Abstract
Rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in urban communities have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. The reasons for this include:
• rapid urbanisation of the world’s population,
• the advantages of decentralised, clean power competing with the retail price of conventional electricity,
• uncertainty in grid electricity delivery, and
• the rise of affordable batteries.
The worldwide rooftop solar PV market is very large, with California currently having over 670,000 PV systems with a combined capacity over 4.5 GW [1]. Singapore is noteworthy for its high density of rooftop PV, with a number of large capacity systems, between 1 and 10 MW [2] on the rooftops of 15-25 storey commercial and industrial buildings. Australia has the highest percentage of residential PV systems in the world (16.5%) with over 5 GW of installed PV in systems less than 10 kW in rated power [3]. Over the next 5 years, the greatest growth in rooftop solar PV systems is expected to be in the Asia Pacific region, in countries such as China, Japan and India.