I think this would be a fun student project. I would certainly have enjoyed it.
Here’s a year’s worth of my solar-generation data. My roof is oriented approximately 5 degrees west of south.
- How close can you get to discovering where I live, from this data alone?
- How can you improve your estimate by incorporating other publicly-available data sources?
- What further information about the installation would help you improve your estimate?
Feel free to make suggestions in the comments about fun additions.
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You can probably determine sunrise and sunset times pretty accurately by graphing daily incidence across the year (maybe after filtering for sunny days). This would give longitude and position within the time zone. Knowing you’re in the UK, I’d guess this would probably be enough to determine your county.
After removing seasonal changes you would get some indication of local weather. Combining this with radar data might give you 10km resolution or better, depending on the density of weather stations in your area.
The peak power production would give an estimate for panel surface area. How many 24-panel roof installations angled 5 deg west are there within the above area? It might be possible to narrow down to a few addresses just from satellite imagery.
Of course, it’s probably easier to find your address on the internet or via public records.