Website visitors at focussolar.de enter their address, view the prospective site on aerial imagery, and order yield reports for their solar system. The service is addressing different aspects of solar planning related to the building itself and atmospheric weather influences merging them into one single assessment tool.
How much solar insolation is incident on a particular rooftop? To answer that question, not only the geometry and structural form of the roof need to be known, but it's equally important to have access to long-term on-site solar insolation records. All these different aspects are covered by focus solar's online planning tool.
The aerial imagery is sourced from Microsoft Bing Maps and shows houses and rooftops from a bird's eye perspective. Determining roof pitch and azimuth angle is now an entirely web-based process carried out on the computer screen. The solar insolation records are derived from weather satellites such as Meteosat (for Europe), GOES (for America) and MTSAT (for Asia and Australia). Processing of weather satellite imagery is carried out by focus solar's own solar radiation algorithm.
All these powerful tools, aerial imagery and insolation data are available online, which sets a new stage in solar planning. Rather than working with desktop software, browser-based platforms provide access to much bigger data resources. Users benefit from more realistic environments better representative of the situation as it really is.
Bing Maps Bird's eye provides a detailed view of your house, not just a schematic sketch of any house. And focus solar's insolation data are detailed half-hourly recordings for your site, a completely different quality level than a first rough approximation.
Who is this service for? Both buyers and installers of solar systems have an interest in independent and accurate yield assessments by a neutral third party. Buyers are assured that the estimate is free of mixed intentions and installers emphasize the trustworthiness of their offer. For large-scale solar installations, including PV, CPV and CSP power plants, focus solar serves as data provider and scientific consultant in all questions related to solar radiation, its computation, measurement and validation.
