Should You Install Solar Panels on Your Roof?

Let Google Help You Decide.

Lev Kropotov/Shutterstock

Google’s been busy rebranding itself as a 21st-century jack-of-all-trades. On Monday, it announced a revolutionary way of finding an easy answer to one of the most difficult questions for climate-conscious homeowners: Should I install solar panels?

Enter Project Sunroof, an application of Google Maps that aims to quickly cut through the paralyzingly complicated calculations that go into whether your house is well-suited to generate its own power from that giant nuclear furnace in the sky.

Project Sunroof uses Google Maps’ 3-D modeling (currently available for hundreds of U.S. cities) to get an idea of your roof’s size and orientation and the amount shade cast by nearby buildings and trees. It combines that data with historical weather information (how often your city is blanketed by clouds, for example) to come up with your estimated number of sun hours each year. Also factored in are current levels of government tax incentives, and local laws like net metering that allow homeowners to sell excess electricity back to their utility company. Other companies have likely been using similar calculators internally for years, but Google’s new initiative aims to make the process more transparent for the general public.

Read the rest at Slate.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1TScEdy

Let Google Help You Decide.

Lev Kropotov/Shutterstock

Google’s been busy rebranding itself as a 21st-century jack-of-all-trades. On Monday, it announced a revolutionary way of finding an easy answer to one of the most difficult questions for climate-conscious homeowners: Should I install solar panels?

Enter Project Sunroof, an application of Google Maps that aims to quickly cut through the paralyzingly complicated calculations that go into whether your house is well-suited to generate its own power from that giant nuclear furnace in the sky.

Project Sunroof uses Google Maps’ 3-D modeling (currently available for hundreds of U.S. cities) to get an idea of your roof’s size and orientation and the amount shade cast by nearby buildings and trees. It combines that data with historical weather information (how often your city is blanketed by clouds, for example) to come up with your estimated number of sun hours each year. Also factored in are current levels of government tax incentives, and local laws like net metering that allow homeowners to sell excess electricity back to their utility company. Other companies have likely been using similar calculators internally for years, but Google’s new initiative aims to make the process more transparent for the general public.

Read the rest at Slate.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1TScEdy