Power Explorer, Net Billing, and ground-mount design

Power Explorer now gives teams and proposal clients a detailed, hour-by-hour way to understand solar, storage, utility bills, demand peaks, and backup performance. Teams can save customer-specific usage schedules, build essential-load plans, compare permitted battery strategies, and verify Net Billing credits directly from the proposal.

Utility and financial modeling also takes a major step forward. Powerlily now supports Net Billing, more complex demand tariffs and billing rules, battery-only projects, phased consumption changes, dealer fees, and more flexible incentive calculations. These additions help proposals reflect how customers will actually import, export, store, and pay for energy.

Designers also gain complete ground-mount layout tools and editable parametric roofs in the 3D design tool. Electrical design is more capable too, with wiring conditions available in context, automatic raceway splitting, better handling of dual-tilt arrays, and more accurate storage summaries.

Powerlily

• Interactive Power Explorer Solar teams and proposal recipients can inspect hourly solar production, home consumption, grid exchange, battery activity, demand peaks, monthly bills, and 30-year projections. It is available from quote workspaces and customer-facing proposals, preserves the selected point in time, and supports English, Spanish, and French.
• Net Billing plans and projections Companies can configure utilities and quotes where grid imports are purchased and exports earn monetary credits. Calculations respect eligible energy charges, minimum bills, fees, demand charges, signed import and export prices, and credit payout or expiration rules.
• Net Billing analysis in Power Explorer Monthly details now show exports, credits earned, export charges, credits applied, expired credits, and remaining balances using monetary-credit terminology. This makes the projected bill impact easier to verify with customers.
• Safer Net Billing selection If an installed-solar quote lacks complete hourly production, Powerlily preserves the previous settings and explains that production must be refreshed. Grid-only Net Billing quotes can still be saved without solar production.
• Detailed outage simulation Teams and proposal clients can test how quoted batteries and solar would serve loads during an outage, including battery state, solar recharge, equipment limits, load shedding, and performance over time. Customer-facing results are available only when the saved design includes a valid backup configuration.
• Saved backup-load plans Backup demand can be modeled as a percentage of whole-home usage or as selected appliances with quantities, schedules, cycling, priorities, background wattage, and enabled states. Plans are saved with the quote for repeatable analysis.
• Custom household usage timing Teams can save weekday, weekend, monthly, and day-of-week consumption patterns for a quote. Financial, battery, scenario, and outage calculations consistently use the edited schedule.
• Private consumption scenarios Power Explorer users can try alternate consumption amounts and profiles and recalculate hourly billing, demand, solar, and storage results without changing the saved quote.
• Configurable battery operation Proposal editors can choose self-consumption, tariff optimization, peak shaving, or Backup Only operation, set a reserve from 0 to 100%, and control grid charging. The selected strategy is used consistently in dispatch, economics, demand results, and Power Explorer.
• Backup Only battery mode This strategy keeps stored energy in reserve during normal operation and makes it available for outages. Proposal summaries show a 100% effective reserve and explain the cost of maintaining backup readiness.
• Customer battery comparisons When permitted by the solar company, proposal clients can compare self-consumption, tariff optimization, and peak-shaving strategies using fresh hourly projections. Locked proposals continue to use the installer-selected mode.
• Configurable backup presentation Proposal editors can decide whether outage availability, solar recharge, and restart behavior follow the saved design or explicit settings. They can also choose the opening Power Explorer view and control whether clients may change backup assumptions or battery modes.
• More relevant opening analysis Battery proposals can open directly to backup, everyday energy, or peak-demand analysis based on company settings and proposal context. Summaries identify the saved battery strategy.
• Battery-only project modeling Storage quotes without solar can now use hourly dispatch, peak-shaving, and demand-charge analysis. Results account for the complete monthly charging and discharging sequence, including peak increases caused by grid charging.
• Hourly weather context Power Explorer can show typical-year temperature, wind, direct and diffuse irradiance, weather source, and station for the selected hour across grid, variant, and outage traces.
• Clearer bidirectional charts Timeline charts show solar production, usage, and imports above zero, with exports below zero on the same kW scale. Improved axes, shading, and direction guidance make energy flow easier to read.
• Correct metering-specific analysis Gross feed-in tariff proposals now use generation-only replay without incorrectly applying household load, battery dispatch, or demand comparisons. Net metering, net feed-in, storage, billing, and outage views remain aligned with their appropriate energy accounting.
• Corrected feed-in tariff projections Net feed-in tariffs bank credits monthly and pay remaining export value, while gross feed-in tariffs keep generation earnings separate from household billing. Gross feed-in quotes also avoid adding unsupported storage savings.
• Reconciled energy and credit tables Proposal tables can show direct solar use, energy sent to or drawn from the credit bank, utility purchases, true-up payouts, credit caps, battery savings, and annual totals. Designs without hourly production are clearly marked as estimated.
• Correct credit settlement Monthly and yearly excess-energy caps now expire unused credits at reconciliation without a payout, while uncapped balances receive their export value. Yearly and indefinite projections also preserve carried credit quantities and values without double counting.
• Advanced utility billing rules Utility plans and quotes can model minimum bills, non-bypassable charges, export limits and curtailment, separate export escalation, kVA demand billing, demand blocks, and lower demand-rate classes.
• Commercial demand-tariff modeling Utilities and quotes can use kW or kVA billing, power factor, incremental tiers, seasonal or flat rates, and lower-priced classes triggered by annual peak thresholds. Proposals show billed peaks and charges before solar, after solar, and after storage.
• Phased consumption changes Users can keep usage flat or define up to six compounded growth or decline phases over 30 years. Bills, solar offset, and demand peaks follow changes such as a future EV or reduced household usage.
• More reliable hourly CSV imports Consumption files can identify energy columns named Usage, Consumption, Energy, kWh, or Wh even when numeric metadata is present. Ambiguous or malformed files receive clear row-specific errors, and daylight-saving adjustments preserve annual energy.
• Accurate all-day rate periods A time-of-use period with matching start and end hours is now treated as covering all 24 hours while respecting its selected days and months.
• Precise tier thresholds Tiered rates now change at the configured usage threshold. Usage crossing a threshold within an hour is divided so each portion receives the correct rate.
• Reliable utility-plan autosaving Company utility changes save through a coordinated queue with unsaved, saving, success, validation, and retry feedback. Rapid edits no longer cancel one another, and rate, tier, and schedule controls retain in-progress values.
• Improved demand-rate editing Utility managers receive clearer kW or kVA labels, power-factor guidance, and easier controls for demand blocks, tiers, and flat rates. Incomplete tier rows remain visible while they are being entered.
• Quieter proposal save feedback Utility and demand edits show inline confirmation and refresh dependent consumption values without unnecessary success notices. Dollar-to-kWh guidance now includes the monthly fixed fee.
• Complete utility snapshots New quotes, utility switches, and sample quotes carry minimum bills, non-bypassable charges, export limits, export escalation, and advanced demand settings into proposal calculations.
• Full-tariff bill conversions Conversions between bill dollars and consumption now use applicable fees and billing rules rather than a simple flat-rate multiplication. Imported consumption and stored bill totals remain aligned with the tariff.
• Correct seasonal-rate averages Monthly rate edits recalculate the utility plan's average from the saved values. Returning to a flat rate consistently applies that rate to every month.
• Imported minimum charges Imported utility minimum charges are treated as bill floors rather than fixed monthly fees, improving bill and savings projections.
• Fresh projection results Solar and battery results now refresh when relevant consumption, production, utility, degradation, or storage inputs change. Unsaved hourly data is not reused from an older calculation.
• Complete hourly PV production Creating or resizing a manually entered array saves its full hourly production series as well as monthly totals. Arrays connected to a saved 3D design return to Solar design for edits, protecting layout and shading results.
• Unified battery savings modeling Battery charging and discharge now participate in the same hourly simulation as solar, credits, time-of-use rates, export limits, tiers, and demand peaks. Proposal summaries, PDFs, and Power Explorer remain aligned without double counting separate estimates.
• Meaningful demand examples Demand summaries highlight the month where solar reduces the billed peak the most, including timing, reduction percentage, and first-year savings. If no month improves, the highest-demand month is shown instead.
• Context for negative battery savings When modeled battery operation increases annual energy cost, proposals explain why, including net-metering efficiency context when available.
• Cleaner empty load planner The selected-load planner hides its curve and metrics until a device or background load is added, then restores the preview automatically.
• Accurate backup wording Successful solar-backed simulations now say they cover the seven-day test period instead of implying unlimited outage coverage.
• Incentive ordering Proposal teams can drag applied incentives into the required order within pre-tax and post-tax groups. Quotes reprice immediately so sequential discounts remain consistent on web and mobile.
• Flexible percentage incentive bases Administrators and proposal editors can calculate percentage incentives against the full cost, remaining cost after earlier incentives, full pre-tax cost, or remaining pre-tax cost where applicable. This supports more accurate tax-credit and discount stacking.
• Complete incentive price refreshes Adding, editing, removing, or reordering incentives refreshes prices across Overview, Equipment, Incentives, and quote-option tooltips without a full navigation.
• Better quote option switching Option pills now wrap, truncate long names, clearly mark the current option, and provide tooltips with title, panel count, capacity, and permitted net cost.
• Dealer fees in financing Company loan structures can include a dealer-fee percentage. Quotes, proposals, PDFs, designed documents, mobile quote data, and return calculations can disclose and account for the fee, financed amount, interest, and total financing cost.
• Expanded financial comparisons Proposal and document templates can show bills before and after solar, first-year and monthly savings, year-30 bills, escalation and degradation assumptions, metering type, savings milestones, and selected financing.
• Correct default financing in designed documents When a document has no explicit financing choice, its payment details, savings, ROI, and conditional content now follow the quote's selected loan instead of defaulting to cash.
• Accurate production offset Designed proposals show solar production as a percentage of annual usage to one decimal place, including values above 100%. Projects without annual usage safely show 0.0%.
• More reliable proposal charts Charts retain consistent sizing, render only into the current page, clean up during navigation, and remain visible in theme previews.
• Consistent equipment presentation Panel and inverter sections use clearer reusable rows and product-document presentation. Equipment lines and racking kits also select available catalog imagery and placeholders more consistently.
• Separate shading and other losses Systems created in the 3D designer retain modeled shading separately from other production losses. Proposals can show a capacity-weighted system shading figure.
• Company soiling defaults Administrators can define twelve monthly soiling or snow-loss percentages. New PV arrays inherit these values for more consistent seasonal production estimates.
• Adaptable SLD and plan-set controls Single-line diagram and plan-set workspaces use clearer toolbars, sidebars, status areas, and property controls that wrap on narrower layouts and work across company themes.
• Complete template import and export Template managers can move full HTML and stylesheet designs into or out of the visual editor. Custom CSS and embedded style blocks are supported while scripts, unsafe styling, external fonts, and imports remain blocked.
• Faithful imported template styling Proposal, invoice, and landing-page designs retain body styling, gradients, typography, borders, responsive rules, and CSS variables after saving, reopening, and customer rendering.
• Cleaner visual-editor pages Editor-only outlines and minimum heights no longer create false blank rows beneath the final page.
• Safer inline text editing Leaving the designer, reloading, or closing it during text editing no longer allows delayed editing actions to produce errors.
• Accessible template menus Company administrators can open action menus in the PDF template list without the menu being clipped by its panel.
• Additional proposal backgrounds Template designers can choose four more portrait stock backgrounds with open sky or landscape space for proposal text.
• Image-aware canvas assistant The design assistant can browse stock and company-uploaded images, insert exact assets, inspect page boundaries, and identify content extending outside the canvas.
• More complete assistant-built documents Pericles has more time and capacity to create all requested pages, sections, and copy before responding when asked for a complete design.
• Clearer Pericles progress Assistant docks now show waiting, streaming, tool activity, and persistent stopped or failed states within each conversation. Long builds remain scrollable without pushing the composer away.
• Paste or drop images into Pericles Users can attach visual context to supported canvas requests by pasting or dropping an image directly into the assistant dock.
• Better handling of long document content Long text and dynamic values can wrap within page, flex, and grid boundaries instead of extending beyond previews or exported sheets.
• Correct starter-template imagery The site-survey starter places the 3D design in its intended roof-design slot, while proposal starters distinguish pre-installation imagery from proposed-system visuals.
• Multi-document catalog research Pericles can combine up to five spec sheets or supporting documents for one product or family, preserve source evidence, and carry the documents into the approved catalog record. The same source-set workflow is supported for mobile catalog imports.
• Online catalog sources Pericles can fetch relevant source URLs, attach the resulting documents, and continue equipment or racking research when an initial document is incomplete.
• More complete racking research Pericles can capture manual-listed structural members and joining brackets even when no counting formula is published, while keeping genuinely optional parts classified as accessories.
• Create missing racking parts on approval Approved racking repairs can create required missing parts as visible, unpriced catalog items and add them to the kit. Existing parts with the same name are reused.
• Save racking facts before parts Administrators can approve published details for a new or incomplete racking kit before component parts have been added, then use readiness guidance to identify what remains.
• Optional MID neutral-switching data Microgrid interconnect devices can remain catalog- and SLD-ready when manufacturers do not publish neutral-switching behavior. Pericles leaves the value unknown rather than guessing.
• Linked systems on client records The Systems tab now uses compact, responsive cards with status and production information. Authorized users can add systems or unlink one directly from its card.
• Safer missing design-pack recovery If a stored design pack is unavailable, cached design data remains usable while Powerlily requests a replacement instead of discarding the existing attachment.
• Fresh design image links Designers and scene viewers automatically request a new image link when a cached link has expired.
• Fresh weather data when needed If cached weather rows are unsuitable for analysis, the designer can retrieve replacement data even when the project location has not changed.
• Clearer design-save recovery When a required design file cannot load during saving, designers receive specific guidance to keep the page open and retry before refreshing, reducing the risk of losing unsaved work.
• Solar timeline and weather in proposal viewers Customers can inspect a 3D design for today, seasonal reference dates, or an exact date and time. Viewers can also show typical-year temperature, wind, irradiance, source, and station.
• Cleaner 3D proposal controls Compact, theme-aware controls leave more of the solar model and compass visible, with improved responsive layout and focus states.
• Ground-mount rail-kit readiness Short rails across structural beams no longer make ground-mount kits appear incomplete solely because they lack splice components. Roof rail kits still require splices.
• Safer system-access changes Submitting system access without choosing a client now shows a clear prompt and preserves existing access.
• More reliable searchable selects Clearing a searchable choice no longer causes the next click to be ignored. Custom triggers also retain required, invalid, and descriptive accessibility information.
• Clearer escalation controls Utility editors present constant annual escalation and phased 30-year schedules as a clearly labeled, responsive control group.
• Readable warnings and pricing Design readiness and inverter-clipping messages retain readable text across themes, while proposal price tables avoid doubled borders.
• Consistent AC capacity Proposal design metrics display AC output to one decimal place.
• Unclipped catalog menus Manufacturer dropdowns can extend beyond catalog form panels so all choices remain visible.

3D design tool

• Complete ground-mount layout workflow Designers can draw an available area or enter exact row and table counts, preview the footprint, and configure orientation, modules per table, split rows, gaps, tilt, height, azimuth, and staggering. Created layouts use the selected panel and become normal editable facets and modules in one undoable action.
• Ground-mount drawing controls Scroll rotates a layout and Shift+scroll changes tilt without moving the camera. Row gaps, table gaps, and low-edge height use feet with broader practical ranges, while cursor guidance shows the occupied width and depth before placement.
• Editable parametric roofs Designers can draw a complete roof outline and generate connected facets, ridges, hips, valleys, walls, and constrained straight-skeleton geometry. Interior edges can be reshaped while connected surfaces follow, invalid moves are stopped, and saved designs preserve the behavior.
• Cleaner roof-vertex snapping Roof edges snap into merged vertices within a consistent screen distance and show a confirmation hint, preventing tiny residual edges and overlapping points after repeated edits.
• Design conditions in wiring workflows String-inverter and microinverter panes now include utility service, design temperatures, voltage limits, and inverter input windows. Designers can resolve service mismatches where they wire the system, with cold-voltage and hot-MPPT warnings for both approaches.
• Automatic parallel raceways If conductors cannot legally fit in one raceway, the electrical design selects the fewest compliant parallel raceways instead of failing. The SLD identifies the split and warns designers to confirm routing.
• Improved equipment pickers Panel, inverter, battery, and optimizer choices are ordered by nameplate rating and product name. Manufacturer names appear when needed to distinguish similar models.
• Persistent microinverter breaker choices A selected branch breaker rating becomes the default for new branches, automatic rebuilds, and rollover branches. It can also be selected before a branch exists.
• Correct dual-tilt stringing Each side of an east-west or other dual-tilt array is treated as a separate orientation with its own azimuth and yield. Automatic stringing avoids combining opposite faces in the same series string.
• Smarter orientation mixing Automatic string allocation keeps orientations separate unless a leftover group is too small and the predicted MPPT loss remains within the configured threshold. Higher-loss leftovers remain unstrung and are reported.
• Service-based string-voltage limits Applicable PV voltage caps are derived from the selected utility service unless an explicit SLD override is present, reducing unexpectedly short strings caused by unrelated dwelling assumptions.
• Broader shading-simulation compatibility Panel and proxy sky-exposure calculations now operate within the guaranteed graphics limits of more devices, preventing heatmap and production failures on affected hardware.
• Company-default seasonal losses New arrays inherit the company's twelve monthly soiling and snow percentages until overridden. Production and heatmap calculations use the defaults, with guidance for dust, pollen, cleaning, and snow.
• Reliable long-running solar analysis Saving continues to wait while analysis is actively advancing, even when a complex design exceeds the normal duration. Time spent in a hidden browser tab is excluded because graphics work may pause there.
• Graphics interruption recovery The canvas detects graphics-context loss before or during rendering and enters recovery instead of freezing or showing misleading shader errors. Scene frames are prepared again after restoration.
• Consistent scroll gestures Rotation for pasted geometry and scene objects, plus microinverter grouping selection, now behaves consistently across mouse wheels, trackpads, horizontal Shift-scroll, and browser wheel units without also zooming the camera.
• Cleaner technical captures Top-down exports use the panels' native appearance instead of adding temporary outlines around every module.
• Correct tree coloring at image edges Trees near aerial-imagery boundaries sample only overlapping image pixels. Trees outside the image no longer receive an incorrect ground-derived tint.
• Actionable electrical catalog findings When isolation equipment lacks ratings, connections, protection limits, backup capability, or listing evidence, SLD findings direct catalog managers to the specific product information that needs attention.
• SLDs with undocumented MID switching Unknown neutral-switching behavior no longer blocks SLD export. Drawings retain equipment-verification, grounding, and bonding warnings without assuming an unsupported arrangement.
• Integrated battery recognition Hybrid and all-in-one inverters with built-in storage are counted even without a separate ESS bank. Battery editors, readiness checks, plan sets, and SLD summaries include matching units, expansion batteries, and combined capacity.
• Usable battery capacity totals Storage summaries use catalog usable capacity, or nominal capacity adjusted by depth of discharge, rather than raw rated capacity.
• Self-consumption storage distinction Systems that offset grid consumption but do not provide backup are clearly separated from whole-home or partial-home backup. Misleading outage-runtime estimates are suppressed and isolation guidance follows the actual arrangement.
• Interactive viewer compass Customers viewing designs in Power Explorer can see the current heading and click the compass to realign the model to north.
• Preserved read-only production assumptions Read-only designs retain saved module wattage, inverter ratio and efficiency, system losses, module type, and bifaciality when catalogs are unavailable. Displayed capacity and production remain consistent with the original design.
• Compact SLD generation status Status, live counts, and actions are organized into compact groups that wrap more cleanly on narrow screens while keeping full explanations available.
• Clearer design-tool visuals Ground-mount placement has a dedicated rack cursor, and Shed, A-Frame, Hip Roof, Dormer, and Hip Dormer tools use distinct shape icons.
• Clearer roof-from-outline action The renamed action better describes the generated editable roof, and the designer automatically leaves outline mode after creation so editing can begin immediately.
• Readable integrated-storage details Headings, descriptions, and notes for integrated battery storage have improved spacing, wrapping, and hierarchy in the compact editor.
• Reliable canopy and wall cleanup Canopies keep the correct frame-based highlight, and obsolete wall geometry is removed when the final roof becomes an open canopy.
• Correctly sized panel edit handles Panel-layout control points use the imagery's real-world scale immediately after creation and after view changes, avoiding oversized or undersized handles.
• More legible electrical warnings Readiness chips, wiring warnings, clipping notices, and badges use notification colors while retaining readable text across themes.