Constructing a Model to Identify Markets for Rooftop Solar on Multifamily Housing

As the renewable energy transition accelerates, housing, due to its high energy demand, can play a critical role in the clean energy shift. Specifically, multifamily housing provides a unique opportunity for solar photovoltaic (PV) system adoption, given the existing competing interests between landlords and tenants which has historically slowed this transition. To address this transition gap, this project identified and ranked Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States for ZNE Capital (the client) to acquire multifamily housing to install solar PV systems. The group identified seven criteria to determine favorable markets for rooftop solar PV on multifamily housing: landlord policy favorability, real estate market potential, CO2 abatement potential, electricity generation potential, solar installation internal rate of return, climate risk avoidance, and health costs associated with primary air pollutants. A total investment favorability score is calculated based on crit...,
Collecting real estate and landlord data for metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) from federal agency databases.

Real estate metrics: Six indicator metrics were selected to represent areas with growing housing demands. The metrics included were population growth, employment growth, average annual occupancy, annual rent change, the ratios of median annual rent to median income, and median income to median home price. The population estimates and median income data was downloaded from the Census Bureau. Median rent data was downloaded from HUDuser. Median home price data was downloaded from National Association of REALTORS®. Students were provided temporary memberships to Yardi Systems Matrix to obtain multifamily occupancy rates, and this data will not be redistributed. All the real estate metrics were combined into a single dataset using CBSA codes, which each MSA has a unique 5-digit identifier. Income-to-home price and rent-to-income ratios were calculated in R Studio.

Landlord d..., RStudio was used to calculate all metrics, criteria scores, and the investment favorability score.
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/gbianch/ZNE_Capital_GP
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) created a web tool, REopt, to evaluate the economic viability of distributed PV systems in an area given the type of building, utility costs, and net metering policies. In order to replicate this model, future studies will have manually input data for each MSA into REopt. Instructions for the exact inputs are provided in a pdf to follow the same methodology.,