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Remote Shading Tool Has Potential to Reduce Solar Soft Costs by 17 Cents/Watt

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in partnership with Solar Census, and with support from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) SunShot Incubator program, conducted onsite assessments at four residential homes to determine the accuracy of Solar Census' remote online shading tool. NREL conducted a blind study to determine the accuracy of the remote shading algorithms in the software and found the data to be equivalent to onsite shading measurements with a tolerance interval of ± 3.4 solar access values (SAVs). For software solutions including remote site assessment and improved bid-prep software, NREL has estimated that residential-system (5 kW) savings to be $0.17/W at scale.

The tool will also generate a list of homes in an area with greater than 90% SAVs for targeted marketing campaigns.

Additional Information

Learn more about NREL's models and tools and its tool development capabilities.

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