Potential Rooftop Distribution Mapping using

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

for Solar PV Installation:
A Case Study for Dhaka, Bangladesh
Taskin Jamal#1, Weerakorn Ongsakul*, Jay Govind Singh*, Sayedus Salehin#, S.M. Ferdous#
#
Faculty of Engineering, American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB)
Dhaka, Bangladesh
1
taskin@aiub.edu
*Energy Field of Study, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)
Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract — To meet the ever increasing electricity demand in
the urban area, roof-top solar PV offers a feasible and alternative
solution along with conventional power supply from the
electricity grid. Geographic Information Systems can be used as
a significantly useful tool for potential rooftop distribution
mapping. This paper aims at mapping potential roof-top area
available in Dhaka city and evaluating the possible electricity
supply from such installations. In this work, ArcGIS software
has been used to compile and analyze the geographic data for
potential bright roof-top area whereas HOMER has been used to
model the energy system and to investigate the energy share from
the roof-top PV installations. This type of study will encourage
the entrepreneurship in the field of rooftop solar home system in
the urban areas of a country.
Keywords - Geographic Information System; Roof-top PV;
Distribution mapping; solar Photovoltaics; ArcGIS
I. INTRODUCTION
Electricity is one of the mostly used forms of energy which
is consumed in various residential as well as in industrial
applications. Fossil fuels have the major share in providing the
large amount of electricity demand which requires burning of a
huge quantity of fossil fuels across the globe. This fossil fuel
usage is also one of the main reasons for the green house gas
emission resulting global warming. Renewable energy
resources provide an alternative solution by replacing
hydrocarbon based fossil fuels. These resources are also often
termed as green energy since these don't cause green house gas
emission. Among renewable energy resources, solar
photovoltaic energy conversion is one of the most promising
one to meet the energy demand. Solar photovoltaic modules
can be integrated on the roof-top of buildings in urban areas to
harvest energy efficiently. It is of utmost importance to
develop new concepts to utilize this potential energy source in
efficient way considering the increasing demand of electricity.
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a smart technology
which can be used as an important element of smart electricity
network consisting of renewable energy resources. This
technology facilitates distribution network planning along with
improving system operation, maintenance and efficiency.
Research has been conducted at various research institutes and
universities for utilizing GIS technology for estimating the
potential roof top areas for solar PV electrification. Dhaka, as a
mega-city, needs more green energy solutions for urban
electrification among which roof-top integrated solar PV is a
prospective candidate. Studies have suggested that area
dependent methods are required for the optimal results while
using GIS for potential roof-top distribution mapping. Thus, it
is essential to find an optimal method for roof top distribution
mapping using GIS for Dhaka city [1].
II. GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR MAPPING
To determine the tremendous potential of renewable energy
systems, extensive research is being carried out by researchers
from different disciplines. Use of Geographic Information
System (GIS) offers added advantage for planning for
performing efficient operation and control of the system of any
place. GIS helps in mapping on spatial and temporal scales of
components of the distribution system of renewable energy. It
is a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing
phenomena existing and happening on earth. This technology
assists in integrating common database operations such as
query and statistical analysis with the unique visualization and
geographic analysis benefits offered by maps.
Different information in a spatial context is related by GIS
and the relationship between them is concluded. GIS store and
process data in two different formats, vector and raster. In
vector format, the view is presented as a mosaic of
interconnected lines and points those can represent any
position and boundaries of locations. In vector data models, the
data are represented by lines (arcs), traversed areas (polygon),
labeled nodes (points) and intersection points (nodes). The
raster format has appeared by aerial and satellite image
technology, where geographical objects are represented as
grid-cell structures, known as pixels.
 The ability of Geographic Information System to look for
databases and carry out geographic queries has been found as
an economically efficient solution for power utilities. GIS have
been used in electric power applications for planning, solar and
biomass energy resources, wind energy evaluation, optimal
siting of wind and solar farms and their integration to the grid
[1].
III. DETERMINATION OF ROOFTOP AREA FOR SOLAR PV
There has been significant amount of works investigating
the evaluation of rooftop area for solar PV applications and
urban electrification through rooftop solar PV. Different
algorithms and methodologies including the assessment from
city 3D model have been proposed by Guindon et al., Ratti &
Richens, Wiginton et al., Gutschner et al., Defaix, Joachem et
al., Bryan, Strzalka et al., Izquierdo et al. for the evaluation of
total rooftop area for solar PV application in urban areas [2-
10]. LIDAR technology has been applied by Nguyen et al.,
Kassner et al. in their researches for the same purpose [11-12].
GIS tools have been applied by several researchers, like
Gadsden et al., Izquierdo et al., and Kraines et al. to estimate
the potential of photovotaics to be set up on building roofs in
the urban areas [10, 13-14]. Castro has simulated the electrical
characteristics of PV modules under shading effect [15].
Our research aims at finding out the potential capacity of
the rooftop solar PV for urban electrification with the help of
GIS platform to map. Unlike the related works done by various
researchers previously, in this work many inputs to software
were processed manually. Practical data collection and
observation of the research location have facilitated for having
improved set of data for the area. Here, the assessment of
rooftop area for the solar PV setup has not been proposed using
LIDAR technology or FA tool of GIS. The reasons behind the
manual processing of data for evaluation in the study area are:
¾ Uneven distribution of informal settlements in the
area.
¾ Uneven distribution of population density and
building density.
¾ No correlation between the population and building
densities among different areas.
¾ Incompatibility of many structures for rooftop solar
PV setup.
¾ Extrapolation is not possible due to uneven
distribution of population and the density of
population varies depending on the types of buildings
and informal settlements.
¾ Bangladesh has six different seasons throughout the
year. The solar irradiation thus varies and the analysis
based on image recognition is difficult due to weather
effects of the rooftop.
The software used for the analysis is ArcGIS. It is a system
for working with maps and geographic information. ArcGIS is
a suite consisting of a group of geographic information
systems (GIS) software products produced by ESRI.
IV. DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AREA
The study area for the research has been selected in the city
of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, one of the major
cities in South Asia. It is one of the most densely populated
cities in the world. After granted as a city status in 1947,
presently it is the 9th largest city in the world. Considering the
last few years scenario in Bangladesh, especially in Dhaka, it
has been observed that the migration from the rural area to the
urban areas is increasing and thus population in the urban areas
is increasing drastically. As this trend is continuing, the
electricity demand is increasing each year. Roof-top PV panels
offer an excellent option for meeting the growing electricity
demand. Concerned power utilities and industries should
evaluate the potential for rooftop solar PV technology and
adopt necessary measures and it must be done in advance by
promoting the technology to avoid electricity crisis in future.
Electricity in Dhaka is supplied by two entities, Dhaka
Power Distribution Company Limited (DPDC) and Dhaka
Electric Supply Company Limited (DESCO). For mapping and
calculating the potential, area under DPDC has been chosen;
being the largest distribution company in Dhaka. Of all the
132/33kV substations of DPDC, the Dhanmondi 132/33kV
substaion and its associated network have been chosen as the
main study area of this work. Dhanmondi 132/33kV grid
substation is in the center of the city in Katabon area and is
covering a large geographical area of extreme importance to
the country. Many government offices as well as educational,
commercial, industrial, residential and other important places
are located in this area. The service area of the Dhanmondi grid
substation has several types of customers starting from the
domestic 0.4kV to 11kV bulk customers. There are four
33/11kV substations under this substation named Dhanmondi,
Kakrail, Kawranbazar and New Ramna 33/11kV substation.
Fig. 1 Study Area: Dhanmondi Grid Area
V. ROOFTOP SOLAR PV FOR DHAKA CITY
Distributed Generation (DG) is becoming popular all over
the world mainly because of loss reduction, cost saving from
transmission expansion & distribution network as it is located
near the load centers. The scarcity of conventional energy
resource is the other reason to consider DG as an emerging spins backward or slows down when energy is produced and
energy source. consumed in proportion to the amounts.
According to Bangladesh Renewable Energy Policy-2008, In Bangladesh, thousands of off grid solar home systems
solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are in use throughout the are currently in operation in rural areas. But for the urban
country with over 300,000 household-level installations having areas, this is not a common scenario yet. Dhaka city is still
capacity of about 15 MW (November 2008). An average of 4– lacking behind in terms of solar PV applications, and thus to
6.5 kWh/m2 of solar radiation is available daily in Bangladesh. solve the power crises. With the help of solar PV systems
Recently a notable decline of the indigenous gas supply has installed on the bright rooftops, electricity can be generated
taken place, which rapidly had worsened electricity generation and resolve the issues of planned load shedding. Figure 2 and 3
in the country. Given the city’s power crisis and geophysical show the grid architeture for different types of grid-tied solar
situations, applications of either stand-alone or grid connected PV system.
PV systems would be very effective and realistic for power
addition. As planned load shedding is a daily phenomenon, the
Instant Power Supply (IPS) units have become very popular.
This system charges the batteries during the electricity supply
time and will deliver the stored energy when there is load
shedding. Rooftop solar system can be an excellent alternative
to this IPS unit. In Bangladesh, the government has not setup
the rules and regulations for feed-in-tariffs for the solar
systems in residential areas and the electricity infrastructure is
old and unsuitable to date for integration of renewable energy
resources in it. Thus the grid tie system is limited to internal
grid only.
The conservative calculation of bright roof-tops from the
Quickbird Scene 2006 of Dhaka city indicates that the city
offers 10.554 km2 of bright roof-tops within the Dhaka City Fig. 2 Grid intertied solar system with battery backup [17]
Corporation (DCC) area (134.282 km2). The application of
stand-alone PV systems with 75Wp solar modules can generate
nearly 1000MW of electrical power, which could substantially
meet the city’s power demand [16]. From the perspectives of
environmental protection and climate change, application of
solar PV systems is pragmatic as Bangladesh is a signatory of
both the Kyoto Protocol and United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Therefore, PV
applications would be an appropriate and effective option for
the urban areas of Dhaka city.
There are two approaches those can be taken while
installing PV panels on roof-top of residential buildings to
produce electricity. One is the off grid system and the other is Fig. 3 Grid intertied solar system without battery backup [17]
the grid tie system. One can isolate himself from the utility
company that is responsible for supplying elecricity to homes.
VI. EVALUATION OF POTENTIAL POWER GENERATION
This is known as going off grid. Then, the owner is responsible
FROM ROOFTOP SOLAR PV
for providing electricity to his home. Since, solar energy is
intermittent; variation of solar radiation may create problems. In this work, the calculation of bright rooftop for the solar
An off grid system is very difficult to maintain and the PV installation is limited to the study areas only. The service
operation is quite complex. The other option is to remain tied areas under the four 33/11kV substations mentioned above
with the utility company and produce electricity from PV have been located in Google Earth software where the earth
panels at the same time. In this case, the utility company images are captured from satellites, aerial photography and
becomes the back up system in case of any discrepancy occurs. GIS 3D globe. The areas have been selected not only from the
This is known as grid tie in solar systems. This is the most theoretical and conceptual data but also from the field
common system people take when they plan to change to a observation and survey. After geographically locating the
renewable energy system. The grid tie system is also called areas, the map of the potential bright rooftops has been
tied to grid electrical system. In grid-tie systems, all the generated. Using the options available in Google Earth
electricity generated is utilized. After meeting the domestic or software, the potential rooftops have been selected by hand
household energy demands, the excess power can be fed into digitization method to ensure more accuracy. The selected area
the grid. This is known as Net Metering. The electric meter file has been exported into the ArcGIS software. ArcGIS is
used for creating maps and using it for different purposes. It
can also compile the geographic data, analyze the mapped
information, share and discover geographic information.
ArcGIS is able to manage geographic information in a
database. Using the functions of this software, all the
informations realted to the selected areas and the potential
bright rooftop areas have been analyzed. Several limitations
and conditions have been considered while analyzing and
calculating the total rooftop amount in the areas having the
potential for PV installation. In these areas there exist many
important governmental as well as private properties.
Considerable amount of area has not been selected as potential
area due to the incompatibility characterisitics of those areas
for the purpose. Many small and medium sized building
rooftops have been discarded for shadowing problem. In the
study areas, the height distribution of the buildings has found
to be very uneven; thus the shadow effect is very prominent.
The informal settlements or the slum areas or vulnerable one
storied houses have been excluded from the consideration for Fig. 5 Locating the potential bright rooftops for solar PV application in
PV installation [16]. For calculating the actual rooftop area for Kakrail 33/11kV substation service area
solar PV installation several factors have been considered such
as construction and design constrains, shades of trees or higher
buildings nearby, obstacles on the rooftop, proper facing of the
rooftop, slum areas (informal settlements) and others
constraints. The fraction of the actual rooftop area has been
evaluated from the total bright rooftop area in accordance with
the research from Kabir et al. and that amount is 50% [16]. The
following table shows actual rooftop area under four different
substation areas for solar PV installation: Figure 4-7 represent
the potential bright rooftops for solar PV installation in
different substation areas of the Dhanmondi grid.

TABLE 1: CALCULATION OF POTENTIAL POWER GENERATION FROM ROOFTOP

SOLAR PV IN DHANMONDI 132/33 KV S/S SERVICE AREA

Substation of Actual Rooftop

Bright Rooftop
the Service Total Area Area for Solar
Area
Area PV Installation
Dhanmondi
3,346,008 m2 232,721.62 m2 116,360.81 m2
33/11kV
Fig. 6 Locating the potential bright rooftops for solar PV application in
Kakrail Kawranbazar 33/11kV substation service area
1,660,574.089 m2 398,783.9065 m2 199,391.95 m2
33/11kV
Kawranbazar
2,539,521.258 m2 406,852.5079 m2 203,426.25 m2
33/11kV
New Ramna
2,285,882.631 m2 466,399.2647 m2 233,199.63 m2
33/11kV

Fig. 7 Locating the potential bright rooftops for solar PV application in

New Ramna 33/11kV substation service area
Fig. 4 Locating the potential bright rooftops for solar PV application in
Dhanmondi 33/11kV substation service area.
 In 2011, Dhanmondi grid had observed the maximum
demand in the month of August. And the maximum load
shedding occurred in August 1, 2011. In the evening peak time
at 7 PM, the demand was the maximum (118.03 MW) and the
supply was the least (93.41 MW), thus resulting the maximum
load shedding (24.62 MW) in the customer premises. It has
been evaluated that, the four substation service areas under the
Dhanmondi 132/33 kV substation can be supplied with the
electricity generation ranging from minimum 62.49 MW-peak
to maximum of 78.78 MW-peak from the rooftop solar PV. As
seen from the data provided, the maximum amount of load
shedding was about 24.62 MW during the specified period of
the day; the potential generation capacity from the rooftop
solar panels would easily meet the scarcity. The surplus energy
can be transmitted through the grid to other areas where the
distributed generation facilities are not sufficient and not
feasible. The geographic locations of the research area have
been represented in figure no. 8.
Fig. 8 Potential rooftop distributions in the Dhanmondi grid area
VII. CALCULATING THE POTENTIAL ELECTRICITY
GENERATION
The visual simulation and analysis after the connection of
rooftop solar PV in the grid has been completed by an
optimization tool called the Hybrid Optimization Model for
Electric Renewable (HOMER, Version 2.68 Beta). For the
analysis, HOMER needs information on system configuration
(whether off grid or grid tied), load profile, component
specifications including size and numbers, resources data,
economics, system control, emissions, constraints etc. The
daily load profile has been calculated from the data collected
from DPDC. At 19:00 hour the load is found to be the
maximum. For simplicity of the calculation and lack of data
available during study, the load profile of August 1, 2011 has
been considered as a sample load profile for the whole year.
For making the data more realistic, day to day variability has
been selected as 3%. The Dhanmondi 132/33kV susbstation
has the maximum load serving capacity of 128MW. Parameter
values have been chosen according to the market analysis of
Dhaka city.
Fig. 9 Average Daily Load Profile of Dhanmondi 132/33kV Substation
The whole system has been designed to be the grid
connected system. The system comprised of PV Panel,
Battery, Converter and Grid. As natural gas is the main source
of the electricity in Bangladesh, it has been selected as the
supply fuel of the grid.
Fig. 10 Model of the Grid-tied PV system
Fig. 11 Monthly load demand and available electric power from PV and
grid (January, 2012)
From the simulation result obtained in HOMER, it has been
considered that the total electricity production will be from
both the sources during the day time. As the PV has a
significant amount of generation in the day time, the burden
will be very less on the fossil fuel supply. Though the
maximum electricity export capacity from the fossil fuel varies
from 90MW to 115MW, due to maximum use of solar
potential, the pressure on grid will be reduced extensively. At
the night time electricity will be supplied from the grid and
also through the battery storage. Thus the optimized use of the
fossil fuel will be ensured.
Fig. 12 Simulation results of electricity production from grid tied
rooftop PV system
The power supplied from the PV array could be 15% of the
total electricity supply of the Dhanmondi grid. The renewable
energy policy of Bangladesh states that it is aiming to get a
total of 5% of the total generation from the renewable sources.
By introducing the rooftop solar PV systems in the urban areas,
the target can be fulfilled and also it will reduce the pressure on
fossil fuel three times more than the estimated amount. The
simulation result also signifies that the PV grid tied system is
feasible under the present policies of the government.
Fig. 13 A sample of Rooftop Solar PV Installation in Dhaka
VIII. CONCLUSION
There lies a great potential for electricity generation through
rooftop grid-tie solar PV system in the urban areas of
Bangladesh. This paper has focused only a small but very
important area of the capital city Dhaka. Data collection for the
whole country and then calculating the potential power
generation from rooftop solar PV installation using the
proposed method will encourage more entrepreneurship in this
sector. A proper and systematic approach for calculating the
potential rooftop area for solar PV installation is also needed to
get an idea about the potential of the renewable energy
resources to reduce the fossil fuel consumption, thus saving the
environment and ensure a sustainable development. Side by
side the Government of Bangladesh needs to establish a
suitable guideline of grid-tied solar PV systems which will
ensure more customers choosing the system [18].
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Acknowledgement is due to the Energy Field of Study,
Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand and the
Government of Japan for the academic and financial helps.
Special thanks to Dhaka Power Distribution Company Limited
(DPDC), Bangladesh for the permission for data collection.
Special thanks also extended to Mr. B.D.Rahmatullah, Visiting
Faculty, University of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh for
academic supports.
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