Between the Poles

Economic analysis of leaving the grid for your own solarPV+storage microgrid

The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has published a fascinating analysis of the economics of leaving the grid.  The central thesis is that solar PV and electricity storage enables consumers to leave the grid completely. 

Solar PV has already reached grid parity in about 10% of the U.S. and declining PV prices suggest that this trend will continue.  However, without the ability to store electric power, consumers with rooftop PV still require the grid for nights and cloudy days.

The development of combined solar PV and batteries from Tesla and others promises to make solar + storage accessible for increasing numbers of consumers.  These consumers could form their own microgrid, either by themselves or with their neighbours and disconnect from the grid.  Increasingly they could find that it is be economically advantageous to do so.  This has serious implications for local utilities because if this trend develops it could seriously erode the traditional utility revenue base.  Generally this would lead to increased rates for the remaining customers still on the grid, which would tend to encourage more customers to leave the grid.

The RMI analysis attempts to show when and where U.S. customers could choose
to bypass their utility without incurring higher costs or decreased reliability.  It  focuses on five U.S. regions New York (Northeast) , Kentucky (Midwest) , Texas (South), California (West), and Hawaii which has some of the highest power rates in the U.S.

RMI modeled four scenarios:

1. Base case—Uses an average of generally accepted cost forecasts for solar and battery systems that can meet 100% of a building’s load, in combination with occasional use of a diesel generator
2. Accelerated technology improvement—Assumes that solar PV and battery technologies experience aggressive price declines
3. Demand-side improvement—Includes investments in energy efficiency and user-controlled  load management
4. Combined improvement—Considers the combined effect of 1 and 2

RMI compares its estimates of costs per hWh for combined solar PV and storage with projected  retail electricity price forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

RMI arrives at some interesting conclusions.

Solar-plus-battery grid parity has already happened or is coming soon for a rapidly growing minority of utility customers.  For many customer segments in Hawaii, grid parity is already here. It will likely be here before 2030 and even as early as 2020 for tens of millions of commercial and residential customers in other geographies including New York and California.

Motivating factors such as more control over their power (Jon Wellinghof, outgoing chairman of FERC has emphasized the importance of this.) and the desire for  low-carbon electricity generation will attract early adopters even before grid parity is reached.

Because grid parity could arrive within 30 years or even sooner for some parts of the U.S., the traditional utility business model based on cost recovery through kWh sales is rapidly becoming obsolete.

As I have blogged before some utilities have foreseen this scenario and have been actively looking at alternative business models.

North American smart grid market forecasted to shift from hardware to software

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance global smart grid investment was up by about 5% in 2013 compared to 2012.

• 2013 $14.9 billion
• 2012 $14.2 billion

In 2013 for the first time China was the leader in smart grid investment ahead of the U.S.

• China $4.3 billion
• U.S. $3.6 billion

Investment in smart grid is forecasted to remain strong.  Asian and European markets are expected to drive growth through 2020, while in North America spending will shift from hardware to software as utilities look to big data management and analytics to convert increasing volumes of data to actionable information.

Smart meter deployment

Smart metering accounted for just under half of the total smart grid spending worldwide in 2013.  China led in the number of smart meters installed in 2013.  China installed 62 million smart meters in 2013 for a total of 250 million.  Europe has only installed 55 million smart meters but this is expected to increase rapidly over the next few years to reach 180 million by 2020.   Spain has a large scale delopyment underway.  The UK, France and Germany are planning large scale smart meter deployments starting in 2015.  Brazil's smart meter deployment is being delayed.  Japan is on the verge of a large scale deployment.  In the U.S. smart meter deployment is slowing down as ARRA funding runs out.

Distribution automation

Global spending on distribution automation which includes self-healing networks and conservation voltage regulation (CVR) or Volt/VAR  increased by 23% over 2012.

• 2013 $5.4 billion
• 2012 $4.4 billion

Future smart grid investment

Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees the following developments in 2014 and beyond:

• Smart meter deployment in China will slow down, but investment in distribution automation will increase.
• Smart grid activity in Japan, Korea, India and South East Asia will ramp up.
• The US is entering a second major smart grid phase of information integration. This involves  applying "big data" management and analytics to leverage the increasing volumes of data coming from smart meters and other smart devices to reduce non-technical losses and improve outage management.

G20 finance ministers looking at ways to attract $57 trillion in needed investment in infrastructure

Australia chaired a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Sydney over the weekend to talk  about the challenges facing the global economy.  One of the fundamental problems is finding the funding for needed infrastruture investment estimated by the McKinsey Global Institute at $3.2 trillion annually or about $57 trillion between 2013 and 2030.

Governments need the private sector to invest in infrastructure.  The problem is not a shortage of capital, but making the investment climate attractive to business.  Business will only get involved if the projects are economically viable and the risk is manageable so that a reasonable rate of return can be expected.  The goal of the Sydney meeting is to find similar ways to break down regulatory barriers and other disincentives for investors.

As a recent example of what governments can do, in the United States where building a new transmission line can take up to 20 years because of regulatory requirements, low cost private  funding is readily available for transmission line projects, but only after the necessary regulatory requirements have been met.  To simplify and streamline the regulatory process for transmission lines on Federal lands, in October, 2009 nine Federal agencies signed a memorandum of understanding to increase their coordination. The Obama administration has also announced pilot projects to streamline the permitting of transmission lines in order to speed up integration of renewables.

Background: MGI on improving infrastructure productivity

I blogged about McKinsey Global Institute's (MGI) research into construction productivity back in 2012 after a presentation at an international infrastructure conference.  The results of this research are encapsulated in a recent report where MGI has estimated that $57 trillion in infrastructure (roads and highways, rail, ports and seaports, electric power, water and waste water and communications) investment will be required from 2013 through 2030 ($3.2 trillion per year) just to support the projected growth in the world economy, estimated at 3.5% growth in world GDP annually.  This is about 60% more than the $36 trillion that was spent over the past 18 years, but it still is not sufficient to address some of the major backlogs in infrastructure maintenance in developed economies, the infrastructure development goals of the emerging economies, or the cost of making the world's economies more resilient to climate change.  

If the world does not invest in infrastructure, this will create a drag on the world's economy that will slow GDP growth especially in emerging economies.  Slower growth in GDP means lower  employment.  MGI estimates that every 1% of of GDP that is invested in infrastructure translates into, for example, 3.4 million direct and indirect jobs in India, 1.3 million in Brazil, 700,000 in Indonesia or 1.5 million in the United States.   

MGI makes a case that it is possible to reduce the cost of infrastructure while at the same time improving its quality.  MGI estimates that if world's infrastructure owners were to adopt proven best practice to improve construction productivity which has been stagnant for the past 20 years in some of the world's most important economies (US, EU, Japan, Korea) it would be possible to save 40% of the total cost of infrastructure (not including telecom). This amounts to savings of about  $1 trillion per year or a 60% improvement in infrastructure productivity.  To arrive at this conclusion MGI has analyzed 400 case studies of best practices - projects that used what is currently recognized as best practices.  So this does not require new and untested technology and business practices, this means applying what we already know.

U.S. has fallen to 16th in the OECD in broadband access

A very interesting article by Brendan Greeley in Bloomberg Businessweek points out that with respect to broadband penetration in the OECD, over the past decade the Unites States has fallen from 10th to 16th.  By 2013, France, Norway, the UK, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland and New Zealand have passed the United States. 

Back in 2003 South Korea was way ahead of everyone.  It had opened up the last mile of its existing cable and phone companies, and offered inexpensive loans to companies to invest in more fiber.  After that there  there were a number of countries including the U.S. at about 10 percent.  France, Germany, and the U.K. were under 6 percent.

At that time, the U.S.had an advantage - every house in the U.S. had a copper telephone line and almost every house had cable as well - which was not the case in the E.U.

By 2013 all the countries that are ahead of U.S. have either opened up the last mile to compeition or subsidized infrastructure by government or both.

• Switzerland opened up the last mile of its phone monopoly in 2007.
• Under a directive from Brussels, all EU countries have opened up the last mile for all monopolies.
• Sweden, in addition, aggressively invested at both the national and local level in rolling out more fiber.
• The U.K. split British Telecom into two separate companies, one that sells network access and another in the very competitive retail communications market.
• In France, in 2003 there was a single state monopoly France Telecom. Since then France opened up the last mile to open competitiion.  In 2013 France is now fourth in the OECD rankings.  It used to be 14th in 2003.  Brendan Greely mentioned Free, one of the startups that took advantage of open access to France Telecom's telephone lines and which offers 1-gigabit DSL, free calls to 108 countries, 197 channels, and a set-top box with a game console and a Blu-ray player—all for €39 a month ($53.60).  And without any special regulatory concessions, Free has also started investing in its own super-fast fiber connections to homes.

The problem is that the last mile of broadband is expensive: Two alternatives are either the government contributes via subsidies or the regulator forces the existing phone and cable monopolies to open up the last mile on a wholesale basis, enabling new companies to compete.  But the FCC in the U.S. has been trying a third alternative, an experiment to see what happens when you encourage monopolies in return for infrastructure investment.  The FCC has.allowed the existing phone and cable companies to hold on to their own last miles, competing only with each other and reinvesting their profits into more infrastructure.  Brendan Greeley's perspective is that the FCC's experiment has failed.   The U.S. has dropped to 16th place in the OECD and all the countries ahead of the U.S. in 2013 have either opened up the last mile or subsidized infrastructure by government or both.

Candidate OGC IndoorGML standard available for public comment

Indoor mapping is already supported by Google and Bing.  Micello is in the business of creating indoor maps of major venues around the world.  Most of the activity seems to be focussed on consumers and locations such as malls, airports and department stores.  A typical indoor application would help you find particular products in a mall or department store.

The major problem that distinguishes indoor from outdoor location and mapping is that there is no widely recognized indoor equivalent of GPS.  When you are outside of buildings on most of the Earth's surface you can use GPS  to determine where you, other people and things are.  As soon as you walk into a building, GPS no longer works and it is difficult to automatically track people and objects.  For example, to be able to track a firefighter in a building  that has not been prepared in advance remains a challenge.

There have been a number of attempts to solve this problem.  Wifi signals from transmitters with known locations can be used to triangulate locations to with an accuracy of 10-15 feet.  Other technologies involve tracking cell phone location by triangulation, RFID, accelerometers, or tracking by low frequency radio frequency waves that are not as affected by walls as high frequency waves.

Another challenge is 3D location in tall buildings, translating an elevation in meters or feet to a particular floor and vice versa.

The business benefit of indoor location is significant because it increases the value of your assets - when you can locate equipment and facilities easily, you will use them more.  In the case of hospitals it can be a matter of life and death to find the "crash cart" in seconds rather than minutes.

The Open Geospatial Consortium's  IndoorGML Standards Working Group has released a candidate  IndoorGML Encoding Standard.  The  IndoorGML Encoding Standard has been developed to provide a common schema framework for interoperability between indoor spatial applications such as indoor location services, indoor web map services, indoor emergency control, guiding services for visually handicapped persons in indoor space, and indoor robotics. The IndoorGML Encoding Standard is intended to provide a cross-platform, vendor-neutral way of communicating indoor spatial information. The IndoorGML Standards Working Group worked in collaboration with other standards groups including ISO/TC204 and IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS).

IndoorGML has been implemented as an application schema of the OGC Geographic Markup Language (GML) Version 3.2.1. IndoorGML's set of geometric and semantic data elements intended to be iconsistent with other standards such as the OGC's CityGML standard and buildingSMART's Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs).

IndoorGML specifies conceptual models and XML schemas for

• Geometric and semantic properties of spaces and connectivity
• Navigation context and constraints
• Space subdivisions and types of connectivity between spaces
• Navigation networks (logical and metric) and their relationships

The OGC is requesting public comment for a month ending on March 21, 2014.  You can download the standard here.

Report predicts that low cost LiDAR will be disruptive in next 5 years

Markets and Markets has released a report that analyzes the LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) market by product types (airborne, mobile, terrestrial and short range) and applications (government, civil engineering, military/defence/aerospace, corridor mapping, topographic surveying, and volumetric mapping)  and provides global forecasts for the period  2013 – 2018.  

LiDAR has been traditionally applied to produce 3D digital elevation and terrain models typically for forestry and civil engineering applications.  But corridor mapping (for example, for transmission lines), which uses mobile LiDAR systems as well as airborne LiDAR, is projected to be the application with the highest annual growth rate from 2013 to 2018.

The report estimates that the global LiDAR market was worth $218.9 million in 2012.   Civil engineering was the most important application.  Most of the revenue was derived from airborne lidar systems, partly because they are relatively expensive.  But this is changing. The report forecasts that the global LiDAR market will grow by more than 15 % annually over the next five years, reaching $551.3 million in 2018.  The report predicts that airborne LiDAR systems will have the lowest compound annual growth rate among the four types of LiDAR systems and projects that the revenue associated with terrestrial and mobile LiDAR systems will surpass that of airborne LiDAR systems by 2018. 

The report also forecasts that low-cost LiDAR systems could revolutionize the surveying industry in the next five years.  I blogged recently about a light weight UAV-mounted LiDAR platform weighing less than 10kg which combines UAV, LiDAR and GNSS technology and is designed as a micro-mapping solution.

EIA projects accelerated new natural gas and renewable and retirement of coal-fired generation

The U.S. Energy Information Adminstration's (EIA) AEO2014 Early Release Overview has been released and the Reference Case changes projections from last year's AEIO2013, some significantly.  EIA Reference Case projections tend to be conservative.  One reason is that EIA Reference Case projections assume no new legislation or regulations beyond what has currently been enacted.

Total primary energy consumption is projected to grow by 12% in the AEO2014 Reference case, from 95 quadrillion Btu in 2012 to 106 quadrillion Btu in 2040.

Fossil fuel generation

Total electricity consumption in the AEO2014 Reference case is projected to grow from 3,826 billion kWh in 2012 to 4,954 billion kWh in 2040, an average annual rate of 0.9%.  The combination of slow growth in electricity demand, competitively priced natural gas, programs encouraging renewable fuel use, and the implementation of environmental rules slows future coal use. The AEO2014 Reference case assumes implementation of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) and the implementation of Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS) in 2016. MATS is projected to reduce sulfur dioxide levels.   Mercury emissions are projected to drop to 6.1 tons in 2016 from 30.8 tons in 2011.

After 2020, coal generation remains lower than projected in AEO2013, because more coal-fired capacity is retired and fewer new coal plants are built.  Coal-fired electricity generation has traditionally been the largest component of electricity generation, representing 37% of total generation in 2012.  By 2035, however, natural gas generation is projected to surpass coal generation.  By 2040 the coal share is projected to drop to 32%, and the natural gas share increases to 35%.  As retirements far outpace new additions, total coal-fired generating capacity falls from 310 gigawatts (GW) in 2012 to 262 GW in 2040.  EIA’s latest prediction that about 60 GW of coal will retire by 2016 is up significantly from about 40 GW in AEIO2013 and 27 GW it predicted in AEIO2012.

Domestic natural gas consumption in the AEO2014 Reference case rises from 25.6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2012 to 31.6 Tcf in 2040.  The largest share of the growth is for electricity generation.  By 2017 natural gas-fired generation is higher in AEO2014 than in the AEO2013 Reference case, and the difference continues to grow. Additional retirements of coal and nuclear plants result in the need for new capacity, and new natural gas-fired plants are much cheaper to build than coal, nuclear, or renewable plants. In 2020, natural gas-fired generation in AEO2014 is 7% higher than in AEO2013, and in 2040 it is 16% higher.

Renewable generation

Increased generation with renewable energy, excluding hydropower, accounts for 28% of the overall growth in electricity generation from 2012 to 2040 in the AEO2014 Reference case. Generation from renewable resources grows in response to federal tax credits, state-level policies, and federal requirements to use more biomass-based transportation fuels. In the final decade of the projection, however, renewable generation growth is driven by increasing cost competiveness with other nonrenewable technologies.  The share of U.S. electricity generation coming from renewable fuels (including conventional hydropower) grows from 12% in 2012 to 16% in 2040 in the AEO2014 Reference case, even with federal subsidies for renewable generation assumed to expire as enacted.

Generation of electricity from solar photovoltaic energy shows the fastest growth accounting for 7.5% of total electricity generation from all nonhydropower renewable energy sources in 2040.  Excluding hydroelectricity, renewable energy consumption in the electric power sector grows from 1.9 quadrillion Btu in 2012 to 4.5 quadrillion Btu in 2040, with wind accounting for 39% of the growth.

Energy intensity

Energy use per 2005 dollar of GDP declines by 43% from 2012 to 2040 in AEO2014 as the result of a continued shift from manufacturing to services (and, even within manufacturing, to less-energy-intensive manufacturing industries), rising energy prices, and the adoption of policies that promote energy efficiency.

U.S. energy use per capita was constant from 1990 to 2007 but began to fall after 2007. In the AEO2014 Reference case, energy use per capita continues to decline as a result of improvements in energy efficiency and changes in the ways energy is used in the U.S. economy. Total U.S. population is projected to increase by 21% from 2012 to 2040, but energy use grows by only 12%, with energy use per capita declining by 8% from 2012 to 2040.

CO2 emisssions

CO2 emissions per 2005 dollar of GDP have historically tracked closely with energy use per dollar of GDP. In the AEO2014 Reference case with lower-carbon fuels accounting for a growing share of total energy use, CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP decline more rapidly than energy use per dollar of GDP, to 56% below their 2005 level in 2040 (or by 2.3% per year).

In the AEO2014 Reference case projected energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020 and 2040 are about 9% and 7%, respectively, below the 2005 level.  Again the EIA Reference Case assumed no new legislation or regulations beyond what is currently enacted.

Cost of utility-scale solar PV has dropped from $0.21/kWh in 2010 to $0.11/kWh in 2013

In February 2011, the Department of Energy (DoE) launched its SunShot Initiative to make solar energy cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by the end of the decade. DoE has just announced that utility-scale PV industry is more than 60 % of the way to achieving SunShot's target of $0.06/kWh. The average price for a utility-scale PV project has dropped from about $0.21/kWh in 2010 to $0.11/kWh at the end of 2013. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average price of electricity is about $0.12/kWh in the U.S.

Reductions in the cost of electricity are based on estimates of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) which a measure of the national average of electricity cost based on certain assumptions regarding financing costs and generation availability projected over the life of a generating asset. The LCOE model provides a benchmark for measuring relative changes in the price of electric power.

Itron study finds that the utility industry needs to reinvent itself through technology

Itron has published its first annual Itron Resourcefulness Index. It is a study based on a survey of utility executives from the gas, water and electricity industries as well as utility consumers. 800 informed consumers and 600 utility executives in 14 countries were asked to respond to questions about the state for the global utility industry.

Concern about the current state of the utility industry

Respondents indicated that there is a significant level of concern about the state of the utility industry.   60 percent of utility executives and 70 percent of customers believe that utility operations are not efficient. 70 % of utility customers and 40 % of utility executives agreed that operational inefficiency lowers customer satisfaction.  The discrepancy between the utility executives and consumers points to another problem identified in this study.

94 percent of utility executives surveyed agreed that transformation of operations was essential to improve efficiency. The concern was greatest in the developing countries, especially China and India. Developed countries, in particular Spain, Australia and  Canada, had the lowest overall concern among both consumers and executives.

Noteworthy is the gap between the level of concern expressed by utility executives and consumers.  In every country consumers expressed greater concern about the state of the utility industry than utility executives.

Eight out of 10 consumers said they do not receive enough information from their utilities today, and seven out of 10 said they want to know more.

The survey also asked executives in the event that they lost 10% of their current budget, what would they cut.  Nearly six out of 10 executives said they would cut consumer education if budgets were reduced.  This points to a serious lack of communication between utility executives and consumers.

If utility executives had to deduct 10 percent from their budget, what would they reduce

• 23% Energy Efficiency / Water Conservation
• 26% Staff / Employees
• 20% Infrastructure
• 21% Upgrading Our Technology
• 33% Consumer/educational programs

Barriers to change

94 percent of utility executives identify government policy and uncertainty about regulations in the future as the most important barrier to infrastructure investment.  Consumers also seem to agree that government or a lack of policy is hindering infrastructure investment.

Which if the following do you believe are barriers to infrastructure investment ?

• 54% Government regulation that delays investment
• 45% Lack of clarity of government regulation
• 40% Uncertainties about the future of the industry
• 34% Difficulties with prioritizing where to invest
• 32% Lack of public funding
• 25% Lack of private funding
• 19% Need more time

Role of technology

Utility executives were also asked in the event that their budget was increased by 10%, where would they spend the money,  More than half of utility executives said that the very first thing they would do with more budget is spend it on technology.  Of these 68 % said they would invest in IT services and 58 % would invest in the sensor web often termed the “Internet of Things."

If Utility executives had an extra 10 percent in their budget, what would they spend it on ?

• 51% Upgrading Our Technology
• 43% Infrastructure
• 41% Staff / Employees
• 39% Energy Efficiency / Water Conservation
• 25% Consumer / Educational Programs

Big data and analytics

A large proportion (74 %) of utility executives feel big data analytics is going to be central to infrastructure modernization efforts. Six out of 10 consumers also believe big data drives utility operational efficiency.

According to this survey 46 percent of utility executive respondents feel prepared for big data analytics today. ( This is surprising.  A similar recent Oracle survey found that utilities are more prepared to manage the huge volumes of data that smart grids are capable of generating in 2013 than they were one year ago, but the majority still say they are unprepared.  In 2013 17 % of respondents said they are completely prepared compared to 9 % in 2012.) Consumers are very concerned about big data readiness, with only two out of 10 responding that utilities are prepared to take advantage of big data analytics today.

Utility executives liekly to invest in technology would choose

• 68% IT services (programs, software, hardware, etc.)
• 58% Internet of things (i.e. embedding sensors in physical objects)
• 45% Sensors
• 38% Meters

In summary

The Itron study found that there was near unanimity among utility executive and consumer respondents that the industry needs to transform itself. It found that consumers want help from utilities to better manage their resources and that policy and regulation are perceived as critical, but they are seen by both utility executives and consumers as a barrier to progress.  Communications between utilities and consumers needs to improve. Most of respondents see technology as the key to the transformation the utility industry needs to go through.

Web-based open source geospatial tool for estimating the solar power potential of cities

At the India Geospatial Forum in Hyderabad, I moderated a session on electric power.  It turned out ot be an absolutely fascinating conversation with a wide range of speakers representing different aspects of the Indian power industry.

Alekhya Datta, a Research Associate at the Centre for Distributed Generation, part of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, gave a presentation about a web-based open source geospatial application that has been developed to estimate the solar power generation potential of a city.

TERI promotes renewable energy and is working with the Ministry of Power to develop a roadmap for renewable energy for India.  The objective is to install 20 GW of solar PV by 2020.  As part of this effort 51 cities have been designated as "Solar Cities" and TERI is working with state governments to develop a program to encourage the installation of solar PV in these cities. 

Chandigarh has been chosen to be first solar city.  Chandigarh is the first planned city post-independence and is in the North of India.  Its population is about a million.

One of the projects to support the Solar City initative is to develop a high performance and flexible Web-GIS tool to estimate the rooftop solar power potential for a city.  It is intended to be low cost, acessible to the public and to use widely available data sources. 

Data sources

Satellite imagery (Pleiades-1A) is used for digitizing building rooftops.  This is augmented by a digital surface model and meteoroloigcal information so that it can account for shadowing and cloud cover and includes the heights of buildings, trees and utiltiy poles.  Rooftop solar analysis is simpler in Chandigarh than in North American and European cities because roofs are flat.

The total number of rooftops that were digitized is about 110,500.  In addition about 14,000 buildings were surveyed and of these 50-60 were used for ground-based solar radiation measurement. For a subsample of 5-10 of these, solar pV panels were actually installed on the rooves and the generated power measured.

Estimating the solar potential of cities

The web-based tool was developed using open source geospatial libraries including Open Layers, GeoServer, PostGIS and TileServer and relies on OGC open standards.  It is intended to be extended to enable it to be used in the other 50 solar cities including Delhi. It enables users to estimate the rooftop solar power potential of selected area for different types of PV technologies such as crystalline and thin-film.  It also provides tools for estimating potential green house gas mitigation through solar rooftop PV systems for a specific area.  The tool is available here (or here)and Alekhya Datta encourages people to try it.

It is envisioned that it will be used as a decision support system to perform pre-feasibility assessments of viability of devloping a rooftop PV program for a city for a particular region or area in the context of the possible business models and financial schemes that are available in that locality.