# SolarGAN: Synthetic Annual Solar Irradiance Time Series on Urban Building Facades via Deep Generative Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.00747 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00747/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Improved Training of Wasserstein GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00028/) (2017)
- [InfoGAN: Interpretable Representation Learning by Information Maximizing Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03657/) (2016)
- [Autoencoding beyond pixels using a learned similarity metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.09300/) (2015)
- [Adversarial Feature Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.09782/) (2016)
- [Multimodal Intelligence: Representation Learning, Information Fusion, and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.03977/) (2019)
- [Model-Free Renewable Scenario Generation Using Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.09676/) (2017)
- [High-Fidelity Synthesis with Disentangled Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04296/) (2020)
- [Privacy-preserving Spatiotemporal Scenario Generation of Renewable Energies: A Federated Deep Generative Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07738/) (2021)
- [Benchmarking of Deep Learning Irradiance Forecasting Models from Sky Images -- an in-depth Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.00721/) (2021)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks applied to sky images for short-term solar irradiance forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11246/) (2020)
- [Vertical Power Flow Forecast with LSTMs Using Regular Training Update Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12167/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Synthetic Homes: A Multimodal Generative AI Pipeline for Residential Building Data Generation under Data Scarcity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09794/) (2025)
- [Towards Overcoming Data Scarcity in Nuclear Energy: A Study on Critical Heat Flux with Physics-consistent Conditional Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16207/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) is a promising technology to decarbonize urban energy systems via harnessing solar energy available on building envelopes. While methods to assess solar irradiation, especially on rooftops, are well established, the assessment on building facades usually involves a higher effort due to more complex urban features and obstructions. The drawback of existing physics-based simulation programs is that they require significant manual modelling effort and computing time for generating time resolved deterministic results. Yet, solar irradiation is highly intermittent and representing its inherent uncertainty may be required for designing robust BIPV energy systems. Targeting on these drawbacks, this paper proposes a data-driven model based on Deep Generative Networks (DGN) to efficiently generate high-fidelity stochastic ensembles of annual hourly solar irradiance time series on building facades with uncompromised spatiotemporal resolution at the urban scale. The only input required is easily obtainable, simple fisheye images as categorical shading masks captured from 3D models. In principle, even actual photographs of urban contexts can be utilized, given they are semantically segmented. Our validations exemplify the high fidelity of the generated time series when compared to the physics-based simulator. To demonstrate the model's relevance for urban energy planning, we showcase its potential for generative design by parametrically altering characteristic features of the urban environment and producing corresponding time series on building facades under different climatic contexts in real-time.