Three-dimensional SOlar RAdiation Model (SORAM) and its application to 3-D urban planning

•A model estimating solar energy received on sloping PV cell considering shading.•Perez model is integrated with a ray-tracing algorithm to enable shading detection.•Angle of incidence for each solar ray is considered.•Dynamic 3D shading from urban obstacles is integrated into the model.•We validate our results using empirical measurement. The aim of this work is to evaluate the potential direct and diffuse solar radiation aggregated at a point location in an urban area. With the three-dimensional (3D) SOlar RAdiation Model (SORAM) presented here, the paper makes three key contributions. Firstly, the model augments the Perez et al. (1990) model by accounting for the aggregated contribution of diffuse radiation using ray-tracing methods. Secondly, the model demonstrates the use of a randomly generated city building distribution and terrain map to simulate the 3D urban solar radiation exposure at any time or over a selected time period. Thirdly, we validate our results using empirical sunlight data measured from a real urban area (Sheffield Solar Farm), and also validate our results against the Perez et al. (1990) model under conditions of no shading.