Evaluation of Solar Potential by Domestic Building Typology

Abstract

Renewable energy is playing an ever important role in meeting energy requirements across the world. It exhibits favourable credentials such as an abundant and widely available resource base, inexhaustibility and environmental friendliness, which have contributed to its fast growth over the last two decades. Sri Lanka lies within the equatorial belt, a region where substantial solar energy resources exist throughout much of the year in adequate quantities for many applications. Due to the continuously increasing energy demand in the construction sector, there exists a potential for significant expansion of the use of this renewable energy within the region. This paper intends to demonstrate the effect of domestic building type on solar potential, by analysing solar potential in the real urban context of Colombo based on building type and characteristics. Accordingly, this paper studies real cases in Colombo’s urban context by selecting five cases of real urban residential blocks. The buildings were analyzed based on form and dimensions and classified into characteristic buildings. The solar potential was calculated for the roofs of these characteristic buildings respectively. The results obtained showed obvious differences between the six different types of buildings, where the distribution of solar irradiation on roofs for each building type was vividly different based on the building form, owing to differences in roof area and building footprint.