Salt Lake City joins the ranks of other cities such as San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles County, Anaheim and Portland which have solar maps. The Solar Salt Lake Project, an innovative partnership among Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah Clean Energy and other partners; as well as through work with CH2M HILL and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar America Cities program. The solar map gives the citizens of Salt Lake City the ability to visit the site, enter in a property address and see a visual snapshot of the property rooftop and its suitability for solar panels.
Designed by Critigen a global leader in information technology consulting and IT outsourcing. The solar map demonstrates Critigen’s ability to deliver leading-edge visualization technologies. The Salt Lake City map utilizes a multicolored solar layer, where blue indicates lower solar radiation and red indicates an area of higher solar radiation. “As part of broader livability initiatives, Salt Lake City has set a goal to facilitate at least 10 megawatts of solar installations by 2015,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker. “With tools like the solar map, we take the next steps to encourage adoption and further livability in our city,” he added.
These approaches make it simple for property owners to create highly accurate user-defined areas for solar panels in the rooftop areas with the highest solar radiation. The solar map then calculates the system size that will fit into the user-defined area, calculates the amount of electricity that will be generated, and provides information about the cost of the proposed system. If the system is not what the user expected, the property owner can redraw the area to get a different set of results. This tool offers a great deal of flexibility and convenience to those “do-it-yourself” citizens who are interested in solar. “Every step we take to make it easier for the general public to understand the value and potential of renewable resources on their own homes brings us closer to energy security in this country,” stated Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon.