Building Around Solar Power (BASP) is a generative design tool meant to help builders and designers make choices regarding to solar power and building dimensions. The basic structure is a rectangular prism where you can adjust the height, width, and length. The location and time study can be changed in the Revit file to fit the consumers need but for this example San Francisco, CA and sunrise-sunset in June was picked. From the shape, the volume and area was calculated and this was used in the calculation for energy met ratio (EMR) and payback period.

The EMR was calculated by dividing the power produced from solar panels on the rooftop to the amount of power needed to run the building. The solar power output was calculated using the solar insolation and multiplying it by a panel efficiency (15-20%). Next, the amount of power needed was calculated by multiplying the area with the EUI. The goal of EMR is to numerically rank the building in its clean energy use which we want to maximize.

The simple payback period is based on the annual savings and investment cost from installing solar panels. The annual savings was calculated by multiplying the solar energy output with a fixed rate for electricity sold. Then, the cost was calculated by the amount of solar insolation times a fixed rate for $/kW. The payback period tells us how many years it will take to payback the solar cost and we want to minimize this value.

Lastly, the volume of the building should be maximized because this allows for more building space usage.

The building gets more complex when the inputs allow for the top dimensions to be adjusted and at which angle it will twist to produce an organic shape.

These three values will be use to help designers and building weight the options that are important to them. Is it maximizing the volume of the building so that means we have to take into account how much it will cost to power a large building or if we want to use clean energy then the volume or other factors might have to be minimized.

The Dynamo workspace is color coded into sections to show how each component of the study was generated. The light teal is the inputs that the user can change manually or test on through dynamo. Next, the light green is the production of the shape that the generative design will use to calculate the area and volume and run all dimensions on. Then, the dark teal is used for solar analysis and production. Fourth, the light purple is the analysis calculation that was used to produce the outputs in the blue group.

The generative design study allows these outputs to be maximized and minimized to the users preference. Also, they provide the dimensions that was associated with these design choices to produce the outputs. In the example below, a 20 population 10 generation 1 seed test was ran to maximize the volume and EMR while minimizing the payback period.