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points by jcattle 3 days ago | 0 comments

Kind of. Free satellite data starts at 10m resolution per pixel. You will not get a clear signal on small rooftop solar. Same for balcony solar or other near perpendicular installations.

At 10m the only thing you can reliably detect is large scale deployments. If you want to do better than that you need paid data which is prohibitively expensive at large scales.

[–] nkmnz 3 days ago

Current or most recent data is very expensive, indeed, but researchers as well as governments should have access to data that allows them to measure the rates of change across time and extrapolate them, no?

[–] jcattle 2 days ago

Not really in developing countries which the OP is talking about.

While most developed countries have aerial imaging campaigns on some recurrent schedule (NAIP in the US is on a rolling 3-year cycle), this is usually not the case in developing countries.

Quite a few never had any large scale aerial imaging campaigns and most do not have them on regular schedules.

[–] nkmnz 2 days ago

Thanks for explaining!