Create a solar study to understand the carbon impact, cost and return on investment potential of adding solar panels to an existing site.

You’ll get:

Pre-filled financial assumptions are based on estimates for your area. You can make changes by updating the inputs or download a financial model later. These inputs are used to calculate an estimate of costs and ROI.

Find the full list of assumptions for financial data and incentives here.

Solar costs:

Solar costs are typically calculated as total cost per Watt. The total cost includes the cost of panels, labor costs and soft costs.

Electricity:

Electricity rate and escalator will be used to calculate the total electricity cost without solar installation.

Net metering preference

Net metering is a system in which solar panels or other renewable energy generators are connected to a public-utility power grid and surplus power is transferred onto the grid, allowing customers to offset the cost of power drawn from the utility. Net metering is not available in all geographic areas.

Net Metering Preference will be used to calculate credits received from sending excess or all energy generated from solar panels to the grid, when net metering is applicable.

You can choose the following options:

Solar financing options:

There are two main ways to finance solar panels supported by Delve’s financial model.

Purchase: Buy the solar panels yourself through cash purchase or a loan, and use the energy generated from them to offset existing costs.

If you choose to purchase solar panels, you may choose to take out a loan to finance them. To calculate the ROI we use the following inputs

Leasing / PPA: The property owner pays a fee to a provider who owns and maintains the solar panels through a lease contract or a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), and you can use the energy generated from the panels to offset existing costs.

Lease and PPA financials are calculated using

Based on your site size and location, you may qualify for local and federal incentives. Your financial scenarios will include incentives you are likely to qualify for. Delve’s financial model supports 3 types of incentives for solar.

Net metering:

A utility billing mechanism available in most states in the US that offers a credit to customers who are making excess electricity with their solar panel systems and sending it back to the grid.

Cost Based Incentives (CBI):

Cost-based solar incentives are calculated based on the system's cost to the customer and received after the system is bought.

Delve’s financial model supports:

* Credits are granted up to the maximum limit, and system size maximum usually is reflecting the dollar amount maximum limit, Delve’s financial model uses dollar amount limit.

*Our model does not take into account your tax liability to determine your eligibility for tax credits.

Performance based incentives (PBI):

These are incentives calculated based on the system's production. PBIs are applied as they are earned - a credit is paid to the customers for each kilowatt-hour of electricity their system produces.

* Credits are granted up to the maximum limit, and system size maximum usually is reflecting the dollar amount maximum limit, Delve’s financial model uses dollar amount limit.

After you provide your inputs in Create Study, Delve will generate up to 3 designs with different orientations of solar panels and calculate the potential return on investment for each of these.

Solar Configuration:

Delve generates designs by taking into consideration existing buildings, parking lots and international fire code regulations on your site. It then determines the possible configurations for implementing solar panels, including ensuring solar panels are aligned with orientation of parking lots.

Rooftop solar panels: These are solar panels placed on the roof of your building. They conform to the International Fire Code’s regulations for solar panel placement, including pathway generation within the panels. For Solar Studies, these panels don’t factor in pathways around roof access hatches on buildings. In order to maximize efficiency, we only include solar panels that are less than 25% shaded and in an array of at least 4 panels. To get more accurate solar energy estimates we estimate the rooftop mechanical systems. The rooftop systems are not an exact representation of your roof.

Solar canopies: These are long-span structures in parking lots, with solar panels placed on their roofs. These canopies are placed over the entire parking lot, without reference to the parking spots. Driving aisles are excluded from these canopies.

Solar carports: These are structures placed directly over parking spots in parking lots, with solar panels placed on the carport roofs. We use a Delve-generated parking layout to generate these solar carports.

All the solar panels are commercial-size solar panels, based on a solar panel on the US market.

Generated designs are evaluated for solar yield, energy savings and return on investment.

Solar Yield:

The average amount of solar radiation received from direct and diffuse sunlight, measured in kilowatt hours per square meters. The solar radiation output does not account for coverage ratios and efficiency, these are calculated in the utility demand model’s calculated renewable energy generation potential for photovoltaics.

For small roofs (<500m2), Delve uses the Solar API to calculate solar flux and panel placement.

Key Metrics:

Energy Use:

Operational emissions indicate the amount of carbon emitted through the use of a building. This includes energy used for climate control, ventilation, lighting, and many other activities. Operational emissions measure the energy use intensity on a site and depend on location and environmental factors to evaluate expected building performance.

Energy use intensity and associated operational emissions are calculated using data from the Google Environmental Insights Explorer and the Climate Action for Urban Sustainability (CURB) tool. All existing buildings are assumed to have commercial EUI.

Emissions Reductions:

For simplicity in modeling, we are aggregating the solar energy for the entire site, even if the site is multi-parcel, and use it to offset energy on every building on site. This is done as opposed to offsetting only the buildings the solar panels are on top of.

If Net Metering is applied, we offset the total energy use from the site. If Net Metering is not applied, we only offset the total electricity energy use from the site.

Financials:

Delve’s financial model for solar studies evaluates two financing options for solar systems: buying and leasing and take into consideration incentives where available (US only). The financial metrics were modeled with the adjusted assumptions during study setup and default values from collected data.

The financial model does not currently include insurance or tax liability.