Overview

Turning the solar energy received by a surface into electricity is a major challenge for cities looking for a quick and efficient transition to sustainable energy systems.
From a complete 3D digital model including terrain, vegetation, buildings any other potentially "masking" elements, RhinoSolar™ allows to evaluate the solar potential of your infrastructures.

Features

RhinoSolar™ calculates the solar potential and the sunshine duration of all surfaces by taking into account the complete 3D digital model to which they belong.
By taking into terrain, vegetation, buildings and all other potentially masking elements, RhinoSolar™ is an unprecedented solution for exploiting a territory's 3D digital model.

SOLAR ENERGY

RhinoSolar™ computes very precisely, taking in account the 3D visibility complex, the 3 components of the solar irradiance :

Direct irradiance: the extra-atmospheric solar radiation that reaches a surface directly after having passed through the Earth's atmosphere.
Diffuse irradiance : the extra-atmospheric solar irradiance that has been diffused by the different components of the atmosphere.
Reflected irradiance : the solar radiation reflected by non-atmospheric elements, in particular the ground.

The global solar irradiance (power in W.m-2) is the sum of these 3 components.
Based on this "clear-sky" solar energy, RhinoSolar™ can also manage the impact of cloud cover to determine sunshine.

URBAN HEAT ISLAND (UHI)

An Urban Heat Island (UHI) is an urban area that is significantly warner than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities.

Compute the sunshine duration is the key point of UHI analysis. Using RhinoSolar™ you'll be able to :

Compute the solar potential of your 3D models
Evaluate the duration of sunshine in all points of these 3D models

RhinoSolar™ produces usable numerical results in Excel or SQLite, as well as textured 3D models from totally customizable gradients: let your creativity expose the solar potential of your data!

TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE COMPLETE 3D MODEL

RhinoSolar™ calculates the solar potential and the sunshine duration of all surfaces by taking into account the complete 3D digital model to which they belong.

By taking into terrain, vegetation, buildings and all other potentially masking elements, RhinoSolar™ is an unprecedented solution for exploiting a territory's 3D digital model.

RhinoSolar provides multiple ways of presenting your results:

All the characteristics of the studied surfaces (identifier, surface, slope) as well as the results of computation are available as a CSV file directly exploitable in Excel.

SQLite database export: the high-reliability, embedded, full-featured and public-domain SQL database engine

Your 3D model is textured for easy reading of the results by gradients with customizable colors. You can also create geo-referenced vertical images of type GeoTiff.

Exported as attribute data from the 3D geometries studied, the calculation results are directly integrated into the 3D model when exported in CityGML format or in Shapefile (ESRI) format.

Rhino & Rhino Plugins

RhinoSolar for Rhino - Maintenance

RhinoCapture for Rhino - Maintenance Subscription

RhinoDB (ZOO) - Maintenance Subscription

RhinoSolar for Rhino - Upgrade