Rooftop Solar Power Production Potential of Existing Public Housing Buildings in Singapore

The importance of increasing renewable energy production to facilitate a sustainable energy transition has been well-discussed and reinforced worldwide. In land- and resource-scarce and tropical Singapore, solar has been deemed the most feasible renewable energy technology for the country moving forward. Previous studies have focused on assessing the feasibility of various solar technologies. This paper instead analyses the rooftop solar power production potential of existing high-rise residential buildings in Singapore, and thus contributes to reaching the national solar goal using geographic information system geospatial imagery. For this study, the chosen focus area is the south of Jurong East in Singapore. Results show that solar deployment on all available public high-rise residential building rooftop areas in the focus area will be able to generate a total potential solar peak power and annual solar energy output of 2-megawatt peak and 2.8-gigawatt hour per year respectively. This equates to meeting the energy demand of 679 public residential apartments in the focus area and meeting 0.18% of the national solar goal of reaching 1.5- gigawatt peak by 2025. In an urban context, the use of geospatial analysis has been presented to benefit urban planning especially with regards to the integration of rooftop solar photovoltaic systems