Free solar sizing advice for consumers from SunSPOT
Councils and their ratepayers all over Australia can now access free, independent and tailored solar advice with APVI’s significantly upgraded SunSPOT solar and battery calculator.
Great news for councils with renewable energy goals!
With support from the Australian Government, the Australian PV Institute (APVI) and UNSW Sydney are proud to deliver SunSPOT Version 3 with significant upgrades, more accurate estimates, a new user-friendly interface and a version that is freely available nationwide without a council subscription.
SunSPOT is the only independent solar savings calculator providing households and small businesses right across Australia with free, reliable estimates of the savings they can make with solar and batteries.
Project Leader Dr Anna Bruce says, “SunSPOT has been built specifically to help people understand what solar can do for them – not to sell solar.
“It’s the only independent tool with this level of sophistication available in Australia. All other solar calculators seek to capture personal information and generate sales leads.”
“Now, with nationwide delivery and improvements to its usability and accuracy, SunSPOT can help the vast majority of Australians confidently navigate the complex solar market.”
SunSPOT is free, everywhere
Previous versions of APVI’s flagship tool have only been available in areas where the local council has taken up a subscription and urban areas of the local government area (LGA) has been mapped into the tool with spatial mapping LiDAR data. Now, with the support of the Australian Government, a version of the tool that does not require LiDAR data has been released and can be used for free, everywhere.
Councils across Australia are encouraged to share this best-in-class solar calculator with their communities to help lift solar uptake in their LGAs.
Dr Mike Roberts, SunSPOT Project Leader and Senior Research Associate in the School for Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at UNSW says,
“Householders no longer need to depend on salespeople to educate them. With this latest version of SunSPOT everyone can get reliable tailored answers to common questions about solar and batteries.”
In two minutes, SunSPOT users can find out what system size will give them the best return on their investment and get an estimate of the cost and annual savings.
They can compare the costs and annual savings with different battery sizes, answering the question in everyone’s heads: “Should I get a battery?”
SunSPOT’s clever mapping tool allows users to drag and drop scaled groups of panels onto their roof so they can see how many panels will fit and where they can go. See image A below.
SunSPOT allows users to place scaled solar panels on the roof to estimate how many will fit
The premium subscription-based version identifies the best areas for solar panels with red dots on the rooftops. See image below.
Red and orange dots show the best place for solar panels in the premium version of SunSPOT.
Spatial mapping LiDAR data enables it to read the shape, slope and orientation of the rooftop. It can also estimate the amount of shading across the year on every 0.25m2 area on the roof, and the impact this has on bill savings. This is combined with Bureau of Meteorology weather data for the local area.
Users of both versions can add their smart meter data and electricity tariffs for even more accurate estimates.
SunSPOT is proudly supported by the Australian Government and is a project of the Australian PV Institute and UNSW Sydney.
