Estimating Mumbai's rooftop PV potential through mobilization of IEEE student community

Generating fine grain data about the rooftop PV potential of a city can help the city planning and administration authorities to effectively draft and execute regional rooftop PV policies. A quick and `holistic' rooftop potential estimation approach was developed and tried out in the city of Mumbai, India. Students from IEEE student branches of twelve engineering institutes in the city were trained as surveyors for estimating the rooftop PV potential of buildings. They were taught how to use GIS tools and simulation software to measure the rooftop area suitable for PV installation. They did site surveys to measure the roof area of selected buildings and validated their GIS based study. They also interviewed building owners to understand their perspective towards PV. Different areas within the city were assigned to different teams of students and finally the data was consolidated and used to estimate city level potential. The study concluded that there is a potential to install 1.72 GW over various buildings in the city.