2 July 2024National charity, the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) has launched Solar Wizard, an innovative online tool supporting homeowners, community organisations and local authorities across the UK to evaluate their rooftop solar potential quickly and easily.
Solar Wizard provides an unbiased assessment to help more people make informed decisions about installing solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and has two user experience interfaces:
- Homeowners (public facing): Homeowners can quickly look up any building in England, Wales, and Scotland, based on its postcode. It’s totally free and users enter their postcode to receive an easy summary of how much energy solar panels on their roof could generate, how much it could cost to get them installed and how quickly they could earn this back through savings on energy bills (the payback period). The report can be customised based on actual energy usage and there’s information and next steps if people want to explore more about installing solar panels
- Building selection and economic modelling: Visualise solar potential with interactive maps. Parish and town councils alongside larger district, unitary and county authorities can understand the viability of PV for their buildings and can assess the contribution rooftop solar could make to their climate emergency responses
Solar Wizard also offers an interactive map interface that displays solar potential across entire areas. This map interface is a paid service offering additional functionality for users to select multiple buildings and run financial modelling. The buildings in the area with the best potential for solar can be easily identified and summary data can be downloaded. Users can run financial modelling looking at potential investment, payback periods, rate of return and more. Find out more about this service and the methodology here.
With less than 5% of UK homes currently using solar panels, there is huge potential to expand this commercially viable low-carbon technology. Solar Wizard was created by CSE to encourage wider adoption of solar power by simplifying the process of understanding if installing panels makes sense for a building.
