NEW: Solar Design Annotations

An important part of designing a solar system and producing a transparent proposal is providing information regarding the location of solar system components. These include the location of the power inverter, electrical meter box and isolators switches. Specifically, inverter location is required in solar proposals to be compliant with industry standards (CEC Approved Solar Retailer guidelines) and when applying government rebates (Solar Victoria’s “Solar Homes rebate”).

Market research indicate that most solar designers will use a solar design tool (Nearmap, SolarPlus or Pylon Observer) in conjunction with a graphics editor (MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop) to display component location information.

The solar designer will use a solar design tool to design a solar panel layout and export the layout with aerial imagery of the house. They will then upload the design and imagery into a graphics editor to mark and label where each required component is located. The labelled image would be exported and then added to the solar proposal to be shared with the end-consumer. The process is time consuming and requires the solar designer to moving between multiple software platforms.

Pylon Observer’s Annotation feature provides an easy-to-use tool to mark and label components and fulfil industry standards and guidelines. Solar designers can easy drag and drop solar specific component icons with labels onto the map to annotate locations of components. The annotated image is professional and includes representative icons of the electrical components. It is automatically included in the proposal generated, making Pylon Observer’s proposals complaint with CEC ASR guidelines and SolarVic rebate requirements.

By streamlining the process of annotating components and reducing the time commitment, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in information provided to the end-consumer and transparency in the industry. Over 80% of proposals on Pylon Observer now include component location information.