Spatio-Temporal Detection of Photovoltaic Systems on Industrial Building Rooftops Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning
The global transition toward carbon-neutral energy systems is heavily dependent on the rapid deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure, yet the speed of this expansion has outpaced the ability of administrative registries to maintain accurate records. While high-resolution commercial imagery is often used for monitoring, its high cost and infrequent updates can create an information gap for grid operators, energy infrastructure developers and policymakers. This study addresses the lack of scalable monitoring for industrial-scale rooftop PV systems by developing a machine learning framework that utilizes open-access, multispectral Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. By integrating building geometries from OpenStreetMap with Sentinel-2 reflectance data, a Random Forest model was trained to identify the specific spectral signatures of PV modules. Moving beyond theoretical modeling, this work emphasizes practical implementation through the development of an interactive web-based prototype for on-demand site monitoring. The application enables users to retrieve up-to-date satellite observations and assess the presence of PV systems on industrial building rooftops. The tool incorporates quality metrics that inform users whether a prediction is supported by sufficient training data density or requires manual verification. This end-to-end framework demonstrates that open-source medium-resolution data can effectively bridge this monitoring gap.