Renewable Energy Siting
The resource picks the country; the grid and the ground pick the field.
Solar and wind siting looks like a resource problem and is mostly a land problem. Irradiance varies by 2% across a 35 km region and by 60% across Europe; the setback from housing, the slope, the protected areas and the distance to a substation decide which fields are left. These guides start with what irradiance, capacity factor and the wind resource actually measure, and what the rules and power densities imply; then download and align irradiance, model PV output with pvlib, choose a tilt, move wind to hub height, integrate a Weibull against a power curve, build an exclusion mask, compute horizons, measure grid distance and rank candidate sites — with the fixes for yields off by a factor, timestamps an hour out, 10 m wind at the hub, masks that remove everything and energy read at the mean speed.
Step twelve is where the path turns from resource to land: after the exclusion mask, every later number is about which fields are left and how far they are from a substation, and the resource barely moves the ranking.
Start here
The cornerstone guide — the whole workflow end to end. Everything after it goes deeper into one part of it.
Step 1 Solar Irradiance Explained solar irradiance ghi dni dhi Begin the path →The full path, in order
The concepts underneath the work, then each task, then the errors that task produces. Work down, or jump to the step you need.
- Capacity Factor Explained capacity factor solar wind 🧭 Concept
- Wind Resource Explained wind resource assessment 🧭 Concept
- Renewable Siting Constraints Explained renewable energy siting constraints 🧭 Concept
- Terrain Shading and the Horizon Explained horizon shading solar 🧭 Concept
- Power Density and Land Use Explained solar farm land use mw per km2 🧭 Concept
- How to Download Solar Irradiance Data in Python download solar irradiance data python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Model PV Output with pvlib pvlib pv output python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Find the Optimal Tilt and Orientation for Solar Panels optimal solar panel tilt python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Estimate Wind Speed at Hub Height in Python wind speed hub height python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Estimate Wind Energy with a Weibull Distribution wind energy weibull python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Build a Siting Exclusion Mask in Python siting exclusion mask python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Compute a Horizon Profile from a DEM in Python horizon profile dem python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Measure Distance to the Grid for Renewable Siting distance to power grid python ⚙️ How-To
- How to Build a Solar Suitability Map in Python solar suitability map python ⚙️ How-To
- PV Yield Off by a Factor pv yield wrong units 🔧 Fix
- Solar Timestamps Shifted by an Hour solar data timestamps shifted 🔧 Fix
- Wind Speed at 10 m Used as Hub Height wind capacity factor too low 🔧 Fix
- Siting Mask Removes Everything exclusion mask removes everything 🔧 Fix
- Wind Energy from the Mean Speed Is Wrong wind energy from mean wind speed 🔧 Fix
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