Solar Panels Suitability Checker — iPhone/iPod/iPad App (Free)

I recently ran across a pretty sweet solar power iEverything app (that is, it’s an app for numerous versions of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad).

The app is a solar panel suitability checker… as you might have guessed from the title. 😉

To be more clear, the iTunes page states: “The solar panels suitability checker will help you to identify if your roof or other location is suitable for solar panel installation.”

The screenshots from the iTunes page look pretty interesting. I wish I had an iSomething to try it out myself — this is one of the most enticing apps I think I’ve ever run across.

The app comes from the website Solar Panels UK (a pretty attractive-looking solar website, in my humble opinion).

The app uses google maps technology… as so many do. “After downloading the app for either iPhone or iPad to their device, the user can simply press the ‘Use Current Location’ button to allow the suitability checker to locate them via the inbuilt GPS feature,” a news release states. “Alternatively one can also manually enter the address of the site and select the country from the drop down menu.”

Once the location is nailed down using satellite imagery, the app “uses a performance graph overlay to help identify the suitability of the site or specific section of the property’s roof.” That would be the colorful thing in the second image above.

All well and good, and it certainly seems like it’s worth a look. Not perfect yet, perhaps, but the company also notes that it is already developing version 2.0, which it says will “factor in sun time data based on GPS location and also slope/tilt angle of the roof to give estimated energy generation in kWh.” That’s insanely sweet. If this company were in the US, I imagine it would have won one of those recent DOE SunShot grants for bringing down the “soft costs” of going solar.

If all of the above wasn’t cool enough, I also don’t think anyone will complain about the fact that the app is actually free.

Of course, since it is based on google maps, the app works essentially everywhere in the world. To learn more and/or get the app, head on over to:

• http://www.solarpanelsuk.co.uk
• http://itunes.apple.com/app/solar-panels-suitability-checker/id537591409

All images via Solar Panels UK