Cities are the modern era’s undisputed drivers for economic growth and
development. But cities are also highly energy and resource intensive. Therefore, it
is predictable that cities would be active participants in the global effort to creatively
strike a balance between resources consumption and economic growth for a
sustainable future. Part of this is exploiting the often neglected, but vital, solar
photovoltaic (PV) resource and rooftop real estate within cities.
At face value, a city with the real estate infrastructural sophistication of the City of
Johannesburg (CoJ), presents an attractive opportunity for generating renewable
energy from its building rooftops. However, the magnitude of this potential is yet to be
fully characterised. Assessments of the rooftop solar PV potential of buildings in inner
city locale are made complex by the variety of building typologies and rooftop
accessibility.