Enhanced Rooftop Solar Panel Detection by Efficiently Aggregating Local Features

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kurte, Kuldeep, Kulkarni, Kedar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Kurte, Kuldeep
Kulkarni, Kedar
author_facet Kurte, Kuldeep
Kulkarni, Kedar
contents In this paper, we present an enhanced Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) panel detection approach using satellite images. We propose to use pre-trained CNN-based model to extract the local convolutional features of rooftops. These local features are then combined using the Vectors of Locally Aggregated Descriptors (VLAD) technique to obtain rooftop-level global features, which are then used to train traditional Machine Learning (ML) models to identify rooftop images that do and do not contain PV panels. On the dataset used in this study, the proposed approach achieved rooftop-PV classification scores exceeding the predefined threshold of 0.9 across all three cities for each of the feature extractor networks evaluated. Moreover, we propose a 3-phase approach to enable efficient utilization of the previously trained models on a new city or region with limited labelled data. We illustrate the effectiveness of this 3-phase approach for multi-city rooftop-PV detection task.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_02840
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enhanced Rooftop Solar Panel Detection by Efficiently Aggregating Local Features
Kurte, Kuldeep
Kulkarni, Kedar
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
In this paper, we present an enhanced Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) panel detection approach using satellite images. We propose to use pre-trained CNN-based model to extract the local convolutional features of rooftops. These local features are then combined using the Vectors of Locally Aggregated Descriptors (VLAD) technique to obtain rooftop-level global features, which are then used to train traditional Machine Learning (ML) models to identify rooftop images that do and do not contain PV panels. On the dataset used in this study, the proposed approach achieved rooftop-PV classification scores exceeding the predefined threshold of 0.9 across all three cities for each of the feature extractor networks evaluated. Moreover, we propose a 3-phase approach to enable efficient utilization of the previously trained models on a new city or region with limited labelled data. We illustrate the effectiveness of this 3-phase approach for multi-city rooftop-PV detection task.
title Enhanced Rooftop Solar Panel Detection by Efficiently Aggregating Local Features
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02840