We’ve mentioned in an earlier post that we have been considering either creating a non-marine version DC Wire Sizer for solar, RVs, cars/motorcycle, etc. or adding a “non-marine” standard option to DC Wire Sizer’s Settings. We are now leaning towards the latter and would love to get input here in the blog comments or on DC Wire Sizer’s Facebook page on whether the non-marine standard should just be general wire sizing formulas or should be based on or allow the option of selected other standards (e.g., NEC, IEC, CEC, AS/NZS 3000, CSA, SAE, UL, and so on)?
Solar ToolKit app will make on-site solar assessment and cost/benefit analysis available and affordable to anyone interested in solar installations or site evaluations.
Over the years we’ve received solar oriented requests like add “Solar PV Cable” to wire type list in DC Wire Sizer (now in version 1.1.1) or create a non-marine standards (aka ABYC, ISO) version of our 5-star customer rated DC Wire Sizer for solar installations and so on. On the latter request, after we release DC Wire Sizer 2.0, we will either add a feature in Settings to select a non-marine standard or rebrand a non-marine version of DC Wire Sizer.
And we are not stopping there, over the years we have visible noticed that the littlest to largest New England state has more residential solar installations then currently installed in Florida or countries like the Bahamas. Why are homeowners not installing solar? According to the National Reusable Energy Lab (NREL), over half of low-to-moderate income households are suitable for rooftop solar energy (that’s 42% of the total annual residential solar potential in the USA alone). Plus these households would benefit the MOST from solar installations since their potential solar output closely matches their electric consumption.
What we are hearing is that home owners would be very interested in solar energy if it was easy to get the following three questions answered:
Is their house suitable for solar energy?
What they would need (aka how many panels, what size and what other equipment)?
What it would cost to install a solar system?
In researching this through looking at applications on all platforms and NREL reports, we are finding there is little available for solar consumers to get accurate answers to all three of those questions without either paying for a solar site analysis ($$$) or committing to getting a quote from a solar agent.
So what if Dirty Dog Software built an iOS app to answer those three questions and more?