OpenStreetMap
I’ve had a look at mapping solar farms in England. By “solar farms” I mean the large field-scale things.
A few years ago someone put this very useful List of under construction and operational UK Ground Mounted Solar Farms on the wiki, sourced from the “REPD”.
I’ve been through and checked for every item in that table which is rated as >= 30 MW. About two thirds of them were already there. The rest were easy to map because very visible in DigitalGlobe imagery - most of them were not visible in Bing imagery because the latter is a few years old, and many solar farms are new.
In some cases I’ve used a single power=generator way, but in most cases they’re a power=plant relation. The tagging is generally like this:
generator:output:electricity 31.6 MW name Broxted Solar Farm power plant repd:id 1592 source:generator:output:electricity repd type site
This is in ADDITION to the tagging of solar panel areas using the PV tagging described here
I’m broadly following the approach in the wiki page with the big REPD list. The repd:id is useful to be able to join the dots later.
Discussion
Comment from Jez Nicholson on 22 May 2019 at 14:05
Oh, hi, the REPD table was added by me. It’s been very useful for saying what is a wind ‘farm’ and what is ‘just a small turbine in someone’s field’, as well as being a good driver for hunting down wind and solar farms. I haven’t made a concerted effort on the solar yet but will most likely be triggering the next OSMUK Quarterly Project on it https://www.loomio.org/p/MoIw3091/-solar-power-will-be-the-q3-july-sept-2019-quarterly-project
If you are coming to the OSMUK AGM on June 29 we could chat.
Have you found the solar farm that is floating on the surface of a reservoir yet?!
Comment from mcld on 22 May 2019 at 20:41
Thanks Jez!
I’m afraid I’ll be on holiday at the time of the OSMUK AGM. I’d be happy to have a chat about related things by email or call if you think it worth it.
The REPD table has been a really useful guide for hunting. I’ve checked every entry in there >=12 MW. Not all were findable (in bing/digitalglobe), but there are many I was able to add, and many that others have added too.