Solar Energy Systems: Driving Urban Sustainability through Innovative Strategies and Impacts

The concept of access to solar energy is an abstraction that must be generalized to urban fabric within cities in presence of modern, high-rise buildings that are increasing daily, with two different effects: first is their response to solar radiation due to height, and second is their effect on neighborhoods in blocking those rays from them. Cities are not directional and buildings are fixed, not responding to rhythms of their surroundings. Research aims to demonstrate importance of interaction between buildings and their environmental surroundings in an effort to achieve sustainable urban development by providing electrical energy from sunlight throughout year and adopting it in facades to achieve a balance between obtaining lighting on one hand and saving energy in cooling. The concept was applied to a local example, which is “Bawabat Al-Iraq” project in city of Baghdad, to provide solar energy throughout year, and measures taken in this regard, relying on field data taken from integrated photography and data from official weather bulletins. Research concluded that urban planners and architects must take into consideration “solar architecture” as one of most important principles for achieving urban sustainability.