Climate-Dependent Performance of Solar-Powered Spray Cooling Canopies: A Climate-Archetype Zone Framework for Pre-Deployment Feasibility Assessment

Urban heat stress is intensifying under climate change, particularly in outdoor public spaces where conventional mechanical cooling is impractical. This study develops a climate-driven, system-level numerical framework to evaluate the pre-deployment feasibility of modular, solar-powered spray cooling canopies across 110 cities in Türkiye. Hourly Typical Meteorological Year (TMYx) weather files, representing a single typical year constructed from 2009 to 2023 source data, are used to estimate photovoltaic (PV) energy yield, electrical load, feasible misting duration, water demand, and PV-to-load autonomy under summer daytime conditions. The misting operation is governed by a rule-based adaptive control strategy based on air temperature, relative humidity, and plane-of-array irradiance. To support transferable comparison, the cities are classified into six summer climate-archetype zones using k-means clustering of standardized climate variables, including temperature, humidity, irradiance, wind speed, and summer precipitation. Results show that evaporative cooling feasibility is governed primarily by humidity rather than temperature alone. Hot–Dry Inland cities exhibit the longest mean misting duration (501.90 h) and highest water demand (30,152 L per module), but the lowest PV-to-load autonomy ratio (1.55) because of high pump-driven electrical demand. In contrast, Humid Black Sea cities show minimal misting duration (11.43 h) and water use (465 L per module), but the highest autonomy ratio (39.68) due to very limited system activation. Thus, high autonomy does not necessarily indicate high cooling usefulness. The proposed framework provides a reproducible screening tool for identifying where PV-powered spray cooling canopies are climatically suitable, where water and PV sizing become limiting, and where alternative outdoor heat-mitigation strategies may be more appropriate.