Design Must-Haves
Special Features
Design Special Features
1. LIDAR
LIDAR is one of the most powerful advancements in solar design. LIDAR data allows you to know the heights of homes, buildings, trees, and obstructions with pinpoint accuracy. This lets you complete site audits remotely and eliminate costly in-person visits while knowing that your measurements will be as close as possible to real-world measurements.
- Enables remote design
- Increases accuracy
- Decreases site visits
2. Solar + Storage
According to SEIA, one-third of new residential systems will be paired with storage by 2025. Being able to model storage in addition to solar can help your solar business expand top line revenue. When looking for a solar software solution, be sure to ask about their storage capabilities as well.
- Increases market potential
- speed up workflows
3. Self Consumption
Aside from modeling solar + storage, helping homeowners visualize their savings is a game-changer. With new NEM and time-of-use policies, it often makes financial sense for homeowners to consume power they have stored in their home battery during peak rate times. This means that having access to a self-consumption feature within your solar software can quickly and accurately analyze the homeowner's energy consumption, solar production, and battery specifications can be a game-changer. This helps homeowners visualize their potential savings and highlights the potential financial benefits that batteries can provide over time.
- Increases market potential
- Increases sales
4. AI-Driven Solar Design
One of the latest advancements in solar design is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Some solar software solutions can now automatically lay out a perfectly sized system based on your customer’s home and power consumption needs. After the AI creates the design, you can then modify it to your exact specifications. This allows you to speed up your workflows by having the AI design most of the system in a matter of seconds.
- Speeds up workflows
- Scales your business
PRO TIP: Pair Storage with Customizable Proposals to easily upsell customers on storage in your pitch.
5. Design for New Construction
Being able to model a solar system on a site that hasn’t been built yet can give you a huge edge over your competition and help you expand your business. Some solar software allows you to design an accurate system with just a blueprint or site imagery of the new home or building. Be sure to ask your solar software vendor if they have this functionality and how it works.
- Increases accuracy
- Reduces change orders
- Secure financing faster
6. Auto-stringing
Auto-stringing allows your solar software to wire the panels in your design automatically. Some solar software can even do intelligent stringing by using shading data to maximize the efficiency of the system and decrease loss due to shading.
- Increases system efficiency
- Speeds up workflows
7. Consumption Modeling
Oftentimes when homeowners provide a utility bill, the information on the bill may be incomplete. This can make accurately sizing a system very difficult. Some solar software can fix this problem by modeling the customer’s consumption from a single energy bill using predictive algorithms. This very useful feature can not only help with accuracy but also with increasing the potential customers you can service and speeding up your sales process.
- Increases accuracy
- Increases market potential
- speed up workflows
8. Sun Path Modeling
Sun path modeling is a useful tool for increasing the accuracy of your designs. This feature simulates the path that the sun will take on any given day, allowing you to see the energy your modules will generate at any given time. This helps increase the customer’s confidence in the accuracy of your designs and provides a visual way to demonstrate your calculations.
- Improves customer confidence
Next up...
Design Ops
Next, let's take a look at the features that make top software solutions stand out from the rest.