India’s solar journey depends not only on better panels and hardware but also on accessible, transparent, and community-driven software tools. In this session, I will discuss how developers can create useful tools that support the nation's renewable energy goals through the use of open-source libraries, open datasets, and collaborative development practices.
The talk is based on my experience working on solar estimation projects using open-source tools like SunCalc for sun-position and shadow simulation, and pvlib for solar modelling. I'll go over how these tools can be integrated to create a workable pipeline for calculating rooftop solar potential in Indian cities.
This session will cover:
Why open-source is essential for trustworthy solar potential analysis
How open datasets (building footprints, weather data) enable scalable modelling
A step-by-step breakdown of a reproducible solar estimation pipeline
Designing a modular architecture using only FOSS components
Challenges encountered while working with Indian datasets and rooftops
How contributors can improve documentation, data quality, visualizations, and algorithms
By the end of this session, participants will see how FOSS tools can empower India’s renewable-energy ecosystem and how they can meaningfully contribute to open-source energy and civic-tech projects.
Understand how FOSS tools can be used to model and analyse solar potential
Learn how open datasets support transparent and reproducible solar computations
Gain a practical architecture for building solar estimation workflows using open-source components
Discover opportunities to contribute to open-source energy-tech projects
Recognize how open-source accelerates climate-tech innovation in India
Learn practical lessons from applying FOSS in real solar and civic-tech projects