Method and system for determining solar access of a structure

Abstract

Methods and systems are disclosed for automatically determining solar access values, including a method including calculating a ray between a sun position and a structure vertex at a plurality of time periods; comparing a path of the ray to location of points in object point cloud data representative of the size, shape, and location of one or more objects to determine that the object(s) blocks the ray from reaching the vertex, resulting in a shadow over the vertex for at least one of the time periods; determining effects of the shadow over the vertex on the maximum possible irradiance values based on a determined distance and whether the vertex is within an umbra, penumbra, or antumbra of the shadow at at least one of the time periods; and determining irradiance in Watts per time period over the plurality of time periods in which the shadow is over the vertex.