Optimization of rooftops for PV in residential buildings in Saudi Arabia

Energy consumption across the world is on the rise due to the growing population, with a rapid increase in annual Increments of 5- 8% in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As part of the Kingdom's goal of reducing its dependency on oil and natural gas for electricity generation, the country is quickly moving towards two major sources of energy abundantly available: wind and solar. The building rooftops have been identified to be the most viable location fully exposed to the sunlight with little to no effect of shadow, however, residential buildings in the Kingdom have their rooftops usually occupied with various types of obstructions ranging from the AHU, Satellite dish, clothing line, water tank, etc as identified in some of the previous studies. An area of study to optimize the usage of the rooftop for PV application has not been touched. A typical apartment facility located in the Al Khobar locality of the eastern province was studied with 3 other alternative solutions from Case A (Base case) to utilize the rooftop, which are Case B (re-arrangement of the obstacles), case C (re-arrangement of the obstacles with lower parapet), and case D (Fly roof). In the case of A, results show that about 32.6% of the roof area with 16.5% shading effects, while cases B and C have the same roof space availability increased to 63.4% with 12% and 7.6% shading effects respectively. Finally, it is understood that Case D is the best in terms of area availability and power generation due to the absence of shading from the obstacles.