Rooftop Energy Potential of Low Income Communities in America REPLICA

The Rooftop Energy Potential of Low Income Communities in America REPLICA data set provides estimates of residential rooftop solar technical potential at the tract-level with emphasis on estimates for Low and Moderate Income LMI populations. In addition to technical potential REPLICA is comprised of 10 additional datasets at the tract-level to provide socio-demographic and market context. The model year vintage of REPLICA is 2015. The LMI solar potential estimates are made at the tract level grouped by Area Median Income AMI income tenure and building type. These estimates are based off of LiDAR data of 128 metropolitan areas statistical modeling and ACS 2011-2015 demographic data. The remaining datasets are supplemental datasets that can be used in conjunction with the technical potential data for general LMI solar analysis planning and policy making. The core dataset is a wide-format CSV file seeds_ii_replica.csv that can be tagged to a tract geometry using the GEOID or GISJOIN fields. In addition users can download geographic shapefiles for the main or supplemental datasets. This dataset was generated as part of the larger NREL-led SEEDSII Solar Energy Evolution and Diffusion Studies project and specifically for the NREL technical report titled Rooftop Solar Technical Potential for Low-to-Moderate Income Households in the United States by Sigrin and Mooney 2018. This dataset is intended to give researchers planners advocates and policy-makers access to credible data to analyze low-income solar issues and potentially perform cost-benefit analysis for program design. To explore the data in an interactive web mapping environment use the NREL SolarForAll app.

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
bureauCode {019:20}
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dataQuality true
identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/8174
issued 2018-04-03T13:15:04Z
landingPage https://data.nrel.gov/submissions/81
license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
modified 2025-07-22T21:55:08Z
programCode {019:000,019:008}
projectNumber EE0032307
projectTitle Unlocking Widespread Solar Adoption Understanding Preferences of Low- to Moderate-Income Households to Create Scalable Sustainable Models
publisher National Renewable Energy Laboratory
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash a1e3d4870967edad2ef68fe1d21aa5b1caf7886b77c8e7593d38bab387e85b81
source_schema_version 1.1
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • 2011-2015
  • AmeriGEO
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • CKAN
  • GEO
  • GEOSS
  • National
  • North America
  • United States
  • cost-benefit-analysis
  • demographic-data
  • lidar
  • lmi
  • low-and-moderate-income
  • low-income
  • photovoltaic
  • prediction
  • pv
  • residential
  • rooftop
  • solar
  • solar-for-all
  • technical-potential
  • tract
  • usa
isopen True
license_id cc-by
license_title Creative Commons Attribution
license_url http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by
maintainer Meghan Mooney
maintainer_email Meghan.Mooney@nrel.gov
metadata_created 2025-09-23T14:44:31.975568
metadata_modified 2025-09-23T14:44:31.975574
notes The Rooftop Energy Potential of Low Income Communities in America REPLICA data set provides estimates of residential rooftop solar technical potential at the tract-level with emphasis on estimates for Low and Moderate Income LMI populations. In addition to technical potential REPLICA is comprised of 10 additional datasets at the tract-level to provide socio-demographic and market context. The model year vintage of REPLICA is 2015. The LMI solar potential estimates are made at the tract level grouped by Area Median Income AMI income tenure and building type. These estimates are based off of LiDAR data of 128 metropolitan areas statistical modeling and ACS 2011-2015 demographic data. The remaining datasets are supplemental datasets that can be used in conjunction with the technical potential data for general LMI solar analysis planning and policy making. The core dataset is a wide-format CSV file seeds_ii_replica.csv that can be tagged to a tract geometry using the GEOID or GISJOIN fields. In addition users can download geographic shapefiles for the main or supplemental datasets. This dataset was generated as part of the larger NREL-led SEEDSII Solar Energy Evolution and Diffusion Studies project and specifically for the NREL technical report titled Rooftop Solar Technical Potential for Low-to-Moderate Income Households in the United States by Sigrin and Mooney 2018. This dataset is intended to give researchers planners advocates and policy-makers access to credible data to analyze low-income solar issues and potentially perform cost-benefit analysis for program design. To explore the data in an interactive web mapping environment use the NREL SolarForAll app.
num_resources 27
num_tags 25
title Rooftop Energy Potential of Low Income Communities in America REPLICA