Components that can be used for 3d shadow analysis, sunhours of surfaces throughout the year in a 3d model?
I use Nvidia OptiX for Ray casting and tracing purposes. It is based on CUDA and gives you a library that runs on GPU and is capable of building and traversing efficient acceleration structures. You just supply a few programs such as intersection tests and shading and OptiX does the rest.
I personally think it is really easy to work with it but your milage may vary.
With this it should be very doable to make your project and even with decent running speed.