Renewable energy data and automation firm Aurora Solar has made an update to its commercial and industrial solar design software HelioScope, adding integrated energy storage modeling capabilities.

The web software aims to united solar design, storage, and financial cost-benefit analysis under one proverbial roof, Aurora Solar representatives say. With the new update, the web-native HelioScope becomes the world’s first software solution purposefully built for commercial solar design, which can combine PV asset layout, production estimates, fiscal analysis, and storage modeling in one program.

“The solar market is being tested right now, and the companies that come out ahead will be the ones that make their teams faster and their numbers more defensible,” says Sudeep Deshpande, COO at Aurora Solar. “That’s exactly where we’re investing. Storage is becoming the heart of the commercial deal, and we’re bringing design, storage, and financials into one place so developers can move at the speed this market demands.”

The new energy storage modeling software comes at a critical time for that part of the solar industry, with storage and batteries sweeping the American solar market. Regardless of sector, storage options have swiftly moved from a luxury to a project necessity. Being able to model storage solutions, complete with performance and financial metrics, in just minutes, will push that even further.

Fulfilling Aurora Solar’s vision

Design capabilities that once required three separate tools is now available in the same place, Aurora Solar officials say. Everything from layout to a lender-ready output can come together as part of the same workload. As Aurora officials put it, “when a client asks what a bigger battery does to the economics, the answer takes minutes, not days.”

The new software additions also pushes Aurora Solar’s vision forward, helping to create a solar industry that is not only more efficient, but more resilient and fully adaptable to policy change.

“These abrupt policy changes far from signal the end of solar,” says Aurora Solar founder Chris Hopper. “If anything, this is the beginning of a new energy future, and a lot of the foundation — convincing people that solar is worth it — has been built. … It’s time to make solar policy-proof. We can’t wait on Washington; we have to change the way we work.”

Hopper says that the industry must make “real changes,” allowing solar firms to meet the market where it is, and where it’s going. That means eliminating soft costs and project-wide uncertainties, he says, through means like the new HelioScope software.

A preview of the new HelioScope software will be available at this year’s Intersolar Europe trade show, June 23-25. Potential customers can sign up for a free trial of the program on its website.

Tags: Aurora Solar, commercial and industrial, Helioscope, products, software