Google's Project Sunroof: How it could help you save with solar power
Google wants to make it that much easier to go solar.
The company on Monday launched , a new online service that taps into Google鈥檚 growing capacities in satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to give consumers a comprehensive look at how much they would save by swapping their traditional power source for solar energy.
The project, currently available for residents of San Francisco, Boston, and Fresno, Calif., is the latest investment to tie Google to renewable energy sources 鈥� and solar in particular 鈥� and could be a step towards making solar power more accessible and easy to use.
鈥淎s the price of installing solar has gotten less expensive, more homeowners are turning to it as a possible option for decreasing their energy bill,鈥� . 鈥淲e want to make installing solar panels easy and understandable for anyone.鈥�
To that end, the company developed what is essentially a search engine that relies on the same technology that Google Earth uses to map cities all over the world. The user types in an address, and Project Sunroof creates a 3D model of that location鈥檚 roof structure. It then estimates how much sunlight that roof gets in one year and how much the homeowner might save over the next 20.
鈥淧eople search Google all the time to learn about solar,鈥� Joel Conkling, a renewable energy investment expert with Google, . 鈥淏ut it would be much more helpful if they could learn whether their particular roof is a good fit.鈥�
Solar energy is the fastest-growing renewable energy source in the United States today and, along with wind, accounts for two-thirds of renewable growth in the country, in May.
Advocates聽tout solar鈥檚 advantages, : unlike other sources of electricity, including hydropower, photovoltaic (PV) panels eschew the use of turbines and convert solar energy directly into electricity. That process, Mr. Roberts wrote, makes solar energy clean, low-maintenance, and, once the initial investment is paid off, low-cost.
But solar comes with disadvantages as well, the most obvious being its dependence on the sun.
鈥淪olar radiation is rarely constant and varies with changing atmospheric conditions (clouds and dust), and the changing position of the Earth relative to the sun,鈥� . And although the sun鈥檚 energy comes free, 鈥渢he cost of the technology relative to the amount of energy produced makes solar significantly more expensive than other more widely used energy sources,鈥� posing a challenge to the large-scale use of solar energy.
Indeed, 鈥淭he past decade has been a remarkable time for the solar industry,鈥� Francis O鈥橲ullivan, director of research and analysis at MIT鈥檚 Energy Initiative, told 海角大神. 鈥淗owever, continued rapid growth in solar is not an inevitability.鈥�
Google, for its part, has been working to change that. In the last few years the tech giant in solar energy in the US and elsewhere, including $12 million into a 96-megawatt (MW) solar PV plant in South Africa; $280 million into California-based solar provider SolarCity; and $80 million in utility-scale solar facilities across California and Arizona.
The company plans to profit, too. For Project Sunroof, the idea is to eventually recommend solar providers to users and pick up a referral fee from those providers, Wired reports. 鈥淲e want to help people understand the potential of solar power,鈥� Mr. Conkling told the magazine. 鈥淏ut we can make some money off of that as well.鈥�
