Solara

Overview

Solara studies the energy potential of sites and areas from public data. It reads solar resource and photovoltaic yield, screens wind at hub height, maps terrain-aware irradiation and usable ground, and examines grid connection and electricity consumption in Brazil. A local Python sidecar runs the analyses; public inputs are fetched on demand and cached. The Studio keeps places, settings and results together in a project, with a run graph, comparison tables and exports.

Research

Solara is a screening instrument for particular sites and areas under explicit assumptions. Solar resource combines NASA POWER meteorology and pvlib photovoltaic modelling. Terrain products use Copernicus DEM GLO-30, horizon shading and ESA WorldCover permanent water. Brazilian grid readings draw on ONS, ANEEL and distributor BDGD records in a shared local PostGIS store. Each reading carries its parameters and location; changed inputs mark previous results stale.

• Solar resource and photovoltaic yield at a site; terrain-aware plane-of-array irradiation at 30 m
• Hub-height wind screening from NASA POWER/MERRA-2 with sensitivity to the assumed shear
• Usable-ground screening from maximum slope and minimum height above nearest drainage (HAND), with permanent water excluded separately
• Grid connection, bus headroom and curtailment read separately; electricity consumption by voltage, tariff class and municipality, with a 1 km spatial grid

Software

• Resizable Studio editors and workspaces for Solar, Wind, Grid and Ground; maps, outliner, properties, run graph, readings, data tables and console
• Solar resource by month and year, photovoltaic yield and seasonal terrain irradiation with horizon shading
• Wind operating-regime screening and usable-ground maps with user-defined slope and HAND thresholds
• Brazilian plant, transmission-line and substation overlays; connection, curtailment and area-consumption readings from a read-only local PostGIS store
• Current weather: GOES-East clouds, RainViewer radar, GFS wind fields and Open-Meteo conditions, with source age and observed/modelled labels
• Save .solara projects with adjacent raster data, undo changes, compare results and export CSV/JSON; terrain layers also export as float32 GeoTIFF
• Run from source with Go, Wails, Node.js and Python 3.12. PostgreSQL/PostGIS and a populated terra_br store are required for grid-store products

Scope & interpretation

• Wind screening is gross and unvalidated. Solar and wind values are model outputs under stated assumptions, not site measurements.
• Grid-connection screening is not an access opinion. Proximity and curtailment are separate readings, not a combined suitability score.
• The HAND flood rule is a lower bound, and usable-ground results are a terrain screen rather than a complete siting assessment.
• Grid-store products need a populated local PostGIS database. Other analyses remain available when that store cannot be reached.
• Live weather requires internet access; missing radar coverage does not mean no rain. Open-Meteo’s free tier is for non-commercial use.