PV Rooftop Dataset

Abstract

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Photovoltaic (PV) Rooftop Database (PVRDB) is a lidar-derived, geospatially-resolved dataset of suitable roof surfaces and their PV technical potential for 128 metropolitan regions in the United States. The PVRDB data are organized by city and year of lidar collection. Five geospatial layers are available for each city and year: 1) the raster extent of the lidar collection, 2) buildings identified from the lidar data, 3) suitable developable planes for each building, 4) aspect values of the developable planes, and 5) the technical potential estimates of the developable planes.