3.4M Solar Panels

🚀 Read this insightful post from Hacker News 📖

📂 **Category**:

💡 **What You’ll Learn**:

In October, I reviewed the Ground-Mounted Solar Energy in the United States (GM-SEUS) dataset. This dataset attempted to outline the majority of solar farm arrays and panels across the US. Version 1 of this dataset contained 2.9M panels.

On Monday, version 2 of this dataset was released and now contains more than 3.4M panels. In addition to the panels and arrays being refreshed, there is a new rooftop array dataset.

In this post, I’ll review v2 of the GM-SEUS dataset.

My Workstation

I’m using a 5.7 GHz AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU. It has 16 cores and 32 threads and 1.2 MB of L1, 16 MB of L2 and 64 MB of L3 cache. It has a liquid cooler attached and is housed in a spacious, full-sized Cooler Master HAF 700 computer case.

The system has 96 GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at 4,800 MT/s and a 5th-generation, Crucial T700 4 TB NVMe M.2 SSD which can read at speeds up to 12,400 MB/s. There is a heatsink on the SSD to help keep its temperature down. This is my system’s C drive.

The system is powered by a 1,200-watt, fully modular Corsair Power Supply and is sat on an ASRock X870E Nova 90 Motherboard.

I’m running Ubuntu 24 LTS via Microsoft’s Ubuntu for Windows on Windows 11 Pro. In case you’re wondering why I don’t run a Linux-based desktop as my primary work environment, I’m still using an Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU which has better driver support on Windows and ArcGIS Pro only supports Windows natively.

Installing Prerequisites

I’ll use GDAL 3.9.3 to help analyse the data in this post.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install \
    gdal-bin

I’ll use DuckDB, along with its H3, JSON, Lindel, Parquet and Spatial extensions in this post.

$ cd ~
$ wget -c https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/releases/download/v1.5.1/duckdb_cli-linux-amd64.zip
$ unzip -j duckdb_cli-linux-amd64.zip
$ chmod +x duckdb
$ ~/duckdb
INSTALL h3 FROM community;
INSTALL lindel FROM community;
INSTALL json;
INSTALL parquet;
INSTALL spatial;

I’ll set up DuckDB to load every installed extension each time it launches.

.timer on
.width 180
LOAD h3;
LOAD lindel;
LOAD json;
LOAD parquet;
LOAD spatial;

The maps in this post were rendered with QGIS version 4.0.1. QGIS is a desktop application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The application has grown in popularity in recent years and has ~15M application launches from users all around the world each month.

I used QGIS’ HCMGIS plugin to add basemaps from Esri to this post.

Analysis-Ready Datasets

The following will download a 3.4 GB ZIP file. I’ll extract any GeoPackage (GPKG) file from it.

$ wget -O GMSEUS_v2.zip \
    'https://zenodo.org/records/19581821/files/GMSEUS.zip?download=1'
$ unzip -j GMSEUS_v2.zip "*.gpkg"

The following is the projection used by the GPKG files in this dataset.

$ gdalsrsinfo \
    -o proj4 \
    GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.gpkg
+proj=aea +lat_0=23 +lon_0=-96 +lat_1=29.5 +lat_2=45.5 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs

The following will convert the rooftop arrays into Parquet. I needed to use DuckDB v1.4.4 for the following as v1.5.1 was raising exceptions.

COPY (
   WITH a AS (
       SELECT Source,
              grndCvr,
              modType,
              mount,
              nativeID,
              roofArrID,
              area: IF(area::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, area::DOUBLE),
              azimuth: IF(azimuth::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, azimuth::DOUBLE),
              capMWAC: IF(capMWAC::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, capMWAC::DOUBLE),
              capMWDC: IF(capMWDC::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, capMWDC::DOUBLE),
              tilt: IF(tilt::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, tilt::DOUBLE),
              instYr: CASE WHEN instYr::INT = -9999 THEN NULL ELSE instYr     END,
              ST_FLIPCOORDINATES(
                  ST_TRANSFORM(
                      geom,
                      '+proj=aea +lat_0=23 +lon_0=-96 +lat_1=29.5 +lat_2=45.5 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs',
                      'EPSG:4326')) geometry
       FROM ST_READ('GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.gpkg')
   )
   SELECT   * EXCLUDE (geometry),
            🔥 AS bbox,
             ST_ASWKB(geometry) geometry
   FROM     a
   ORDER BY HILBERT_ENCODE([ST_Y(ST_CENTROID(geometry)),
                            ST_X(ST_CENTROID(geometry))]::double[2])
) TO 'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet' (
   FORMAT            'PARQUET',
   CODEC             'ZSTD',
   COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
   ROW_GROUP_SIZE    15000);

There are 5,822 records in this dataset.

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM   'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet';

Below is a breakdown of unique values and NULL coverage across each column.

SELECT   column_name,
         column_type,
         null_percentage,
         approx_unique,
         min,
         max
FROM     (SUMMARIZE
          FROM READ_PARQUET('GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet'))
WHERE    column_name != 'geometry'
AND      column_name != 'bbox'
ORDER BY LOWER(column_name);
┌─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────┬────────────┬────────────────────┐
│ column_name │ column_type │ null_percentage │ approx_unique │    min     │        max         │
│   varchar   │   varchar   │  decimal(9,2)   │     int64     │  varchar   │      varchar       │
├─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────┤
│ area        │ DOUBLE      │            2.77 │          5180 │ 15.0       │ 487111.0           │
│ azimuth     │ DOUBLE      │           89.63 │           156 │ 0.0        │ 530.02323408881    │
│ capMWAC     │ DOUBLE      │           89.52 │            60 │ 0.2        │ 74.9               │
│ capMWDC     │ DOUBLE      │           87.12 │           166 │ 0.00448    │ 99.7               │
│ grndCvr     │ VARCHAR     │           97.61 │             2 │ impervious │ vegetation         │
│ instYr      │ BIGINT      │           72.43 │            23 │ 2003       │ 2025               │
│ modType     │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │             2 │ c-si       │ thin-film          │
│ mount       │ VARCHAR     │           87.53 │             5 │ dual_axis  │ unknown            │
│ nativeID    │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │          4540 │ 1          │ Xebec 1 solar farm │
│ roofArrID   │ BIGINT      │            0.00 │          5830 │ 1          │ 5822               │
│ Source      │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │            15 │ CCVPV      │ gspt               │
│ tilt        │ DOUBLE      │           90.64 │            31 │ 0.0        │ 52.0               │
├─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────┴────────────┴────────────────────┤
│ 12 rows                                                                             6 columns │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The following will convert the panels into Parquet.

COPY (
   WITH a AS (
       SELECT Source,
              arrayID: arrayID::INT,
              panelID: panelID::INT,
              pnlSource,
              rowArea,
              rowAzimuth,
              rowLength,
              rowMount,
              rowSpace: IF(rowSpace::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, rowSpace::DOUBLE),
              rowWidth,
              ST_FLIPCOORDINATES(
                  ST_TRANSFORM(
                      geom,
                      '+proj=aea +lat_0=23 +lon_0=-96 +lat_1=29.5 +lat_2=45.5 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs',
                      'EPSG:4326')) geometry
       FROM ST_READ('GMSEUS_Panels_Final_2025_v2_0.gpkg')
   )
   SELECT   * EXCLUDE (geometry),
             AS bbox,
             ST_ASWKB(geometry) geometry
   FROM     a
   ORDER BY HILBERT_ENCODE([ST_Y(ST_CENTROID(geometry)),
                            ST_X(ST_CENTROID(geometry))]::double[2])
) TO 'GMSEUS_Panels_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet' (
   FORMAT            'PARQUET',
   CODEC             'ZSTD',
   COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
   ROW_GROUP_SIZE    15000);

There are 3,429,157 records in this dataset.

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM   'GMSEUS_Panels_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet';

Below is a breakdown of unique values and NULL coverage across each column.

SELECT   column_name,
         column_type,
         null_percentage,
         approx_unique,
         min,
         max
FROM     (SUMMARIZE
          FROM READ_PARQUET('GMSEUS_Panels_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet'))
WHERE    column_name != 'geometry'
AND      column_name != 'bbox'
ORDER BY LOWER(column_name);
┌─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────┬───────────┬─────────────┐
│ column_name │ column_type │ null_percentage │ approx_unique │    min    │     max     │
│   varchar   │   varchar   │  decimal(9,2)   │     int64     │  varchar  │   varchar   │
├─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────┼─────────────┤
│ arrayID     │ INTEGER     │            0.03 │         12653 │ 1         │ 18980       │
│ panelID     │ INTEGER     │            0.00 │       3323765 │ 1         │ 3429157     │
│ pnlSource   │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │             5 │ CCVPV     │ OSM         │
│ rowArea     │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │        100105 │ 15.01     │ 9982.68     │
│ rowAzimuth  │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │         22029 │ 90.0      │ 540.0       │
│ rowLength   │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │         25531 │ 3.96      │ 737.38      │
│ rowMount    │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │             3 │ dual_axis │ single_axis │
│ rowSpace    │ DOUBLE      │            1.27 │          1836 │ 0.01      │ 20.0        │
│ rowWidth    │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          2258 │ 0.45      │ 135.33      │
│ Source      │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │            12 │ CCVPV     │ USPVDB      │
├─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────┴─────────────┤
│ 10 rows                                                                     6 columns │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The following will convert the arrays and panels datasets into Parquet.

COPY (
   WITH a AS (
       SELECT COUNTYFP,
              GCR1,
              GCR2,
              STATEFP,
              Source,
              arrayID,
              avgAzimuth: IF(avgAzimuth::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, avgAzimuth::DOUBLE),
              avgLength: IF(avgLength::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, avgLength::DOUBLE),
              avgSpace: IF(avgSpace::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, avgSpace::DOUBLE),
              avgWidth: IF(avgWidth::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, avgWidth::DOUBLE),
              capMWAC,
              capMWACest,
              capMWDC,
              capMWDCest,
              effInit: IF(effInit::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, effInit::DOUBLE),
              grndCvr,
              instYr: CASE WHEN instYr::INT = -9999 THEN NULL ELSE instYr END,
              instYrEst: CASE WHEN instYrEst::INT = -9999 THEN NULL ELSE instYrEst END,
              modType,
              mount,
              nativeID: IF(nativeID::TEXT='unknown', NULL, nativeID),
              newBound,
              numRow,
              tilt: IF(tilt::TEXT='-9999.0', NULL, tilt::DOUBLE),
              tiltEst: CASE WHEN tiltEst::INT = -9999 THEN NULL ELSE tiltEst END,
              totArea,
              totRowArea,
              ST_FLIPCOORDINATES(
                  ST_TRANSFORM(
                      geom,
                      '+proj=aea +lat_0=23 +lon_0=-96 +lat_1=29.5 +lat_2=45.5 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs',
                      'EPSG:4326')) geometry
       FROM ST_READ('GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.gpkg')
   )
   SELECT   * EXCLUDE (geometry),
             AS bbox,
             ST_ASWKB(geometry) geometry
   FROM     a
   ORDER BY HILBERT_ENCODE([ST_Y(ST_CENTROID(geometry)),
                            ST_X(ST_CENTROID(geometry))]::double[2])
) TO 'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet' (
   FORMAT            'PARQUET',
   CODEC             'ZSTD',
   COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
   ROW_GROUP_SIZE    15000);

There are 18,980 records in this dataset.

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM   'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet';

Below is a breakdown of unique values and NULL coverage across each column.

SELECT   column_name,
         column_type,
         null_percentage,
         approx_unique,
         min,
         max
FROM     (SUMMARIZE
          FROM READ_PARQUET('GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet'))
WHERE    column_name != 'geometry'
AND      column_name != 'bbox'
ORDER BY LOWER(column_name);
┌─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ column_name │ column_type │ null_percentage │ approx_unique │    min     │    max     │
│   varchar   │   varchar   │  decimal(9,2)   │     int64     │  varchar   │  varchar   │
├─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ arrayID     │ BIGINT      │            0.00 │         16914 │ 1          │ 18980      │
│ avgAzimuth  │ DOUBLE      │           32.88 │          5865 │ 90.22      │ 540.0      │
│ avgLength   │ DOUBLE      │           32.88 │         12674 │ 4.02       │ 360.128    │
│ avgSpace    │ DOUBLE      │           32.88 │          7965 │ 0.024      │ 20.0       │
│ avgWidth    │ DOUBLE      │           32.88 │          6528 │ 0.863      │ 83.13      │
│ capMWAC     │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          4182 │ 0.003      │ 1128.931   │
│ capMWACest  │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          6620 │ 0.003      │ 1352.693   │
│ capMWDC     │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          7203 │ 0.003      │ 1467.61    │
│ capMWDCest  │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          8883 │ 0.004      │ 1758.501   │
│ COUNTYFP    │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │           237 │ 001        │ 840        │
│ effInit     │ DOUBLE      │            0.07 │            12 │ 0.09       │ 0.21       │
│ GCR1        │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          5096 │ 0.1        │ 1.0        │
│ GCR2        │ DOUBLE      │            0.00 │          5913 │ 0.0943     │ 0.9883     │
│ grndCvr     │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │             3 │ impervious │ vegetation │
│ instYr      │ BIGINT      │            0.00 │            26 │ 1985       │ 2025       │
│ instYrEst   │ BIGINT      │            0.32 │            23 │ 2003       │ 2025       │
│ modType     │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │             3 │ c-si       │ thin-film  │
│ mount       │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │             9 │ dual_axis  │ unknown    │
│ nativeID    │ VARCHAR     │            0.23 │         14342 │ 1          │ York Solar │
│ newBound    │ BIGINT      │            0.00 │             2 │ 0          │ 1          │
│ numRow      │ INTEGER     │            0.00 │          1177 │ 0          │ 90145      │
│ Source      │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │            10 │ CCVPV      │ USPVDB     │
│ STATEFP     │ VARCHAR     │            0.00 │            49 │ 01         │ 56         │
│ tilt        │ DOUBLE      │           46.39 │            63 │ 0.0        │ 90.0       │
│ tiltEst     │ BIGINT      │           46.39 │            30 │ 10         │ 43         │
│ totArea     │ INTEGER     │            0.00 │         14669 │ 30         │ 19603313   │
│ totRowArea  │ INTEGER     │            0.00 │         13415 │ 30         │ 8537538    │
├─────────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────┴────────────┴────────────┤
│ 27 rows                                                                     6 columns │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Rooftop Solar Arrays

Below is a heatmap of the rooftop solar arrays dataset.

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE h3_4_stats AS
    SELECT   h3_4: H3_LATLNG_TO_CELL(
                        bbox.ymin,
                        bbox.xmin,
                        4),
             COUNT(*) num_recs
    FROM     'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet'
    GROUP BY 1;

COPY (
    SELECT geometry: ST_ASWKB(H3_CELL_TO_BOUNDARY_WKT(h3_4)::geometry),
           num_recs
    FROM   h3_4_stats
) TO 'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.h3_4.parquet' (
        FORMAT 'PARQUET',
        CODEC  'ZSTD',
        COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
        ROW_GROUP_SIZE 15000);

US Solar Farms

These are the source counts for this dataset.

SELECT   COUNT(*),
         Source
FROM     'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet'
GROUP BY 2
ORDER BY 1 DESC;
┌──────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ count_star() │           Source           │
│    int64     │          varchar           │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│         2175 │ OSM                        │
│         1835 │ CECSFC                     │
│         1024 │ TZSAM                      │
│          485 │ USPVDB                     │
│           93 │ GRW                        │
│           54 │ GMSEUSdigArraysPanels_v2_0 │
│           46 │ gspt                       │
│           43 │ SAM                        │
│           24 │ GMSEUSgeoref_v2_0          │
│           16 │ CCVPV                      │
│           15 │ GPPDB                      │
│           10 │ CWSD                       │
│            2 │ InSPIRE                    │
├──────────────┴────────────────────────────┤
│ 13 rows                         2 columns │
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘

Below are the most-represented source per hexagon.

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE h3_3s AS
    WITH b AS (
        WITH a AS (
            SELECT   h3_3: H3_LATLNG_TO_CELL(
                                bbox.ymin,
                                bbox.xmin,
                                3) ,
                     Source,
                     num_recs: COUNT(*)
            FROM     'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet'
            GROUP BY 1, 2
        )
        SELECT *,
               ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY h3_3
                                  ORDER BY     num_recs DESC) AS rn
        FROM   a
    )
    FROM     b
    WHERE    rn = 1
    ORDER BY num_recs DESC;

COPY (
    SELECT geom: H3_CELL_TO_BOUNDARY_WKT(h3_3)::GEOMETRY,
           Source
    FROM   h3_3s
) TO 'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.Source.h3_3.parquet' (
    FORMAT 'PARQUET',
    CODEC  'ZSTD',
    COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
    ROW_GROUP_SIZE 15000);

US Solar Farms

This is the breakdown of mount and mod types.

WITH a AS (
    SELECT   modType,
             mount,
             cnt: COUNT(*)
    FROM     'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet'
    GROUP BY 1, 2
)
PIVOT    a
ON       modType
USING    SUM(cnt)
GROUP BY mount
ORDER BY mount;
┌─────────────┬────────┬───────────┐
│    mount    │  c-si  │ thin-film │
│   varchar   │ int128 │  int128   │
├─────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
│ dual_axis   │     33 │      NULL │
│ fixed_axis  │    381 │         2 │
│ mixed       │      2 │      NULL │
│ single_axis │    210 │      NULL │
│ unknown     │     98 │      NULL │
│ NULL        │   5096 │      NULL │
└─────────────┴────────┴───────────┘

These are the area stats broken down by year of installation.

SELECT   instYr,
         count: COUNT(*),
         avg:   AVG(area)::INT,
         mean:  MEAN(area)::INT,
         max:   MAX(area)::INT
FROM     'GMSEUS_RooftopArrays_2025_v2_0.parquet'
WHERE    instYr IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;
┌────────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬────────┐
│ instYr │ count │  avg  │ mean  │  max   │
│ int64  │ int64 │ int32 │ int32 │ int32  │
├────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼────────┤
│   2003 │    23 │  2630 │  2630 │  18124 │
│   2005 │     1 │ 20342 │ 20342 │  20342 │
│   2006 │     1 │ 37587 │ 37587 │  37587 │
│   2007 │     6 │ 16848 │ 16848 │  27067 │
│   2008 │     4 │ 24989 │ 24989 │  30107 │
│   2009 │    11 │  7877 │  7877 │  30229 │
│   2010 │    24 │ 15834 │ 15834 │  43854 │
│   2011 │    46 │ 41511 │ 41511 │ 487111 │
│   2012 │    54 │ 13371 │ 13371 │  38923 │
│   2013 │    47 │ 14476 │ 14476 │ 151620 │
│   2014 │    24 │ 29289 │ 29289 │  65995 │
│   2015 │    37 │ 34130 │ 34130 │ 218080 │
│   2016 │    47 │ 21094 │ 21094 │  46138 │
│   2017 │   105 │ 20882 │ 20882 │ 315564 │
│   2018 │   225 │ 13584 │ 13584 │ 152636 │
│   2019 │   102 │ 21613 │ 21613 │ 111497 │
│   2020 │   143 │ 16052 │ 16052 │  70018 │
│   2021 │   120 │ 16169 │ 16169 │ 101955 │
│   2022 │   141 │ 17343 │ 17343 │ 185698 │
│   2023 │   164 │ 18865 │ 18865 │ 137787 │
│   2024 │   132 │ 14743 │ 14743 │  63190 │
│   2025 │   148 │ 12363 │ 12363 │ 135270 │
├────────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴────────┤
│ 22 rows                       5 columns │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Arrays & Panels

Below is a heatmap of the arrays dataset.

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE h3_4_stats AS
    SELECT   h3_4: H3_LATLNG_TO_CELL(
                        bbox.ymin,
                        bbox.xmin,
                        4),
             COUNT(*) num_recs
    FROM     'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet'
    GROUP BY 1;

COPY (
    SELECT geometry: ST_ASWKB(H3_CELL_TO_BOUNDARY_WKT(h3_4)::geometry),
           num_recs
    FROM   h3_4_stats
) TO 'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.h3_4.parquet' (
        FORMAT 'PARQUET',
        CODEC  'ZSTD',
        COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
        ROW_GROUP_SIZE 15000);

US Solar Farms

SELECT   COUNT(*),
         Source
FROM     'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet'
GROUP BY 2
ORDER BY 1 DESC;
┌──────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ count_star() │           Source           │
│    int64     │          varchar           │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│         5222 │ OSM                        │
│         4024 │ USPVDB                     │
│         3278 │ TZSAM                      │
│         2288 │ CECSFC                     │
│         1697 │ GMSEUSgeoref_v2_0          │
│         1291 │ GMSEUSdigArraysPanels_v2_0 │
│          957 │ GRW                        │
│          155 │ CCVPV                      │
│           68 │ CWSD                       │
└──────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE h3_3s AS
    WITH b AS (
        WITH a AS (
            SELECT   h3_3: H3_LATLNG_TO_CELL(
                                bbox.ymin,
                                bbox.xmin,
                                3) ,
                     Source,
                     num_recs: COUNT(*)
            FROM     'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet'
            GROUP BY 1, 2
        )
        SELECT *,
               ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY h3_3
                                  ORDER BY     num_recs DESC) AS rn
        FROM   a
    )
    FROM     b
    WHERE    rn = 1
    ORDER BY num_recs DESC;

COPY (
    SELECT geom: H3_CELL_TO_BOUNDARY_WKT(h3_3)::GEOMETRY,
           Source
    FROM   h3_3s
) TO 'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.Source.h3_3.parquet' (
    FORMAT 'PARQUET',
    CODEC  'ZSTD',
    COMPRESSION_LEVEL 22,
    ROW_GROUP_SIZE 15000);

US Solar Farms

Solar Farms in close proximity can have different sources attributed to their detection.

US Solar Farms

Not all solar farms are picked up within the arrays dataset. There are also array datasets that haven’t marked out the panels themselves. The following is an example from 34.837N, -118.355E. The panels are coloured purple.

US Solar Farms

These are the array capacity stats broken down by year of installation.

SELECT   instYr,

         count:  COUNT(*),

         ACavg:  AVG(capMWAC)::INT,
         DCavg:  AVG(capMWDC)::INT,

         ACmean: MEAN(capMWAC)::INT,
         DCmean: MEAN(capMWDC)::INT,

         ACmax:  MAX(capMWAC)::INT,
         DCmax:  MAX(capMWDC)::INT
FROM     'GMSEUS_Arrays_Final_2025_v2_0.parquet'
WHERE    instYr IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1;
┌────────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬────────┬────────┬───────┬───────┐
│ instYr │ count │ ACavg │ DCavg │ ACmean │ DCmean │ ACmax │ DCmax │
│ int64  │ int64 │ int32 │ int32 │ int32  │ int32  │ int32 │ int32 │
├────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼────────┼────────┼───────┼───────┤
│   1985 │     1 │    14 │    17 │     14 │     17 │    14 │    17 │
│   1990 │     2 │    88 │    90 │     88 │     90 │    92 │    92 │
│   2002 │     1 │     3 │     3 │      3 │      3 │     3 │     3 │
│   2003 │     7 │     2 │     2 │      2 │      2 │     2 │     3 │
│   2005 │     4 │     0 │     0 │      0 │      0 │     0 │     1 │
│   2006 │    64 │     3 │     4 │      3 │      4 │   100 │   125 │
│   2007 │   101 │     2 │     3 │      2 │      3 │    68 │    68 │
│   2008 │   195 │     2 │     3 │      2 │      3 │   226 │   294 │
│   2009 │   268 │     2 │     2 │      2 │      2 │   150 │   195 │
│   2010 │   401 │     2 │     2 │      2 │      2 │   150 │   195 │
│   2011 │   544 │     3 │     3 │      3 │      3 │   175 │   225 │
│   2012 │   777 │     3 │     3 │      3 │      3 │   331 │   430 │
│   2013 │   793 │     4 │     5 │      4 │      5 │   280 │   313 │
│   2014 │   913 │     6 │     7 │      6 │      7 │   586 │   752 │
│   2015 │   910 │     5 │     7 │      5 │      7 │   314 │   398 │
│   2016 │  1096 │     9 │    12 │      9 │     12 │   300 │   350 │
│   2017 │  1765 │     5 │     6 │      5 │      6 │   350 │   455 │
│   2018 │  1941 │     5 │     6 │      5 │      6 │   352 │   458 │
│   2019 │  1531 │     6 │     8 │      6 │      8 │   300 │   390 │
│   2020 │  1673 │    11 │    15 │     11 │     15 │   638 │   829 │
│   2021 │  1705 │    19 │    24 │     19 │     24 │   504 │   656 │
│   2022 │  1389 │    16 │    21 │     16 │     21 │   868 │  1128 │
│   2023 │  2017 │    34 │    44 │     34 │     44 │  1095 │  1423 │
│   2024 │   730 │    37 │    44 │     37 │     44 │   868 │  1128 │
│   2025 │   152 │    18 │    23 │     18 │     23 │  1129 │  1468 │
├────────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴────────┴────────┴───────┴───────┤
│ 25 rows                                                8 columns │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

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