Australia’s Trusted Solar Calculator
Why you can trust SunSPOT
SunSPOT was built to help households and business
The Australian Government is a partner of the SunSPOT project.
SunSPOT was built by not-for-profit solar research organisation the Australian PV Institute specifically to help households and small businesses to navigate the confusing and highly technical solar sales market. Unlike other free-to-use solar calculators, SunSPOT was not built to help solar companies find customers.
SunSPOT’s design has been informed by extensive user testing and consultation. We’ve built a tool that quickly provides answers to your questions about solar and batteries and potential savings, without being overwhelmingly technical.
Photovoltaic engineers and data analysts from UNSW’s School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Engineering (SPREE) designed and built SunSPOT for the APVI, using sophisticated algorithms, 3D spatial mapping data and Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) weather data so it can deliver accurate and tailored estimates that account for local sunshine patterns, shading from nearby structures, the shape, slope and orientation of the roof planes, locally relevant electricity plans and information about your usage.
The user-focused design and enhanced development of this latest version of SunSPOT was made possible thanks to the partnership with the Australian Government, and support from the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. This includes development of the ‘standard’ version of SunSPOT for regions where the 3D mapping (LiDAR) data is not available, or a council has not subscribed.
The release of the standard version of SunSPOT means everybody Australia-wide can use the tool to get free, useful insights into what solar can do for them.
Are you using the most accurate version of SunSPOT?
When a council takes up a subscription to SunSPOT its urban areas are ‘mapped’ into the tool using 3D spatial mapping LiDAR data. This allows the tool to read the shape, slope and orientation of all roof planes and assess any shading on these across every day of the year.
This ‘mapped’ version of SunSPOT is the most accurate, freely available, not-for-profit solar estimator tool available to potential solar buyers.
If, when using SunSPOT, you are asked to estimate the shading and the slope of your roof, and there are no dots on the image of your roof showing the best places for solar panels, then your area has not been mapped.
You can send an email to your council below to ask them to subscribe to SunSPOT so you and your neighbours can get even more accurate results.
Find your Council’s email address, and add your suburb and name to the email, or write your own.
We won’t share your details
You won’t get any unexpected phone calls from solar companies after using SunSPOT. Any information we store is only with your explicit permission and is only used to improve the tool or for research. We will never sell or give away
your information.
SunSPOT is not-for-profit
SunSPOT was built by photovoltaic engineers and data analysts from UNSW for the Australian PV Institute. The APVI is a not-for-profit solar research and analysis organisation providing tools and analysis to government, industry and the public to support the development and rapid uptake of solar.
SunSPOT is supported by the Australian, NSW and ACT governments
