step. Complete documentation of every step can be found on the NSRDB Data 

Viewer website.

6

Figure 2. Major steps for determining the suitability of roof area for PV

 6 The file containing the documentation can be accessed at maps.nrel.gov/pv-rooftop-lidar by selecting the “?” 

button to the right of the lidar Covered Areas raster listing and following the “Lidar Processing Methods” link at the 

bottom of the dialogue box that appears. 
5

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3.1 Input Data

The lidar data used in our analysis were obtained from the U.S. Department of Homeland 

Security (DHS) Homeland Security Infrastructure Program for 2006–2014. For each of the 128 

cities in the data set, DHS provided (1) lidar data in raster format at 1-m by 1-m resolution and 

(2) a corresponding polygon shapefile of building footprints. The raster data are based on the 

reflective surface return (first return) of the lidar data, which correlates to the elevation of the 

first object detected and creates a digital surface model for each city.

The DHS data set also includes detailed data for about 26.9 million buildings and 7.7 billion m2

of rooftop area, or about 23% of U.S. buildings (EIA 2009; EIA 2012). The area covered, shown 

in Figure 3, represents about 122 million people or 40% of the U.S. population. 
6

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Figure 3. Lidar data coverage
7

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3.2 Shading

Our first step in processing the lidar data was to run a shading simulation on the digital surface 

model of each city.

7 Figure 4 provides an example of output of the simulation, showing how the 

shadows move throughout a single day. Seasonal variation in shading was captured by running 

the simulation for four days: March 21, June 21, September 21, and December 21. The result was 

the number of hours of sunlight each square meter of roof area received on the simulated days.8

The hours of sunlight for the four days were averaged to determine an average number of hours 

of daily sunlight for each square meter, as shown in Figure 5. We used this metric to exclude 

roof area that is excessively shaded (see Section 3.5). 

Figure 4. Example of hourly shading and sunlight availability

 7 The standard ArcGIS Hillshade tool (available in the Spatial Analyst extension, ESRI 2014) was used for the 

shading simulation. 

8 For each month, we determined a different threshold of illumination required to classify a cell as being in sunlight;

March requires 60% illumination (values > 152), June requires 70% illumination (values > 178), September requires 

60% illumination (values > 152), and December requires 50% illumination (values > 127).
8

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure 5. Example of average daily hours of sunlight

3.3 Tilt

The orientation of a roof plane is important for determining its suitability for PV and simulating 

the productivity of installed modules. We determined the first component of orientation—the 

tilt—for each square meter of roof area within our lidar data set. To be consistent with many 

roofers’ and PV installers’ definition of flat roofs, we defined all roof area with a tilt less than 

9.5 degrees as “flat”. By comparing actual and predicted hours of sunlight for a subset of roof 

areas, we determined that our predictions underestimated the illumination of roofs with low 

angles of tilt. We determined, through iteration, that applying a multiplier of 1.5 to the estimated 

illumination of all flat roofs compensated for this bias. 

3.4 Azimuth

We also determined the second component of roof plane orientation—the azimuth (aspect)—for

each square meter of roof area. Each square meter was categorized into one of nine azimuth 

classes, shown in Figure 6, where tilted roof areas were assigned one of the eight cardinal and 

primary intercardinal directions; area with a tilt less than 9.5 degrees was classified as flat. 

Figure 6. Nine azimuth classifications

Flat

N

NE

E

SE

S

SW

W

NW

67.5°

247.5°

202.5° 157.5°

112.5°

292.5°

337.5° 22.5°
9

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

The azimuth file was then run through a variety function, which returned the number of different 

values in the 3 × 3 neighborhood surrounding each square meter of roof area. Area bordered by 

more than three unique azimuths was excluded from the data set to remove areas of changing 

roof orientations and excessively noisy data.

We then used the azimuth values to identify roof planes by assuming contiguous areas of 

identical azimuth class were a unique plane, and we aggregated each of the individual square 

meters of roof area into polygons representing contiguous roof planes. For each of the individual 

roof planes, the ArcGIS Zonal Mean tool was applied to the tilt raster to determine the roof 

plane’s mean tilt. The data set produced through this process consisted of a raster giving a single 

tilt value for each unique roof plane.

3.5 Application of Suitability Criteria

To determine the total roof area suitable for PV, we excluded any area that did not meet criteria 

for shading, tilt, azimuth, and a minimum amount of contiguous roof area. To determine what

roof area met the shading criteria, a minimum allowable number of hours of sunlight was 

determined on a regional basis using the System Advisor Model (SAM), which was developed 

by NREL in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories and the U.S. Department of 

Energy. For each city, SAM was used to calculate the number of hours a rooftop would need to 

be in sunlight to produce 80% of the energy produced by an unshaded system of the same 

orientation. Roof area that did not meet this shading criterion was excluded.

Roof planes were also excluded based on their orientation. All roof planes facing northwest 

through northeast (292.5–67.5 degrees; see Figure 7) were considered unsuitable for PV and 

excluded. All tilt values greater than 60 degrees were removed from the data set, based on the 

recommendation of PV installers.

Figure 7. Rooftop azimuths included in final suitable planes data set
10

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

We also required a PV-suitable roof to have at least one contiguous plane with a projected 

horizontal footprint of 10 m2

or greater that also meets the shading, tilt, and azimuth criteria.

Doing so provides sufficient area to install a 1.5-kW system, assuming a 15%-efficient panel.

We selected this minimum size threshold to represent a conservative lower-end estimate of 

viable PV system sizes, based on current PV performance and historical patterns in reported PV 

system sizing. Specifically, we reviewed reported system sizes for small PV systems (< 10 kW) 

through 2013 (Barbose et al. 2014) and determined that 96% of systems in this class were larger 

than 1.5 kW.

We calculated the area of each suitable roof plane, both as a projected area consistent with the

building footprint and as a tilted area to determine the actual amount of developable area.

Ultimately, we used the tilted-area values to calculate the installed PV capacity.

The final data set contains the suitable area of every roof plane in the 128 cities covered by lidar

data. This data set can be aggregated to the level of a building, ZIP code, utility service territory, 

state, or any other region to develop summary statistics describing the suitability of the 

geographic region for rooftop PV.
11 

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

4 Analyzing the PV Potential of Lidar-Covered Cities

This section describes our process for converting suitable roof area values to PV capacity and

generation potential for the 128 cities covered by our lidar data, and it provides sample results 

from that data set. In Section 5 (small buildings) and Section 6 (medium and large buildings), we 

apply these insights and the same technical assumptions to produce national PV potential 

estimates using statistical models informed by the lidar data.

4.1 Classification of Suitable Roof Area by Orientation and 

Building Size

We categorized each roof plane into one of 21 orientation classes based on its tilt and azimuth. 

We defined a set of four tilt classes and a “flat” class, as shown in Figure 8. We modeled all roof 

planes within a given tilt class using a PV panel at the midpoint angle. For example, any roof 

plane with a tilt value between 47.4 and 60.0 degrees was placed in the same 53.7-degree tilt 

class. Because the northwest, north, and northeast azimuths were defined as unsuitable, we 

defined five non-flat azimuth classes (Figure 7). 

Figure 8. Tilt classes

To better understand the suitability and technical potential of buildings of various sizes, we 

subdivided all 26.9 million buildings into three classes according to the planar area of their

footprints:

Small: < 5,000 ft2 (94% of buildings, 58% of rooftop area in our sample)

Medium: 5,000–25,000 ft2 (5% of buildings, 18% of rooftop area in our sample)

Large: > 25,000 ft2 (1% of buildings, 24% of rooftop area in our sample)

Finally, we aggregated the total suitable roof area in each class and building type to the ZIP-code 

level. This enabled analysis, predictions, and ultimately the presentation of results at fine spatial 

resolution.
12

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

4.2 Trends in Rooftop Suitability for Different Building Sizes

Based on the lidar data, small buildings—with their more diverse architectures (e.g. roof tilt) and 

more shadowing from trees and neighboring buildings—show substantially more variability in 

rooftop PV suitability than do medium and large buildings. Within the 128 cities covered by our 

lidar data, 83% of small buildings have a suitable PV installation location, but only 26% of the 

total rooftop area of small buildings is suitable for development.

9 There is some variability 

among states, with central and southeastern states showing the greatest fraction of suitable 

rooftops. Appendix B provides additional detail on rooftop suitability for small buildings.

A very high fraction of medium and large buildings have at least 10 m2 of roof area that is 

suitable for a PV system. Across the lidar data set, more than 99% of large and medium 

buildings have at least one qualifying roof plane. The percentage of total rooftop area that is 

suitable is also high relative to small buildings, with 49% suitable for medium buildings and 66% 

for large buildings. Across all building sizes, 32% of total rooftop area is suitable for PV 

deployment. 

4.3 Trends in Rooftop Tilt and Azimuth

Throughout our entire lidar sample, flat planes are very common on large buildings (93% 

of planes on large building are flat) and medium buildings (74%) but less common on small 

buildings (26%). Most other suitable rooftop planes fall into the 28-degree tilt category, and 

steep rooftops (54 degrees) are an order of magnitude less common than the next category 

(41 degrees). Azimuths facing east, west, and south are most common, particularly among the 

28-degree category of rooftops. These azimuths correspond to the alignment of buildings on a 

cardinal street grid. These observations appear to hold for small, medium, and large buildings 

alike.

Large cities have the most flat-roofed small buildings, with the fraction decreasing in more 

urbanized areas. Large cities also have a more homogeneous tilt/azimuth distribution than do 

small suburbs. Additional detailed calculations and statistics on roof plane orientation are 

provided in Appendix A.

4.4 Simulation of PV Productivity on Suitable Rooftop Area

Our next step was to simulate the productivity of PV modules covering the suitable roof area

within the 21 different orientation bins for every ZIP code in the lidar data set. These PV 

performance simulations were executed using SAM (version 2015.1.30). SAM is a performance 

and economic model designed to facilitate decision making and analysis for renewable energy 

projects (Gilman and Dobos 2012). It uses hourly meteorological data, a PV performance model, 

and user-defined assumptions to simulate the technical performance of a solar installation. 

The solar resource and meteorological data used for this analysis are from the Typical 

Meteorological Year 3 (TMY3) data set of the National Solar Radiation Database (Wilcox and 

 9 Because of obstructions, the tilt of a small fraction of roof area within the lidar data set was unknown. Statements 

about the total percentage of suitable roof area therefore assume the obstructed rooftops follow the same distribution 

of tilt as the rest of the stock. 
13

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Marion 2008). The TMY3 data set includes hourly representative profiles for 1,001 stations 

throughout the United States. For a given simulation, we used the TMY3 station profile closest 

to the boundary of the ZIP code under consideration.

10 Because the TMY3 stations are 

frequently located in or near major cities, the average distance from a ZIP code to a station for 

the lidar data set was 9 kilometers. 

In addition to the solar resource varying geographically, the technical performance of PV 

systems can vary depending on the equipment used and design choices of the installer. For this 

analysis, a set of technical assumptions was made to represent the average performance of PV 

systems as they are being installed in 2015, shown in Table 1. We used these values in SAM, in 

conjunction with the TMY3 solar resource and meteorological profiles, to determine the 

electrical output of PV systems.

11

Table 1. Assumptions for PV Performance Simulations

PV System Characteristics Value for Flat Roofs Value for Tilted Roofs

Tilt 15 degrees Midpoint of tilt class (Figure 8)

Ratio of module area to roof area 0.70 0.98

Azimuth 180 degrees (south facing) Midpoint of azimuth class (Figure 7)

Module power density 160 W/m2

Total system losses 14.08%

Inverter efficiency 96%

DC-to-AC ratioa 1.2

a A system’s direct current to alternating current (DC-to-AC) ratio is the ratio of the nameplate 

capacity of the PV modules to the AC-rated capacity of the inverters. For example, a system with 

a DC-to-AC ratio of 1.2 would have 8.33 kW of inverters installed for every 10 kW of nameplate 

PV capacity.

The power density value used in this analysis corresponds to a module with approximately 16% 

efficiency. This value is the median module efficiency from approximately 48,000 systems 

installed during 2014 (Barbose and Darghouth 2015). This value was selected to represent an 

installed mixture of monocrystalline-silicon, multicrystalline-silicon, and thin-film modules, as 

opposed to universal installation of premium systems. 

The losses from soiling, shading, snow, wiring, and other sources are captured in the total system 

losses parameter, which was chosen to remain at the SAM default value for this analysis. The 

inverter efficiency value also remained at the SAM default level. These levels have been selected 

to be representative of typical systems. A DC-to-AC ratio of 1.2 was selected based on existing 

literature on the optimal sizing of inverters to minimize the cost of PV-generated electricity 

(Mondol et al. 2009). 

 10 When simulations were performed at state-level resolution—as is described in Section 6 for medium and large 

building predictions—the PV performance values used were a population-weighted average of the PV performance 

values for each TMY3 station within the state.

11 Documentation of the mathematical models used by SAM can be found internally within the program, under the 

“Help” section. For more information, see sam.nrel.gov. 
14

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

For flat roofs, the ratio of module area to roof area was assumed to be 0.7 to reflect the row 

spacing necessary to incur only approximately 2.5% losses from self-shading for south-facing 

modules at 15-degree tilt. For tilted roofs, the value was assumed to be 0.98 to reflect 1.27 cm of 

spacing between each module for racking clamps.

12

Using the above assumptions, we ran simulations in SAM to estimate the installed capacity 

and annual energy generation per square meter of PV systems in the 21 orientations described 

in Sections 3 and 4. These productivity values were then multiplied by the total suitable roof 

area, accounting for tilt, within each orientation bin. The results were summed across the 21 

orientation bins to arrive at total production values for a given ZIP code. Appendix C provides 

details about the distribution of rooftop plane sizes in the data.

4.5 Results for Select Cities: Small Buildings

To provide additional detail on the various patterns of PV potential, we mapped results for 11 

geographically diverse cities. We chose these cities based on (1) good coverage of the ZIP

codes within each city’s boundaries and (2) how the cities illustrate the data variation 

geographically. Figure 9 shows the percentage of small buildings that have suitable roof planes

at the ZIP-code level. Only small building suitability is mapped, because over 99% of medium 

and large buildings have at least one roof plane suitable for PV deployment. Figure 9 and Figure 

10 both show the nominal city boundaries, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau 2013 

TIGER/Line Shapefiles. 

Figure 9 shows only a weak trend of high building density driving down the suitability of small 

buildings. Most of the highly developed downtown ZIP codes in the 11 cities have suitability 

similar to the suitability in other ZIP codes within the city boundaries, although some suburban 

ZIP codes outside city boundaries do show higher levels of suitability. 

Figure 10 shows the average relative production of small buildings, which is defined here as the

annual electricity generation potential for an average small building as a percentage of the 

average household annual electricity consumption in that city’s state (EIA 2009). Because the 

national building stock is estimated to contain 78 million single-family households but only 3.2 

million commercial buildings with a footprint less than 5,000 ft2

, Figure 10 can be interpreted as 

approximately comparing the potential electricity production of an average single-family 

household in a given ZIP code with the state average household electricity consumption.

13 This 

metric should not be confused with the ability of small building PV to offset a state’s total 

electricity sales, which is given in Section 5. Furthermore, because this metric includes buildings 

unsuitable for PV and presents an average for each ZIP code, it should not be interpreted as 

 12 Representative spacing between modules for racking clamps was obtained from a SnapNrack Series 100 UL 

installation manual, a SunFix Plus Installation Guide, and an IronRidge Roof Mountain System Design Guide. 

These racking systems are meant to illustrate existing products; mentioning them does not constitute an 

endorsement.

13 Because the consumption value is a state average, it is constant across all ZIP codes for a given city and therefore 

does not capture household-level variation in consumption that would be driven by socioeconomic status, building 

size, or other household-specific factors. Therefore, the average relative production value mapped in Figure 10

should only be interpreted as a simple estimation of the potential ability for a group of households in a given ZIP 

code to offset its consumption.
15

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

predicting the productivity of individual buildings, which would vary significantly within each 

ZIP code. 

Figure 10 shows strong regional variation in the average relative production of small buildings.

The average productivity of households within a ZIP code is driven by average suitability, 

household footprint, and solar resource. The average relative production is then also a function of 

the state average household consumption. For example, high-quality solar resource and low state 

average household energy consumption lead to a high average relative production for small 

buildings in Los Angeles. However, the outcome of the interaction among these four drivers is 

not always obvious. For example, although Colorado has low state average household 

consumption (7.4 MWh/year or 65% of the national average), low suitability, moderate solar 

resource, and moderate household sizes lead to generally low average relative production for 

small buildings within the city boundaries of Denver. In contrast, despite Florida’s relatively 

high state average household consumption of 14.8 MWh/year (130% of the national average) and 

low state average square footage per housing unit (85% of the national average), Miami’s high 

suitability and good solar resource result in generally high average relative production for small 

buildings. This demonstrates that one or even two metrics are not sufficient for predicting the 

ability of aggregations of households to offset their consumption.

Although it is generally understood that a household with adequate roof area can generate greater 

than 100% of its annual energy consumption with PV, the variation in rooftop suitability and 

building characteristics makes it less obvious whether that trend holds for groups of buildings. 

This analysis suggests that in many parts of the United States ZIP-code-sized aggregations of 

households can collectively generate enough electricity to offset their expected annual

consumption. However, notable exceptions include Atlanta and Portland, which have relatively 

few ZIP codes in which annual energy generation would match expected consumption as 

estimated by state average household consumption.
16

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure 9. Percent of small buildings with at least one plane suitable for PV by ZIP code

in 11 select cities
17

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure 10. Small building average relative production for 11 select cities

(average small building PV production / state average household consumption)
18

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

4.6 Results for Select Cities: All Buildings

To summarize the technical potential of the lidar regions at an accessible resolution level, the 

ZIP code results were aggregated for 47 cities whose ZIP codes all have at least some coverage

by the DHS lidar data and have ZIP code boundaries that approximately align with city 

boundaries (U.S. Census Bureau 2013 TIGER/Line Shapefiles). In contrast to the previous 

section, which only explored data for small buildings, the results here aggregate the productivity 

of all building sizes. Table 2 gives the estimated total installed capacity and annual energy 

generation potential for the 47 cities. Many cities have lidar data that extend beyond official city 

boundaries. Zip codes outside the city boundaries were not included in calculations of the total 

capacity and energy estimates.

To enable a simple estimation of the ability of these cities to offset their electricity consumption 

with PV, each state’s total electric-industry sales were distributed to its cities by population 

weight. For example, Florida has 222 TWh of annual sales, and 1.5% of Florida’s population 

lives within the boundaries of Tampa; therefore, the estimated consumption of Tampa is

3.33 TWh. This approximation will overestimate the potential for PV to meet a city’s actual 

consumption for cities that consume more per capita than the state average, and it 

will underestimate the potential for cities that consume less. 

Owing to their size and building density, the cities with the largest potential installed capacity are 

Los Angeles and New York, with 9.0 GW and 8.6 GW, respectively—illustrating that, even in 

dense urban areas, shading from buildings does not prevent appreciable installation of PV. Even 

with large potential capacities in these dense cities, however, PV cannot meet the same 

percentage of city electricity demand as can be met in some smaller cities. For example, 

Syracuse and New York City have similar solar resources, but Syracuse can generate 57% of its 

associated consumption with rooftop PV, whereas New York City can generate only 18%. The 

total percentage of roof area suitable for PV is similar in the two cities (48% in Syracuse and 

46% in New York City), suggesting the difference is driven by low roof area per capita in New 

York City. 

Mission Viejo has relatively high per capita production, driven in part by a low proportion of 

multi-unit households (which constitute only 15% of total housing units, as compared to an 

average of 30% throughout the rest of California), resulting in a high quantity of residential roof 

area per resident. When combined with a relatively low average state per capita consumption

and high quality solar resource, the city can generate 88% of its estimated consumption using 

rooftop PV.

The values in Table 2 for installed capacity and annual generation are the technical potential of 

existing rooftops that meet our criteria for suitability. The potential to install PV capacity within 

any of these cities could go beyond these estimates by deploying PV on less suitable roof area, 

mounting PV on canopies over open spaces such as parking lots, or integrating PV into building 

facades. Furthermore, continued increases in PV module performance and innovations in racking 

could increase the technical potential in these cities over time. 
19

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Table 2. Technical Potential of Rooftop PV from all Building Sizes within Boundaries of Cities 

Completely Covered by Lidar Data

City Installed Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual Generation 

Potential (GWh/year)

Ability of PV to meet 

Estimated

Consumption

Mission Viejo, CA 0.4 587 88%

Concord, NH 0.2 194 72%

Sacramento, CA 1.5 2,293 71%

Buffalo, NY 1.2 1,399 68%

Columbus, GA 1.1 1,465 62%

Los Angeles, CA 9.0 13,782 60%

Tulsa, OK 2.6 3,590 59%

Tampa, FL 1.4 1,952 59%

Syracuse, NY 0.6 657 57%

Amarillo, TX 0.7 1,084 54%

Charlotte, NC 2.6 3,466 54%

Colorado Springs, CO 1.2 1,862 53%

Denver, CO 2.3 3,271 52%

Carson City, NV 0.2 386 51%

San Antonio, TX 6.2 8,665 51%

San Francisco, CA 1.8 2,684 50%

Little Rock, AR 0.8 1,099 47%

Miami, FL 1.4 1,959 46%

Birmingham, AL 0.9 1,187 46%

St. Louis, MO 1.5 1,922 45%

Cleveland, OH 1.7 1,881 44%

Toledo, OH 1.4 1,666 43%

Providence, RI 0.5 604 42%

Worcester, MA 0.5 643 42%

Atlanta, GA 1.7 2,129 41%

New Orleans, LA 2.1 2,425 39%

Hartford, CT 0.4 404 38%

Baltimore, MD 2.0 2,549 38%

Bridgeport, CT 0.4 435 38%

Detroit, MI 2.6 2,910 38%

Portland, OR 2.6 2,811 38%

Milwaukee, WI 2.1 2,597 38%

Boise, ID 0.5 760 38%
20

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

City Installed Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual Generation 

Potential (GWh/year)

Ability of PV to meet 

Estimated

Consumption

Des Moines, IA 0.8 1,026 36%

Cincinnati, OH 1.0 1,176 35%

Norfolk, VA 0.8 1,047 35%

Wichita, KS 1.1 1,537 35%

Newark, NJ 0.6 764 33%

Philadelphia, PA 4.3 5,289 30%

Springfield, MA 0.3 370 29%

Chicago, IL 6.9 8,297 29%

St. Paul, MN 0.8 903 27%

Pittsburgh, PA 0.9 907 27%

Minneapolis, MN 1.0 1,246 26%

Charleston, SC 0.3 407 25%

New York, NY 8.6 10,742 18%

Washington, DC 1.3 1,660 16%
21 

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

5 Modeling to Extend Small-Building PV Suitability 

and Technical Potential Estimates Nationwide

In the previous section, we presented results for regions where we have lidar coverage. The 

remaining sections show how we leveraged these data to build predictive models and estimate 

PV’s technical potential for larger regions where lidar coverage is incomplete or non-existent. 

The overall model, described in its complete form in Appendix D, is composed of three major 

component models:

Azimuth-tilt (Appendix A)

Rooftop suitability (Appendix B)

Rooftop plane area (Appendix C)

These models predict average and upper and lower bound estimates for suitable rooftop area. 

Upper and lower estimates include the combined model uncertainty at the 95% confidence level. 

This section exclusively presents the results for small buildings, predicted at the ZIP-code level 

for the entire nation. The observation that, within the regions covered by our lidar data, 58% of 

all roof area came from small buildings, suggests that small buildings contribute significantly to 

the total national potential of rooftop PV. Medium and large buildings are discussed in Section 6.

Previous estimations of U.S. rooftop PV technical potential focused on estimating results at a 

regional or national level (Denholm and Margolis 2008). However, here we find significant

variation in the percentage of small buildings that are suitable across the various census divisions

and locale types. Our predictive model leverages this variability—along with additional 

attributes such as ground cover classification, population density, and spatial characteristics—to 

tune our predictions at fine resolution. 

5.1 Modeled Estimates of National Small Building Rooftop Suitability

We used our statistical model and building-count data from the 2011 U.S. Census American 

Community Survey (ACS) to calculate the percentage of small buildings that are suitable for 

PV by ZIP code throughout the continental United States. The resulting map is presented in

Figure 11. Where actual lidar data exist (as shown in Figure 3), the map shows actual data.14

Developable area for rooftop PV is, by its nature, highly correlated geographically with 

population. Most potential for PV energy generation is condensed in the relatively small fraction 

of the country’s land space that is developed. National maps such as the one shown in Figure 11, 

therefore, overemphasize the weight of rural regions if used to approximate visually the impact 

of a given statistic on the magnitude of total national rooftop PV potential. Nonetheless, such 

maps can be useful for observing broad geographic trends. For example, the low suitability of 

northern Minnesota has little impact on the state’s total technical potential, but it does illustrate 

the effect of heavy forestation on rooftop suitability.

 

14 For the small fraction of ZIP codes with no predictor information, the model assumed the predictor of the ZIP 

code’s nearest neighbor. This assumption had little impact on the results, because the ZIP codes with missing 

predictor information covered less than 0.01% of the country’s population.
22

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure 11 confirms the existence of meaningful regional trends in small building suitability, as

suggested previously in our detailed city maps (Figure 9). The highest densities of highsuitability ZIP codes are in southern California, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. The percentage of 

small buildings that are suitable tends to be higher in regions without significant tree canopy 

coverage; for example, the relatively unforested southeast portion of Washington has a higher 

percentage of suitability than the northeastern region of the state. 

Figure 11. Percentage of small buildings suitable for PV in each ZIP code in the continental

United States

The results shown in Figure 11 are used as a key input in calculating rooftop PV technical 

potential. Furthermore, the figure demonstrates the importance of using a high spatial resolution 

for small buildings when estimating rooftop PV technical potential. Capturing the considerable 

variation in rooftop suitability is critical for understanding how rooftop PV potential varies on 

local, regional, and national levels. Previous estimates of rooftop PV technical potential typically 

used a single national value or a few regional values to estimate suitability nationwide. Figure 11

represents a significant step forward in understanding the suitability of small building rooftops 

for PV deployment at fine geographic resolution throughout the United States.

5.2 Estimated National PV Technical Potential from Small Buildings

We used the complete model described in Appendix D—which combines statistical models for 

rooftop suitability, plane size, tilt, and azimuth—to estimate the total amount of suitable rooftop 

area in each of the 21 orientation classes for small buildings, on a ZIP-code level across the 

country. The same technical assumptions and simulation approach described in Section 4 for the 

lidar-covered cities were used to estimate the installed-capacity and energy-generation potential

of modules installed on the predicted small building rooftop area nationwide.
23

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure 12 shows the average estimated rooftop PV production per small building at the ZIP-code 

level.

15 For comparison, Figure 13 shows the simulated energy generation from generic 

hypothetical PV panels tilted at latitude, illustrating the varying intensity of the U.S. solar 

resource. Broadly speaking, average small building production strongly correlates with the solar 

resource; however, there exists significant local variation driven by average household footprint 

and suitability. For example, the simulated average production in Florida is 12,100 kWh/year per 

small building (130% of the national average), owing to an above-average solar resource, but it

ranges from 5,300 kWh/year to 30,100 kWh/year on a ZIP-code level because of variation in 

suitability and building footprint.

Differences in suitability can drive differences in total productivity between regions with similar 

solar resource. For example, lower suitability in the South Atlantic states (see Figure 11) leads to 

lower average small building productivity than on the Florida peninsula, despite a solar resource

of similar quality.

Figure 12. Average rooftop PV production per small building at the ZIP-code level

 15 This average includes non-suitable small buildings. For example, if half of the buildings in a given ZIP code had 

an annual PV generation of 10,000 kWh/year, and the other half were completely unsuitable for PV deployment, the 

average small building PV generation potential of that ZIP code would be 5,000 kWh/year.
24

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Figure 13. U.S. solar resource

Figure 14 shows the average relative production of small buildings at the state level, which is 

considered here to be the annual rooftop PV generation of an average small building as a 

percentage of each state’s average annual household consumption. This metric was considered 

previously for the 11 cities shown in Figure 10. 

These results show that a relatively poor solar resource does not preclude the residential sector 

from offsetting a significant percentage of its consumption. An average small building across all 

of New England’s states except Rhode Island could generate greater than 90% of the electricity 

consumed by an average household in the region. This is driven by the low average household 

consumption of 8,011 kWh/year in the region (70% of the national average), which is due in part 

to high use of natural gas and oil for heating as well as relatively low summer cooling 

requirements.
25

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Figure 14. Small building average relative production at the state level

(average small building PV production / state average household consumption)

Table 3 gives each state’s small-building installed capacity potential, annual energy generation 

potential, and total area suitable for PV deployment. Also given is the potential electricity 

generation of small buildings as a percentage of each state’s total electricity sales from the 

electric industry in 2013.16 For example, Colorado has an estimated potential to offset 27% of its 

total electricity sales with rooftop PV generation from small buildings. This differs from the 

average relative production of small buildings that was shown in Figure 14, and it instead 

presents their ability to offset their state’s total sales of electricity.

Mirroring the trend in small-building average relative production in Figure 14, Table 3 shows 

that California, New Mexico, Florida, Arizona, and several New England states can offset the 

highest percentage of their states’ total electricity sales. In contrast, states such as North Dakota 

and Wyoming, which have moderate average relative production from their small buildings, have 

some of the lowest potential to offset total state sales, presumably owing to an above-average 

proportion of their electricity consumption happening outside the residential sector. Nineteen

states can generate 25% or more of their annual electric sales with rooftop PV, and 40 states can 

generate 20% or more.

 16 The quantity of electricity sold was obtained from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) “Retail 

Sales of Electricity (Megawatthours) by State by Sector by Provider” data file (EIA 2014). The quantities are 

calculated from utility companies’ responses to Form EIA-861 and estimates derived from Form EIA-861S. The 

quantities, therefore, closely approximate total demand, because they represent all generation except the small 

quantity of electricity generated on site by consumer-owned systems. Data from 2013 were used because 2013 was 

the most recent year with data available.
26 

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Table 3. Estimated Rooftop PV Technical Potential for Small Buildings by State

State

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(% of sales)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential 

(TWh/year) 

Total Roof Area 

Suitable for PV 

Deployment 

(millions of m2

) 

43.6% 76.8 114.0 525.5

40.3% 2.0 2.3 13.6

40.0% 4.2 4.7 28.0

32.8% 4.6 7.6 32.6

32.4% 3.2 3.6 21.5

31.6% 15.0 23.9 103.1

31.2% 2.1 2.4 14.0

30.6% 28.3 31.5 189.2

30.3% 50.3 67.3 343.4

29.5% 2.9 3.6 19.2

28.1% 18.8 23.5 126.3

27.6% 7.2 8.2 48.2

27.6% 16.3 19.0 109.0

27.4% 12.2 16.4 80.9

27.3% 8.2 10.9 55.3

27.1% 10.0 14.5 67.4

26.7% 3.0 3.7 20.1

25.5% 12.3 14.1 82.8

25.1% 5.4 7.7 36.2

24.9% 15.6 18.6 104.6

24.9% 9.8 11.6 65.8

24.8% 31.3 36.7 210.0

23.6% 28.4 33.5 192.4

23.5% 23.9 30.6 160.1

23.4% 9.7 11.2 65.3

23.2% 29.6 33.9 198.8

23.1% 31.0 34.7 206.5

23.0% 13.9 15.8 92.7

22.5% 8.3 10.5 55.7

22.2% 4.0 5.4 26.7

22.1% 2.0 2.5 13.7

22.0% 62.7 83.2 424.6

California

Vermont

Maine

New Mexico

New Hampshire

Arizona

Rhode Island

Michigan

Florida

South Dakota

Missouri

Connecticut

Wisconsin

Oklahoma

Kansas

Colorado

Montana

Massachusetts

Utah

New Jersey

Iowa

New York

Illinois

North Carolina

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Ohio

Minnesota 

Arkansas

Idaho

Delaware 

Texas 

Tennessee 22.0% 17.0 21.3 114.6
27 

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

State

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(% of sales)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential 

(TWh/year) 

Total Roof Area 

Suitable for PV 

Deployment 

(millions of m2

) 

Nevada 21.6% 4.8 7.6 32.9

Georgia 21.6% 22.4 28.1 149.6

Maryland 21.4% 10.9 13.3 72.1

Virginia 20.6% 18.3 22.8 121.6

Mississippi 20.5% 7.8 10.0 51.7

Indiana 20.3% 18.3 21.4 122.1

Nebraska 19.9% 4.8 6.1 32.1

Alabama 19.1% 13.2 16.8 88.1

South Carolina 18.9% 11.4 14.9 76.2

Louisiana 18.3% 12.5 15.7 83.5

North Dakota 18.3% 2.4 2.9 16.2

Washington 18.2% 15.7 16.9 105.6

West Virginia 17.3% 4.8 5.4 32.3

Kentucky 16.0% 11.6 13.6 77.6

Wyoming 12.5% 1.5 2.1 10.2

Washington, DC 4.2% 0.4 0.5 2.8

Continental U.S. Total 25.0% 731.1 926.4 4,922.3

5.3 Model Validation

To characterize the accuracy of the small building predictions, we carried out a validation 

experiment for ZIP codes that have lidar data. We trained the complete model on the 3,312 ZIP

codes with 90% or greater lidar coverage, predicted the results from these same ZIP codes using 

the fitted model, and analyzed the difference between the predicted and actual values. This 

validation experiment is a best-case performance method, because it is predicting the same data 

on which it is trained and cannot be used to estimate the combined error in areas where groundtruth data are not available. This model validation is also limited to small buildings, because key 

input data for large and medium buildings are only available at a census division scale; thus, 

large and medium buildings do not have sufficiently fine-resolution input data to enable a 

comparison to ZIP-code-level aggregated lidar data. 

Figure 15 shows the error in predictions of suitable area for each azimuth and tilt combination. 

The black bars in the histogram correspond with differences between the mean prediction and the 

actual observed value. The smaller red bars are size of error outside of the predicted range (lower 

and upper predictions) when the actual observed value is above our upper prediction or below 

our lower prediction. The 54-degree tilt category has been removed, because it is sparely 

represented in the data. The bars are skewed to the left, because the predicted range is a 

conservative estimate and generally under-predicts the true value. 
28 

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Figure 15. Histogram of error process for each azimuth and tilt category for small building 

area predictions 

Black bars are the mean prediction error. Red (lighter) bars are the error outside of the 

estimated range (lower/upper).

The average error per ZIP code in each tilt and azimuth category is 317 m2 and is approximately

normally distributed, with some skew to the left. The average error per ZIP code across all tilt 

and azimuth combinations is 6,603 m2. Larger aggregations come closer to the true values owing 

to a balance in under- and over-predictions (as seen visually by the symmetry in Figure 15). The 

total error for all 3,312 ZIP codes is 21.9 km2

, which is a relative error of 2.55%. Table 4 gives 

relative error percentage for each tilt/azimuth combination. 

Table 4. Relative Error for Each Tilt/Azimuth Combinationa

Region 15° 28° 41° 54°

East 27.3% 1.6% -1.7% -149.7%

Southeast 18.4% -6.3% -11.7% -93.1%

South 25.2% 1.8% -4.8% -62.4%

Southwest 19.3% -6.2% -12.4% -101.2%

West 28.9% -0.1% -1.6% -131.4%

a The error for flat roofs is 4%.
29 

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From the table, it is clear that some tilt/azimuth combinations come much closer to the true 

values than others. The flat area case and several other cases have less than 5% relative error, 

including tilt of 28 degrees and azimuth of east, south, and west—and tilt of 41 degrees and 

azimuth of south, east, and west. The errors for the 54-degree tilt category appear inflated, 

because there are so few rooftops with that tilt in each ZIP code. The overall error of the range is 

0.47% (4.0 km2), with an average error per ZIP code of 1,215 m2 and per azimuth/tilt category 

of 58 m2

. Based on these validation results, future studies that use ZIP-code-level estimates can 

use the upper and lower bounds to provide a range of estimates of suitable area. 
30 

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6 Modeling to Extend Medium- and Large-Building PV 

Suitability and Potential Estimates Nationwide 

In contrast to the previous section, which presented the technical potential of PV on small 

buildings, this section presents the estimated technical potential of PV on medium and large 

buildings. Medium buildings have a footprint between 5,000 ft2 and 25,000 ft2, and large 

buildings have a footprint larger than 25,000 ft2

. Estimates of suitable rooftop area for these size 

classes were obtained using the same model framework as with small buildings, leveraging what 

was observed in the lidar data set to make predictions in areas not covered by lidar data. We then 

use the same set of technical assumptions and simulation method as before to predict the 

nationwide technical potential of PV on medium and large buildings. 

6.1 Modeled Estimates of Total Developable Area from Medium and 

Large Building Rooftops Nationwide

In contrast to the small building rooftop area estimates, the number of medium and large 

buildings per ZIP code is not available as a model input. As an input for these medium and large 

building predictions, we used Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) 

building count data, which are available on a census division scale. Because greater than 99% of 

medium and large buildings within the lidar data had at least one suitable plane, we assumed that 

all medium and large buildings were suitable. Estimates of the total suitable area on each 

building were then derived using the same modeling process used for small buildings and 

described in full in Appendix D, with constituent models described in Appendices A–C. 

To allow state-level predictions, we distributed the estimated rooftop area in a census division to 

its states by population weight.

17 This method of distribution assumes that medium and large 

building counts are linearly related to population at a sufficiently large enough geographic scale. 

The actual number of buildings in states with above-average building counts per capita would 

therefore be underestimated, and states with below-average building counts per capita would be 

overestimated.18 

6.2 Estimated National PV Technical Potential from Medium and 

Large Buildings

Figure 16 shows the total annual rooftop PV generation potential for medium and large buildings 

geographically. The total installed capacity, annual energy generation, suitable roof area, and 

annual energy generation as a percentage of state electricity sales are shown in Table 5. Across 

all states, small buildings have greater potential than the combined potential of medium and large 

buildings. On the national level, medium and large buildings have the potential to generate 

17 To leverage what was known about existing medium and large building counts from the lidar data, known 

building counts within a census division were subtracted from CBECS estimates of building count. The rooftop area 

from the remaining buildings was then distributed among states, weighted by the population of the state that was not 

covered by the lidar data. Because approximately half of the country’s estimated medium and large buildings were 

covered by lidar data, this significantly improved the final state-level estimates. 18 Because it is not possible to thoroughly evaluate the error introduced with this weighting, we caution the reader to 

consider state-level estimates as a visualization only.
31 

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

506 TWh/year of electricity (14% of total national electricity sales), which is about half of the 

small building potential of 926 TWh/year (25% of total national sales).

Differences in potential between building size classes can largely be explained by the total 

suitable roof area and the utilization of the available space. Despite the higher percentage of 

medium and large building roof area suitable for PV deployment,19 the far smaller numbers of 

these buildings resulted in a lower total developable area (3.2 billion m2) compared to small 

buildings (4.9 billion m2

). Additionally, the generally tilted roof area on small buildings could be 

used more efficiently than the predominantly flat roofs of large buildings, because flat roofs 

require greater spacing between modules to prevent excessive losses from shading. As 

innovative racking and module-packing techniques are developed for flat roofs, the technical 

potential from medium and large buildings could increase. 

Figure 16. Annual rooftop PV generation potential for medium and large buildings

The relative magnitudes of the state-level results for medium and large buildings (Table 5) 

largely reflect the small building results (Table 3), with a few differences. Washington, D.C. can 

offset a much greater percentage of its total sales from medium and large buildings, because it 

differs from all the lower 48 states by having more developable area on medium and large 

buildings than on small buildings. Relative to other states, Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, and 

Utah have less potential generation from these building classes than from small buildings, driven 

primarily by fewer large buildings per capita in that region compared with the national average.

19 Within the lidar data, the roof area suitable for development as a fraction of total roof area was 66% for large 

buildings, 49% for medium buildings, and 26% for small buildings.
32 

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Table 5. Estimated Rooftop PV Technical Potential of Medium and Large Buildings by State

State

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(% of sales)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential

(GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(TWh/year) 

Total Roof Area 

Suitable for PV 

Deployment 

(millions of m2

) 

30.6% 52.2 80.0 435.3

25.4% 1.6 2.0 13.7

22.1% 5.6 6.6 46.3

21.5% 10.1 11.9 82.4

21.0% 2.0 2.3 16.5

20.1% 2.1 2.4 16.7

19.7% 1.0 1.1 7.9

18.0% 3.9 6.4 33.8

17.3% 8.5 10.7 70.4

16.9% 6.1 9.0 51.9

16.7% 7.2 10.0 59.5

16.2% 25.9 35.9 213.6

15.5% 9.3 11.6 79.0

15.4% 9.1 10.6 75.7

15.3% 13.7 15.8 114.1

14.5% 9.4 12.1 78.1

14.3% 4.2 5.7 34.7

14.2% 3.3 4.4 27.7

13.4% 15.7 19.0 131.6

12.7% 35.1 48.1 289.9

12.6% 15.3 18.6 129.7

12.6% 7.3 8.7 60.2

12.2% 15.8 18.3 131.3

12.2% 12.2 15.9 101.9

11.8% 10.2 13.1 83.9

11.6% 7.6 9.9 62.6

11.4% 11.1 14.7 92.3

11.3% 14.0 16.5 116.8

10.9% 1.0 1.2 8.1

10.8% 4.4 5.1 35.6

10.8% 3.9 5.0 31.9

California

Rhode Island

Connecticut

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

Maine

Vermont

Nevada

Maryland

Colorado

Oklahoma

Florida

New Jersey

Minnesota

Michigan

Missouri

Kansas

Nebraska

Illinois

Texas

New York

Wisconsin

Ohio

Georgia

Virginia

Louisiana

North Carolina

Pennsylvania

Washington DC 

Oregon 

Arkansas

Alabama 10.7% 7.2 9.4 58.6
33

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

State

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(% of sales)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential

(GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(TWh/year)

Total Roof Area 

Suitable for PV 

Deployment 

(millions of m2

)

Iowa 10.7% 4.1 5.0 33.5

Mississippi 10.6% 3.9 5.2 31.8

New Mexico 10.6% 1.5 2.4 12.6

Tennessee 9.9% 7.4 9.6 60.4

South Dakota 9.3% 0.9 1.1 7.1

Kentucky 9.2% 6.4 7.8 52.9

Indiana 9.2% 8.0 9.7 65.9

Utah 9.1% 1.9 2.8 16.2

Delaware 9.0% 0.8 1.0 6.6

Washington 8.5% 7.1 7.8 57.9

South Carolina 6.6% 3.8 5.2 31.4

North Dakota 6.3% 0.8 1.0 6.7

West Virginia 5.6% 1.5 1.8 12.5

Idaho 4.2% 0.7 1.0 6.1

Arizona 2.8% 1.3 2.1 10.9

Wyoming 1.8% 0.2 0.3 1.7

Montana 1.3% 0.1 0.2 1.2

Continental U.S. Total 13.6% 386.5 506.0 3,207.4
34

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

7 Estimated National PV Technical Potential for

All Buildings

In this section, we present the combined PV technical potential estimates for small buildings 

(from Section 0) and medium and large buildings (from Section 6) to produce an estimate of the 

total national installed capacity and generation potential of rooftop PV. Because the medium and 

large building estimates are only available at the state level, the combined results are presented at 

that level. Table 6 shows potential installed PV capacity, rooftop area suitable for development, 

and annual generation (in terawatt-hours and as a percentage of total electricity sales in 2013) by 

state. Figure 17 and Figure 18 (at the end of this section) map the potential generation results.

The total nationwide technical potential of PV across all buildings is 1,118 GW of installed 

capacity and 1,432 TWh of annual energy generation, which equates to 39% of total national 

electric sales. This is significantly greater than a previous NREL estimate of 664 GW of installed 

capacity and 800 TWh of annual energy generation (Lopez et al. 2012).20 The difference can be 

attributed to increases in module power density,

21 improved estimation of building suitability, 

higher estimates of the total number of buildings, and improvements in PV performance 

simulation tools that previously tended to underestimate productivity.

Table 6 shows California with the greatest potential to offset use—PV on its rooftops could 

generate 74% of the electricity sold by its utilities in 2013. A cluster of New England states 

could generate more than 45%, despite these states’ below-average solar resource. Washington, 

with the lowest population-weighted solar resource in the continental United States, could still 

generate 27%. The best-performing six states—in terms of potential PV generation as a percent 

of total state sales—all have significantly below-average household consumption, suggesting the 

role an energy-efficient residential sector could play in achieving a high penetration of energy 

from rooftop PV.

Wyoming has the lowest potential for offsetting statewide electricity sales with rooftop PV, at 

14%, because it has the highest per-capita electricity sales of any state at 30.3 MWh/year/person 

(250% of the national average), driven by very high electricity use in the industrial sector (60% 

of retail electricity sales). Washington D.C. has the second-lowest potential to offset electricity 

sales, at 15%; lidar data indicate that this unique, almost entirely urban district has only 17.4 m2

of developable roof area per capita, which is much lower than the average of 24.9 m

2 per capita 

throughout the rest of the lidar -covered regions. 

Some states with below-average solar resource (such as Minnesota, Maine, New York, and South 

Dakota) have similar or even greater potential to offset total sales than states with higher-quality 

resource (such as Arizona and Texas). This highlights the observation that solar resource is only 

one of several factors that determine the offset potential.

 20 Lopez et al. (2012) draw most of their rooftop PV results from the analysis carried out by Denholm and 

Margolis (2008). 21 Our analysis assumed a panel power density of 160 W/m2

, whereas Lopez et al. (2012) assumed 135 W/m2.
35

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Florida can offset 47% of its total consumption, despite having an average household 

consumption that is 130% above the national average. This is largely explained by significantly 

below-average electricity consumption outside of the residential sector, which makes total percapita state sales slightly lower than the national average, plus high-quality solar resource and a

high percentage of buildings suitable for PV. In contrast, the other south Atlantic states range 

from a potential 23% to 35% of electricity offset, owing primarily to lower average suitability 

and higher per-capita electricity sales.

Table 6. Total Estimated Technical Potential (All Buildings) for Rooftop PV by State

State

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(% of sales)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential 

(TWh/year)

Total Roof Area 

Suitable for PV 

Deployment 

(millions of m2

)

California 74.2% 128.9 194.0 961

Maine 60.0% 6.3 7.1 45

Vermont 60.0% 3.0 3.4 21

Rhode Island 56.6% 3.8 4.4 28

New Hampshire 53.4% 5.3 5.9 38

Connecticut 49.8% 12.8 14.8 95

Massachusetts 47.0% 22.5 26.0 165

Florida 46.5% 76.2 103.2 557

Michigan 45.9% 42.1 47.3 303

Colorado 44.0% 16.2 23.5 119

Oklahoma 44.1% 19.3 26.4 140

New Mexico 43.4% 6.1 10.0 45

Missouri 42.7% 28.3 35.6 204

Kansas 41.7% 12.5 16.6 90

Nevada 39.6% 8.7 13.9 67

New Jersey 40.4% 24.9 30.1 184

Wisconsin 40.1% 23.6 27.7 169

Maryland 38.7% 19.3 23.9 142

Minnesota 38.5% 23.1 26.4 168

South Dakota 38.7% 3.8 4.7 26

New York 37.4% 46.6 55.3 340

Illinois 37.0% 44.1 52.5 324

Ohio 35.3% 46.8 53.0 338

Iowa 35.5% 14.0 16.6 99

Texas 34.6% 97.8 131.2 715

North Carolina 34.9% 35.0 45.3 252
36 

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

State

Annual 

Generation 

Potential

(% of sales)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential 

(TWh/year) 

Total Roof Area 

Suitable for PV 

Deployment 

(millions of m2

) 

Pennsylvania 34.5% 43.6 50.4 316

Nebraska 34.1% 8.2 10.5 60

Utah 34.3% 7.2 10.4 52

Oregon 34.2% 14.1 16.3 101

Georgia 33.8% 34.6 44.1 251

Arizona 34.4% 16.3 26.1 114

Arkansas 33.3% 12.2 15.5 88

Virginia 32.4% 28.5 35.8 205

Tennessee 31.9% 24.4 30.9 175

Mississippi 31.2% 11.7 15.2 84

Delaware 31.0% 2.9 3.5 20

Louisiana 29.8% 20.1 25.6 146

Alabama 29.8% 20.4 26.2 147

Indiana 29.5% 26.3 31.1 188

Montana 28.0% 3.2 3.9 21

Washington 26.6% 22.8 24.7 164

Idaho 26.4% 4.7 6.4 33

Kentucky 25.2% 18.0 21.4 131

South Carolina 25.5% 15.2 20.0 108

North Dakota 24.6% 3.3 3.9 23

West Virginia 22.9% 6.3 7.2 45

Washington DC 15.1% 1.3 1.7 11

Wyoming 14.2% 1.7 2.4 12

Continental U.S. Total 38.6% 1,118 1,432 8,130
37

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Figure 17. Total annual energy generation potential from rooftop PV for all building sizes

Figure 18. Potential rooftop PV annual generation from all buildings as a percentage of state total 

2013 electricity sales
38

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

8 Conclusions and Future Research Directions

In this report, we considered the technical potential of PV systems installed on existing, suitable 

roofs within the continental United States. We evaluated the technical potential of rooftop PV 

within 47 cities—with a detailed analysis for 11 cities—by using a DHS lidar data set (covering 

40% of the national population and 23% of the building stock) to estimate roof area suitable for 

PV deployment. We also leveraged the DHS lidar data to build models for predicting the total 

amount of suitable roof area in regions for which lidar data do not exist.

Using statistical models and ACS building counts, we made nationwide ZIP-code-level estimates 

of the number and characteristics of small buildings, showing broad regional trends in both the 

suitability and electric-generation potential of rooftops. Although only 26% of the total rooftop 

area on small buildings is suitable for PV deployment, the sheer number of buildings in this class 

gives small buildings the greatest technical potential. Small building rooftops could 

accommodate 731 GW of PV capacity and generate 926 TWh of PV energy annually, which 

represents approximately 65% of the total technical potential of rooftop PV. 

Using statistical models and CBECS building counts, we made nationwide estimates of the 

number and characteristics of medium and large buildings on the census division level and then 

distributed them to the state level by population weight. Medium and large buildings have a total 

installed capacity potential of 386 GW and energy generation potential of 506 TWh/year, 

approximately 35% of the total technical potential of rooftop PV.

The total national technical potential of rooftop PV is 1,118 GW of installed capacity and 

1,432 TWh of annual energy generation. This equates to 39% of total national electric-sector 

sales. Table 7 summarizes the total rooftop area suitable for PV and technical potential metrics,

by building class for the nation. Because the relative magnitudes of the results are a strong 

function of the square footage used as a cutoff between divisions, these results should not be 

presented without that information. 

Table 7. Nationwide Estimated Suitable Area and Technical Potential by Building Class

Building Class (building 

footprint)

Total Suitable 

Area (billions 

of m2

)

Installed 

Capacity 

Potential (GW)

Annual 

Generation 

Potential 

(TWh/year)

Annual Generation 

Potential (% of 

national sales)

Small (< 5,000 ft2) 4.92 731 926 25.0%

Medium (5,000–25,000 ft2) 1.22 154 201 5.4%

Large (> 25,000 ft2) 1.99 232 305 8.2%

All Buildings 8.13 1,118 1,432 38.6%

These results are also sensitive to assumptions about module performance, which is expected to 

continue improving. For example, for this analysis we assumed a module power density of 

160 W/m2

, corresponding to a module efficiency of approximately 16%. If a power density of 

200 W/m2 were assumed instead, corresponding to a module efficiency of approximately 20%, 

each of the technical potential estimates would increase about 25% above the values stated in 

this report. Furthermore, these are only estimates of the potential from existing, suitable roof 
39

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

planes; they do not consider the immense potential of ground-mounted PV. Actual generation 

from PV in urban areas could exceed these estimates by installing systems on less suitable roof

area, by mounting PV on canopies over open spaces such as parking lots, or by integrating PV 

into building facades. 

Because our results are estimates of technical potential, they do not consider what would be 

required to use all the potential PV-generated energy. In practice, the integration of a significant 

quantity of rooftop PV into the national portfolio of generation capacity would require a flexible 

grid, supporting infrastructure, and a suite of enabling technologies.

8.1 Data for Public Use

The data set developed by NREL contains a significant amount of information specific to 

rooftops suitable for PV installation. The data were developed with the intention of providing a 

much-improved starting point for PV research regionally and nationwide. This base data set can 

be combined with numerous other data sets—such as data sets of insolation data, market data, or 

electricity consumption data—to provide more precise and actionable information than has been 

available previously. 

There are many possible directions for future analyses, and it is the author’s hope that the data 

will be used creatively by municipalities, utility providers, solar energy researchers, and anyone 

else interested in using rooftop data to advance PV deployment. We have posted supporting data 

on the NSRDB Data Viewer website.

22 Data layers include a regional summary and ZIP-codelevel summary for all areas where lidar data are available as well as national coverage of ZIP

code estimates as predicted by the methods described in this report. Detailed documentation of 

each step in our analysis, including scripts for running the GIS tools, are linked to in the 

metadata section of each layer. This information can be accessed by clicking the question mark 

icon next to each layer in the table of contents in the Data Viewer. 

8.2 Future Work

Within the DHS lidar data set used in this analysis, approximately 30 cities have multiple years’ 

worth of data, and this type of multiyear data likely will continue to grow. Growth of these data 

could enable analysis to be performed over time to examine whether or how rooftop PV 

technical potential changes over time.

The estimates of PV electricity production from small buildings within this report were made on 

the ZIP-code level, and they could be aggregated to any useful administrative region. For 

example, capacity and electricity-production estimates could be aggregated for a given utility 

service territory to inform utilities of the quantity and spatial distribution of distributed 

generation potential within their territories. Information on the quantity and temporal 

characteristics of distributed generation within a service territory could help guide the design of 

new rate structures that accurately track services rendered, as the grid continues to modernize. 

Using the DHS lidar data, we made building-level estimates of potential productivity from 

rooftop PV. Combining these results with modeled energy consumption within the same regions 

 22 See maps.nrel.gov/pv-rooftop-lidar.
40

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would enable analysis of the ability of PV to offset consumption at the building level. This could 

provide information on how local distribution requirements could change under increasing levels 

of distributed PV adoption. If paired with a technology-diffusion model, such as NREL’s 

Distributed Generation Market Demand Model (dGen), customer-adoption behavior could be 

incorporated, and a timetable for such changes could be estimated. 

We could improve our model predictions by leveraging raw orthoimagery (satellite images) to 

classify potential areas for PV installations and thoroughly explore geostatistical methods on a 

national scale. Although the result of doing so cannot approach the accuracy of the lidar analysis 

described here, it may provide a finer-resolution estimate where fine-resolution orthoimagery is 

available but lidar data are not.
41

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References

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City PV Deployment using NREL's In My Backyard Tool.” Prepared for the 35th IEEE 

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, June 20–25, Honolulu, HI.

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the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2014.” Berkeley, CA:

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Barbose, G, N. Darghouth, S. Weaver, and R. Wiser. 2014. “Tracking the Sun VII: An Historical 

Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2013.”

Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Bright, J., and K. Burman. 2010. “Portland Ecodistrict Solar Site Assessment.” Golden, CO: 

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (for Solar Cities America).

Brown, Austin, Philipp Beiter, Donna Heimiller, Carolyn Davidson, Paul Denholm, Jennifer

Melius, Anthony Lopez, Dylan Hettinger, David Mulcahy, and Gian. Porro. 2015. “Estimating 

Renewable Energy Economic Potential in the United States: Methodology and Initial Results.”

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Chaudhari, Maya, Lisa Frantzis, and Tom E. Hoff. 2004. “PV Grid Connected Market Potential 

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Compagnon, R. 2004. “Solar and Daylight Availability in the Urban Fabric.” Energy and 

Buildings 36(4): 321–28. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2004.01.009.

Denholm, Paul, and Robert Margolis. 2008. “Supply Curves for Rooftop Solar PV-Generated 

Electricity for the United States.” Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

NREL/TP-6A20-44073.

EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration). 2009. “Residential Energy Consumption Survey 

(RECS).” Washington, DC: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration). 2012. “Commercial Building Energy 

Consumption Survey (CBECS).” Washington, DC: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

———. 2014. “Monthly Electric Sales and Revenue Report with State Distributions Report.”

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Frantzis, Lisa, Shannon Graham, and Jay Paidipati. 2007. “California Rooftop Photovoltaic (PV) 

Resource Assessment and Growth Potential by County.” Chicago: Navigant Consulting. CEC500-2007-048.
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Gilman, Paul, and Aron. Dobos. 2012. “System Advisor Model, SAM 2011.12.2. 2: General 

Description.” Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-53437.

Hofierka, Jaroslav, and Ján Kanuk. 2009. “Assessment of Photovoltaic Potential in Urban Areas 

using Open-Source Solar Radiation Tools.” Renewable Energy 34(10): 2206–14.

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2009.02.021.

Land, Charles E. 1971. “Confidence Intervals for Linear Functions of the Normal Mean and 

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Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: A GIS-Based Analysis.” Golden, CO: National 

Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-51946.

Melius, J., R. Margolis, and S. Ong. 2013. “Estimating Rooftop Suitability for PV: A Review of 

Methods, Patents, and Validation Techniques.” Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy 

Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-60593.

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Paidipati, J., L. Frantzis, H. Sawyer, and A. Kurrasch. 2008. “Rooftop Photovoltaics Market 

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Newark.” Newark, DE: University of Delaware, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy.
43

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.

Appendix A: Rooftop Tilt and Azimuth Model

In this appendix, we explore the distribution of rooftop planes in each tilt and azimuth category 

to understand the practical tilt and orientation of planes in the data set. Using that information, 

we develop a predictive model that can be used to infer the distribution of planes in an area 

where lidar data are not available.

Figure A-1 gives the fraction of buildings for each ZIP code grouped according to four tilt 

classes and five azimuth classes.23 These classes, combined with a single class for flat roofs, 

create 21 different orientation bins that can be used to characterize rooftops. Most developable 

rooftop planes fall into the 28-degree tilt category, and steep rooftops (54 degrees) are an order 

of magnitude less common than the next category (41 degrees). Azimuths east, south, and west 

are most common, particularly among the 28-degree category of rooftops. These azimuths 

correspond to buildings aligned on a cardinal street grid. These observations appear to hold for 

small, medium, and large buildings alike.

FigureA-2 shows the fraction of flat rooftops in ZIP codes for each class of buildings. Nearly all 

large buildings provide flat planes. Approximately three in four medium buildings have suitable 

flat planes, while less than one in four small buildings have suitable flat planes. Figure A-3

groups the fraction of small buildings with flat planes according to the ZIP code locale type, 

showing that large cities have the most flat-roofed small buildings and that the fraction decreases 

in more urban areas. The same trend appears to be true of homogeneity when a chi-squared test 

is applied to the contingency distribution of building planes in each tilt and azimuth combination;

17% of ZIP codes labeled “small suburb” show statistically significant heterogeneity among their 

tilt/azimuth distribution, while only 7.2% of large cities are significantly heterogeneous.24

 23 The five azimuth bins are 45 degrees each, covering 67.5 degrees to 292.5 degrees, as defined in Figure 6. The 

four tilt bins equally split the 50.5 degree range from 9.5 degrees to 60 degrees. Anything less than 9.5 degrees is 

considered flat. 

24 The chi-squared test was performed with factored building plane counts and alpha = 0.05.
44

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Figure A-1. Fraction of suitable rooftop planes in each tilt and azimuth category for 

small, medium, and large buildings

Figure A-2. Fraction of flat suitable rooftop planes for small, medium, and large buildings
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Figure A-3. Fraction of small buildings with flat planes grouped by locale type

Figure A-4. Probability distribution functions for each combination of azimuth and tilt for 

small buildings

Figure A-4 shows the probability density function for each combination of tilt and azimuth for 

small buildings alone. This plot is log-scaled and makes clear the long tail on each distribution 

(also apparent in the box plots in Figure A-1) and lognormal shape. Using this observation, we 

can formulate average “characteristic” matrices by using the lognormal mean:
46 

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=

=

. . = 1

where T is the “characteristic” 2-D matrix describing the average distribution of a number of 

matrices. T is normalized to 1 so that the fractions form a complete distribution. 

Using this method, national average distribution can be calculated for each building class, 

providing insight into the distribution of azimuth and tilt in each class (Table A-1, Table A-2, 

and TableA-3).

Table A-1. National Average Tilt/Azimuth Distribution for Planes on Large Buildings

Flat E SE S SW W

0° 0.93

15° 0.01 0.01 0.01

28° 0.01 0.01 0.01

41°

54°

Table A-2. National Average Tilt/Azimuth Distribution for Planes on Medium Buildings

Flat E SE S SW W

0° 0.74

15° 0.02 0.01 0.04 0.01 0.02

28° 0.03 0.02 0.05 0.02 0.03

41° 0.01

54°

Table A-3. National Average Tilt/Azimuth Distribution for Planes on Small Buildings

Flat E SE S SW W

0° 0.26

15° 0.03 0.02 0.06 0.02 0.03

28° 0.09 0.06 0.18 0.06 0.09

41° 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.01 0.02

54°

Confidence interval estimates can be generated for each fitted mean using the Cox method 

(Olsson 2005; Land 1971):
47 

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± + ( )

2( 1)

where z is the distribution parameter for the desired confidence level.

As a final method to understand sources of variability in this data set, we perform a principle 

components analysis on the 21 categorical fractions (20 azimuth and tilt combinations, plus 

fraction flat) for small buildings. TableA-4 provides the loadings for the first three components, 

which cumulatively describe 90% of the total variance observed. In the table, the dominant 

loadings have been bolded. The first component is dominated by the fraction of flat roofs. The 

second component most strongly measures the degree to which a ZIP code has southwest and 

southeast azimuths (most rare in the data), and the third component measures the fraction of 

south-facing azimuths (next most rare).

Table A-4. Principle Component Loadings for Tilt/Azimuth

Component 1 Component 2 Component 3

Flat 0.94 -0.09 0.07

E, 15° -0.02 -0.12 -0.20

E, 28° -0.14 -0.20 -0.33

E, 41° -0.04 -0.02 -0.08

E, 54°

SE, 15° -0.01 0.10 0.02

SE, 28° -0.09 0.51 0.17

SE, 41° -0.03 0.17 0.01

SE, 54°

S, 15° -0.02 -0.25 0.13

S, 28° -0.22 -0.48 0.72

S, 41° -0.06 -0.05 0.05

S, 54°

SW, 15° -0.01 0.11 0.03

SW, 28° -0.08 0.50 0.15

SW, 41° -0.03 0.16 0.01

SW, 54°

W, 15° -0.02 -0.10 -0.18

W, 28° -0.14 -0.22 -0.46

W, 41° -0.04 -0.03 -0.10

W, 54°
48

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Appendix B: Small Building Suitability Model

This appendix describes our model for determining how many small buildings in a given area are 

suitable for PV installation. It combines an analysis of rooftop suitability (fraction of suitable 

rooftops in a given area) with a method for estimating the total number of small buildings. When 

combined, the total expected number of small suitable buildings can be determined.

FigureB-1 and FigureB-2 show the distribution of fraction of suitable rooftops at the state level. 

Small building suitability at the state level appears to be normally distributed. On average, perstate suitability is 79% (median: 79.39%, minimum: 58.70%, maximum: 92.93%, standard 

deviation: 7.21%).

Figure B-1. Distribution of suitable percentage among small buildings (within states)

Figure B-2. Suitable percentage among small buildings (within states) and 95% confidence 

intervals
49

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Aggregating instead by ZIP codes reveals finer-scale variability, particularly among urban and 

rural regions. Looking at ZIP codes in the aggregate as seen in FigureB-3, we see a skewed 

distribution, with a tail to the left. To address this tail, we find that ZIP-code-level statistics can 

be more harmoniously described by partitioning using National Center for Education Statistics 

(NCES) locale description and U.S. census division. FigureB-4 gives the percentage of small 

suitable buildings in each ZIP code, grouped according to these variables, and TableB-1 gives 

the complete statistics for every combination of categories.

Figure B-3. Distribution of the percentage of small suitable buildings by ZIP code
50

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Figure B-4. Percentage of small buildings containing a flat area with at least 10 m2 suitable for PV, 

by census division and aggregated locale description
51

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Table B-1. Suitable Percentage of Small Buildings by Locale/Division

Locale Type Census Division Mean Median Min Max N

City Large East North Central 80.32 81.80 12.50 100.00 222.00

City Midsize East North Central 79.36 78.38 65.57 100.00 65.00

City Small East North Central 81.06 81.70 71.01 100.00 39.00

Rural Distant East North Central 87.51 88.03 61.54 100.00 15.00

Rural Fringe East North Central 84.67 88.16 52.63 100.00 61.00

Suburb Large East North Central 84.06 84.62 47.68 100.00 286.00

Suburb Midsize East North Central 76.55 79.67 69.48 80.50 3.00

Suburb Small East North Central 100.00 100.0 100.0 100.00 1.00

Town Fringe East North Central 81.78 84.62 50.00 97.06 17.00

City Large East South Central 84.16 83.08 70.72 100.00 46.00

City Midsize East South Central 81.93 84.82 47.34 100.00 53.00

Rural Distant East South Central 85.76 84.30 74.30 97.39 8.00

Rural Fringe East South Central 88.13 91.11 63.92 100.00 18.00

Suburb Large East South Central 72.20 74.12 33.33 96.28 29.00

Suburb Midsize East South Central 92.89 92.89 91.12 94.67 2.00

Town Distant East South Central 87.72 87.72 87.72 87.72 1.00

Town Fringe East South Central 88.88 88.31 78.90 100.00 4.00

City Large Middle Atlantic 82.37 84.08 40.52 100.00 273.00

City Midsize Middle Atlantic 77.00 77.15 45.45 93.75 22.00

City Small Middle Atlantic 84.81 84.62 70.69 100.00 54.00

Rural Distant Middle Atlantic 84.15 84.37 66.67 100.00 11.00

Rural Fringe Middle Atlantic 84.95 85.31 66.67 100.00 56.00

Suburb Large Middle Atlantic 80.62 81.65 25.00 100.00 523.00

Suburb Midsize Middle Atlantic 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 1.00

Suburb Small Middle Atlantic 82.67 81.63 80.00 87.43 4.00

Town Fringe Middle Atlantic 84.34 84.54 67.44 92.59 9.00

City Large Mountain 77.10 80.39 46.07 100.00 89.00

City Midsize Mountain 71.54 73.71 55.02 89.02 22.00

City Small Mountain 79.75 84.82 61.54 94.26 9.00

Rural Distant Mountain 76.41 77.40 58.55 85.31 8.00

Rural Fringe Mountain 88.93 90.04 78.77 98.68 5.00

Rural Remote Mountain 66.61 66.61 61.79 71.44 2.00

Suburb Large Mountain 74.25 74.20 33.33 100.00 147.00

Suburb Small Mountain 65.83 68.73 42.11 78.08 11.00
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Locale Type Census Division Mean Median Min Max N

Town Distant Mountain 72.89 72.89 71.71 74.07 2.00

Town Fringe Mountain 78.97 77.28 72.26 91.07 8.00

Town Remote Mountain 86.31 86.31 86.31 86.31 1.00

City Midsize New England 74.71 80.92 28.90 94.96 45.00

City Small New England 78.86 79.08 71.59 85.57 18.00

Rural Distant New England 71.31 70.81 44.44 83.11 12.00

Rural Fringe New England 67.69 71.48 38.46 89.39 14.00

Rural Remote New England 89.58 89.58 89.58 89.58 1.00

Suburb Large New England 74.97 78.38 31.09 100.00 122.00

Suburb Midsize New England 77.25 77.02 70.00 84.46 6.00

Town Distant New England 73.80 73.52 59.63 87.95 7.00

Town Fringe New England 74.12 71.81 66.94 84.52 6.00

City Large Pacific 87.29 89.16 49.48 100.00 244.00

City Midsize Pacific 87.10 89.94 46.41 98.17 93.00

City Small Pacific 89.86 91.09 57.14 100.00 38.00

Rural Distant Pacific 80.13 80.13 76.04 84.21 2.00

Rural Fringe Pacific 80.14 77.89 64.72 94.72 12.00

Suburb Large Pacific 89.47 91.48 53.85 100.00 186.00

Suburb Midsize Pacific 90.20 90.49 80.34 96.58 7.00

Suburb Small Pacific 80.10 84.89 60.00 92.34 10.00

Town Distant Pacific 82.15 82.15 82.15 82.15 1.00

Town Fringe Pacific 74.83 78.35 60.00 88.86 12.00

City Large South Atlantic 80.40 81.12 49.44 100.00 155.00

City Midsize South Atlantic 80.92 80.53 27.21 100.00 185.00

City Small South Atlantic 77.02 83.12 41.82 100.00 4.00

Rural Distant South Atlantic 76.77 81.11 43.28 100.00 16.00

Rural Fringe South Atlantic 79.51 81.95 28.30 100.00 44.00

Suburb Large South Atlantic 85.66 87.80 25.29 100.00 534.00

Suburb Midsize South Atlantic 87.28 88.95 50.00 100.00 42.00

Suburb Small South Atlantic 85.47 85.44 74.93 95.06 18.00

Town Distant South Atlantic 71.43 71.43 71.43 71.43 1.00

City Large West North Central 76.50 75.38 55.51 100.00 133.00

City Midsize West North Central 72.67 71.94 48.61 100.00 46.00

City Small West North Central 77.58 77.51 62.02 100.00 29.00

Rural Distant West North Central 84.18 84.88 57.14 100.00 21.00
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Locale Type Census Division Mean Median Min Max N

Rural Fringe West North Central 85.04 88.51 37.68 98.99 45.00

Suburb Large West North Central 79.14 80.20 54.46 98.74 146.00

Suburb Midsize West North Central 77.62 85.79 57.42 89.65 3.00

Suburb Small West North Central 82.95 84.78 71.03 93.53 6.00

Town Distant West North Central 84.92 84.92 84.02 85.83 2.00

Town Fringe West North Central 83.16 86.74 48.78 98.59 14.00

Town Remote West North Central 75.37 75.37 73.00 77.73 2.00

City Large West South Central 88.90 89.24 61.66 100.00 207.00

City Midsize West South Central 82.30 82.68 56.90 100.00 66.00

City Small West South Central 84.79 85.71 66.67 97.55 18.00

Rural Distant West South Central 84.88 84.94 75.43 96.46 8.00

Rural Fringe West South Central 87.11 90.31 25.84 100.00 44.00

Suburb Large West South Central 90.17 91.99 40.00 100.00 101.00

Suburb Small West South Central 86.96 89.53 63.04 95.30 7.00

Town Distant West South Central 94.99 96.38 91.25 97.34 3.00

Town Fringe West South Central 89.65 89.53 80.91 98.25 10.00

B.1 Predictive Regression Model

As a basis for prediction in a multiple regression model, we gathered geospatial data from the 

U.S. National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2006), NCES (2006), and U.S. Census Bureau. At 

the outset of model building, we expected different regions of the country may have different 

characteristics with respect to PV suitability. We also expected, based on our understanding of 

the shading process, building density is likely well correlated with suitability. 

In the search for the best-performing model for this data set, we tried combinations several 

variables. The variables that appear well correlated with PV suitability are:

Locale Description: NCES (2006) locale description (e.g., Small Town, Remote Rural)

of each ZIP code area.

Census Division: The U.S. Census divides the country into nine divisions: East North 

Central, East South Central, West North Central, West South Central, Middle Atlantic, 

South Atlantic, New England, Pacific, and Mountain (FigureB-5).

Land Cover Classification Percentage: NLCD (2006) percentages for each ZIP code. 

Those that appeared to be particularly useful and are included in our model include: 

Developed Open Space, Developed Low Intensity, Developed Medium Intensity, 

Developed High Intensity, Forest, and Scrub.

Population Density: 2010 population density per square mile from the U.S. Census 

Bureau was used.
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Location: We found meaningful correlations between northing (or latitude) and 

suitability, while easting (or longitude) did not appear significantly correlated. In this 

work, we use projected coordinates25 for easy comparability and convenient (metersbased) scale.

Lidar Coverage: When fitting a regression model, substantial improvements were 

obtained by weighting ZIP codes by their coverage in the lidar data. Both the total 

number of buildings detected and the fraction of the area covered were tested, with the 

former proving more useful.

Figure B-5. Census divisions

Additional variables that were considered but not ultimately used owing to low correlation with 

small building rooftop suitability or for having too coarse of a resolution include the Residential 

Energy Consumption Survey, Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), 

American Housing Survey, U.S. Economic Census, and Zillow building and sales data.

We constructed several models using combinations of the variables above, and we “trained” each 

model using a randomly selected subset of 75% of the original lidar data set. We then assessed 

the predictive accuracy of our models using the remaining 25% of the data by predicting the 

percentage of buildings that are small and suitable for PV and comparing those predictions to 

their actual values. We found that reducing our best-performing model by removing the three 

 25 Common Web Mercator (EPSG 3857) was used for the spatial projection.
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least useful variables provided a simplified version that sacrificed little in terms of accuracy. 

This reduced model served as our final model. About 60% of our final model’s predictions were 

within 10% of the observed lidar values, and about 80% of the predictions were within 20% of 

the observed values.

Table B-2 shows fit statistics for a subset of the small building models evaluated. In each case 

the root-mean-square error (RMSE) is evaluated via 100-fold cross validation, withholding 25% 

of the training data to test against. The Basic Model fits against only locale description and 

census division. The Large model adds land cover and canopy information (classes 10, 20, 40, 

and 50 and their subclasses) along with population density. The States Model adds the U.S. state 

name, for a modest improvement, but has the consequence of causing undesirable transitions at 

state boundaries. Finally, the Spatial Model incorporates the northing of the ZIP code centroid 

being fitted. 

Table B-2. Model Tuning and Performance, Final (Reduced) Model Marked with an Asterisk

Model Degrees of Freedom AIC BIC RMSE

Basic 81 -4,585.853 -4,067.163 0.142

Large 86 -5,016.133 -4,465.425 0.135

States 64 -5,399.268 -4,989.439 0.130

Spatial 90 -5,981.261 -5,404.939 0.121

Weighted 90 -6,515.968 -5,939.646 0.041

Reduced* 86 -6,430.093 -5,879.386 0.042

Although these models perform well (RMSE 12%–14%), substantial additional gains can be 

obtained with the Weighted Model, in which a least squares regression is augmented with 

weights from the number of buildings detected during the lidar GIS processing. This weighted 

least squares (WLS) approach has the effect of up-weighting dense urban areas with good lidar 

coverage in our data set while down-weighting ZIP areas with few buildings or poor lidar 

coverage. For instance, Table B-3 provides statistics for four outliers common to the prior 

models, whose poor coverage seemingly affects the quality of the fit. For simplicity, we also 

present a Reduced Model in which the three least useful variables have been removed. This 

reduced model performs nearly as well, with 4.2% RMSE. TableB-4 and TableB-5 provide 

analysis of variance (ANOVA) results for these models and their parameters.
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Table B-3. Examples of Outliers in Unweighted Regression

ZIP Code City State Total 

Buildings

lidar

Coverage 

(%)

Population 

Density 

(pop./mi2

)

True 

Suitability 

(%)

20560 Washington DC 3 100 7.5 0

63045 St Louis MO 171 100 69.1 7

90095 Los Angeles CA 8 100 15,165.0 0

50061 Des Moines IA 261 28 87.3 79

Table B-4. ANOVA on Weighted Model

Source Df SS MS F P-value

Locale Description 11 0.26 0.02 13.15 0.0000

Census Division 8 2.29 0.29 162.59 0.0000

NLCD21 1 0.28 0.28 157.93 0.0000

NLCD22 1 0.01 0.01 2.86 0.0910

NLCD23 1 0.00 0.00 0.89 0.3453

NLCD24 1 0.65 0.65 369.04 0.0000

NLCD11 1 0.02 0.02 13.93 0.0002

NLCD40 1 0.34 0.34 190.98 0.0000

NLCD50 1 0.01 0.01 7.59 0.0059

Population Dens. 1 0.01 0.01 2.88 0.0898

Northing 1 0.68 0.68 386.60 0.0000

Locale Desc. * Census Division 60 0.47 0.01 4.43 0.0000

Residuals 4,374 7.72 0.00 — —

Table B-5. ANOVA on Reduced (Final) Model

Source Df SS MS F P-value

Locale Description 11 0.26 0.02 12.89 0.0000

Census Division 8 2.29 0.29 159.35 0.0000

NLCD21 1 0.28 0.28 154.78 0.0000

NLCD24 1 0.53 0.53 296.69 0.0000

NLCD11 1 0.04 0.04 23.44 0.0000

NLCD40 1 0.32 0.32 176.76 0.0000

Northing 1 0.69 0.69 381.41 0.0000

Locale Desc. * Census Division 60 0.44 0.01 4.41 0.0000

Residuals 4,378 7.88 0.00 — —
57

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The proportion of predictions within 10% and 20% of their actual values using the final full

(weighted) model was 59.4% and 83.3%, respectively. Similarly, the proportion of predictions 

within 10% and 20% of the actual values using the final reduced model was 59.4% and 83.1%, 

respectively. Therefore, we suggest using the reduced model—henceforth referred to as the final 

model—as the basis for future predictions and analyses because it does not sacrifice predictive 

capability and it is more parsimonious. 

B.2 Spatial Correlation

To understand whether prediction errors might be correlated in space, we computed Moran’s I 

on the underlying process and the regression residuals. As is standard, we computed Moran’s I 

using the network of eight nearest neighbors. The underlying process has an accumulated 

Moran’s I of 0.56 with p-value << 0.05, suggesting a significant spatial autocorrelation. By 

comparison, the post-fit residuals have an aggregate Moran’s I of 0.42 with p-value << 0.05. 

FigureB-6 provides correlograms plotting Moran’s I as a function of lag distance for both the 

actual values and the regression residuals. Lag distance is defined as the number of “hops” on the

nearest neighbor network. 
58

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Figure B-6. Spatial autocorrelation of percentage of buildings that are small and suitable for PV, 

with data aggregated into ZIP codes, both before and after regression fitting

These results suggest that, while the regression can capture some spatial relationships in the data, 

there is still substantial spatial dependency that might be used to better fit the model. There is 

also a relatively strong spatial autocorrelation for ZIP codes within one to three lags, but the 

autocorrelation falls off at greater distances. Based on this result, we explore geostatistical 

modeling as a potential extension to the national regression model.
59

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B.3 Regression Kriging

As an optional extension to the linear regression model, we explored regression Kriging as a 

method for further increasing predictive accuracy. Kriging is a geostatistical interpolation 

originally developed for mapping in resource extraction and mine valuation. Today Kriging is 

finding a foothold in diverse applications mainly owing to its favorable properties as an 

interpolation method; (1) it is an exact method, so the map of predictions will always map to 

ground truth at locations where data exist and (2) it provides a notion of uncertainty around 

predictions by reporting the Kriging variance at each estimated point. In regression Kriging, the 

residual error from a regression model is the basis for training a geostatistical model that 

attempts to make an additional fine-tuning correction. Although regression Kriging is a powerful 

method, it is also computationally costly. In the present study, we limit our analysis to Colorado, 

leaving the task of performing a nationwide prediction to later work.

The first step in geostatistical modeling involves characterizing the semivariogram function. The 

semivariogram is a plot of half the difference between points separated by some distance. Based 

on our analysis of spatial autocorrelation, we understand that there is the highest degree of spatial 

dependency with 2–3 lags. For this reason, we focus our semivariogram model on urban areas by 

truncating the model at a maximum of 40 km between points. In the Colorado data, this appears 

to be a reasonable heuristic that maximizes generalizability while preserving model fidelity. 

FigureB-7 (top) shows an empirical semivariogram for Colorado using an exponential 

semivariogram model. The semivariogram model is used by the Kriging process to find optimal 

weights when predicting additional points.
60

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Figure B-7. Fitted semivariogram using an exponential semivariogram model (top) and residual 

error of regression Kriging model (bottom)

To evaluate this method, we perform a standard cross-validation where 25% of the data are 

withheld while the model is trained on the remaining 75%. The distribution of residual error of 

the Kriging-corrected regression model is given in FigureB-7 (bottom). We see an overall 

improvement of approximately 2%, from 12% error in the basic regression model to 10%. 
61

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FigureB-8 compares the maps generated with this method with the predictions of the final 

regression model. Error is substantially reduced from the prior model in locations where data are 

available because regression Kriging matches the prediction values at those points. While these 

data do not permit us to approximate the value of regression Kriging in rural areas, accounting 

for and explicitly fitting the spatial dependency in residuals does appear to increase fidelity in the 

predictions within urban areas. Because this model builds on the regression model, it can be 

optionally applied when higher-resolution predictions are desired for a particular city or set of 

metropolitan areas, particular when partial lidar data may be available, which allows for perurban-area model training and interpolation.

Figure B-8. Performance of Regression Kriging model for Colorado

Figure shows actual values (top left), regression-Kriging predictions (bottom left), regression 

predictions (bottom right), and error for regression Kriging (top right).
62 

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B.4 Prediction of the Number of Buildings

As a final consideration, to predict the number of suitable buildings in a given region, we must 

have a notion of how many buildings are present (suitable or not). Because these data are not 

readily available, we make a similar prediction using a regression model:

= + + + + + +

where locale is the NCES locale, region is the census division, nlcd is the fraction of land cover 

for the given classes, northing is the Universal Transverse Mercator northing (converted from 

degrees latitude), and is the number of single-unit detached housing according to the 2011 

ACS. This model was evaluated against the data set using 10-fold cross validation with 25% of 

data withheld for testing (Tableb-6). We censored 1,922 ZIP codes with less than 90% coverage 

during fitting, because this produced a more harmonious fit. 

Table B-6. Predictive Accuracy of Predicted Variables for National Potential Model

Model RMSE 2.5th Percentile 

Error 

97.5th Percentile 

Error 

Median 

Error 

Proportion 

within 10%

Proportion 

within 20%

870 -1,939 1,676 69 49% 72%

In practice, owing to the large variability, predicting the number of buildings poses challenges 

for fitting. Nonlinear methods for prediction (e.g., Multiple Adaptive Regression Splines or 

Support Vector Machines) do not appear to perform appreciably better. In this work, we proceed 

with the given model for , treating its errors directly and accepting that future work may 

improve this component of the estimate (e.g., with finer estimates of building counts from 

commercial data).
63 

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Appendix C: Rooftop Plane Area Model

To estimate the suitable area per building we must create model-based estimates for both the 

number of planes per building and the size of each of those planes. As input to a data-driven 

model, we perform a uniform random sample of one million small buildings across all ZIP codes 

where lidar data are available. This results in a sample of 1.86 million planes, which form the 

basis for our model derivation (Figure C-1). 

Figure C-1. Distributions of plane sizes and plane numbers for small buildings

Figure C-1 shows that, for small buildings, the size of each plane and the number of planes per 

building are well characterized by an exponential distribution. Total suitable flat area size for 

small buildings is a Weibull-distributed random variable with a shape parameter of 1.4 (standard 

error = 0.01) and a scale parameter of 62.0 (standard error = 0.47). For the number of planes per 

building, 99.6% of small buildings have six or fewer planes, and 50% have only one plane. We 

use these fractions directly, normalized to 1.0 in the model (TableC-1).

Table C-1. Building Planes: Small Buildings

1 plane 2 planes 3 planes 4 planes 5 planes 6 planes

50% 28% 14% 5% 2% 1%

The per-plane area is similar for small buildings with two to six planes. However, small 

buildings with only one plane generally have a larger single plane. To account for this, we build 

exponential fits for one-plane buildings separately from multiple (six or fewer) plane buildings. 

Figure C-2 shows the fits obtained, which are exceptionally close to the observed values. 
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Figure C-2. Exponential fits
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The fitted probability density function is:

( ) = +

where is the fitted rate of decay of the exponential process and is an optional location 

parameter, which we set to = 10, the minimum plane size in our data. For small buildings, we 

find = 0.042 and = 0.071. The mean of each distribution can be calculated directly:

= 1+

Lower and upper bounds for the mean area in each category are computed as the 95th percentile 

range (2.5% to 97.5%):

= log(0.975),

log(0.025) +

An identical method is used to obtain fits for medium and large buildings. For medium buildings, 

98.2% of buildings have 14 or fewer suitable planes. As before, a truncated distribution is used 

such that the smallest category is at least 1% of all buildings (TableC-2).

Table C-2. Building Planes: Medium Buildings

1 plane 2 planes 3 planes 4 planes 5 planes 6 planes 7 planes

21% 14% 13% 12% 10% 8% 6%

8 planes 9 planes 10 planes 11 planes 12 planes 13 planes 14 planes

5% 3% 2% 2% 1% 1% 1%

In the medium building class, the distribution for single-plane buildings starts farther to the right, 

which is accommodated by setting = 300 (i.e., the minimum practical size of a single-plane 

rooftop is 300 m

2

):

= 0.002, = 300

= 0.046, = 10

Large buildings have as many as 32 planes in our model (TableC-3).
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Table C-3. Building Planes: Large Buildings

1 plane 2 planes 3 planes 4 planes 5 planes 6 planes 7 planes 8 planes

14% 7% 6% 5% 5% 5% 5% 4%

9 planes 10 planes 11 planes 12 planes 13 planes 14 planes 15 planes 16 planes

4% 4% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3% 3%

17 planes 18 planes 19 planes 20 planes 21 planes 22 planes 23 planes 24 planes

2% 2% 2% 2% 1% 1% 1% 1%

25 planes 26 planes 27 planes 28 planes 29 planes 30 planes 31 planes 32 planes

1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1% 1%

= 0.0005, = 2,000

= 0.055, = 0

The large buildings are least well modeled using this method, largely because there is no simple 

dichotomy between buildings with one plane and buildings with two or more planes. As 

FigureC-3 demonstrates, one-plane buildings are clearly exponential; however, buildings with 2–

10 planes appear bimodal. By assuming that all buildings in the model have a first plane selected 

from the one-plane distribution, we account for this multimodality. One goal for future work is

to fit a continuous model that accounts for the relationship between size of panel and number 

of panels.

To understand how this model compares to assumptions of suitable rooftop area used in prior 

studies, we compared the expected average suitable rooftop size from our model for medium and 

large buildings to the average sizes from a previous NREL report on economic potential (Brown 

et al. 2015). In that study, medium buildings were assumed on average to have 1,487 m2 of 

suitable rooftop area, while in our model the mean is 929 m2. Also, that study assumed large 

buildings had on average 5,471 m

2

 of suitable rooftop space, while our model predicts 4,178 m2. 

FigureC-4 and FigureC-5 show these figures overlayed as vertical lines on the actual observed 

distribution of suitable building areas in the lidar data set. For this data set, the nonparametric 

modeling approach used here seems to better account for the heavy-tailed nature of the 

underlying distribution and it better models the true central tendency in the data.
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Figure C-3. Observed size of suitable planes for buildings with 1–32 planes in lidar data

Figure C-4. Distribution of large building suitable areas (total usable rooftop area) in lidar data 

compared to model-calculated mean (green line) and assumed constant value in prior NREL 

studies (red line)

Plot is in log-scale for better visibility.
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Figure C-5. Distribution of medium building suitable areas (total usable rooftop area) in lidar data 

compared to model calculated mean (green line) and assumed constant value from prior NREL 

studies (red line)
69 

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Appendix D: Combined Suitable Area Model

This appendix describes the complete model, which combines component models from 

Appendices A, B, and C for inferring suitability, number of buildings, tilt and azimuth of rooftop 

planes, and number and size of those planes. This combined model can predict the total suitable

area for all buildings in a region where lidar data are not available.

Total suitable area in each tilt and azimuth class as the sum of per-region areas are 

calculated as follows:

=

= 2

= ,

where:

Z is the set of geographies, S is the set of slope categories (tilts), and A is the set of azimuth 

(aspect) categories.

: is a matrix containing the suitable area in each azimuth and tilt class as a cell in the matrix. 

 : Predicted number of buildings in region I (see Appendix B, Section B.4)

For small buildings, prediction is based on a fitted least squares multiple regression: 

= + ( ) + ( ) + ( ) + ( ) +

( ) + ( 1 ) + ( ) . Lower and 

upper estimates are given using 95% confidence intervals on the fitted parameters. 

For medium and large buildings, CBECS per-census-division building counts are used 

directly. For state-level estimates, population-weighted proportions are assigned to states. 

CBECS standard error values are used to calculate 95% confidence intervals.

: Predicted fraction of buildings in region i with suitable rooftops (see Appendix B, Section 

B.1)

For small buildings, prediction is based on a fitted least squares multiple regression: 

= + ( ) ( ) + ( ) + ( ) +

( ) + ( ) + ( ) . This model is identical to the one 

developed in Section 0 for predicting ZIP-code-level national suitability for small 

buildings. Lower and upper estimates are given using 95% confidence intervals on the 

fitted parameters.
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For medium and large buildings, a constant value of 1 is used (assuming that 100% of 

medium and large buildings have at least one suitable plane)

 : Expected fraction of buildings with exactly i suitable planes

Derived from per-class (i.e., small, medium, and large) random sample corresponding to 

the actual fractions seen in the data.

: Expected size of suitable plane space in square meters for the ith suitable plane (see Appendix 

C)

Defined as the mean of a fitted exponential distribution using a per-class random sample.

The first plane (i = 1) is fitted separately from successive planes (i = 2..m) because 

substantial variation exists between these classes.

= + , where l is the location parameter (threshold) and r is the return rate of the 

fitted exponential.

 : Expected fraction of rooftop planes on a surface with tilt class i and azimuth class j (see 

Appendix A)

For small buildings, per-locale-type average values are used from a lognormal fit of data 

in each azimuth and tilt class combination.

For medium and large buildings, national average lognormal fitted values are used.

In both cases, the matrix is normalized such that = = 1. 

= / where and are the fitted parameters of each lognormal distribution, as 

described in Appendix A. 

In the equation for , is the predicted number of buildings, is the number of planes in 

each planes-per-building category, and the dot product of and gives the total suitable 

predicted area in azimuth/tilt combination j/k for the ith geography.