During his free time on the job as a Google employee, Carl Elkin began tinkering with the company’s 3D mapping program, wondering if it could identify rooftops that receive enough sunlight to make installing solar panels worthwhile.
When months later the US-based engineer showed a handful of colleagues the results of his labor, they had a eureka moment.
Soon after, a team followed Elkin’s lead and designed Project Sunroof. The project website uses Google Earth’s high-resolution aerial images to calculate any roof’s solar energy potential.
Project Sunroof aims to help homeowners decide whether installing solar panels, worth thousands of dollars, makes sense and speed-up the adoption of solar energy, which today accounts for less than 1 per cent of US electricity generation.
“People can come in and very quickly and very easily get a pretty sophisticated understanding of their solar potential and whether it makes sense for them to go solar,” said Joel Conkling, a product manager for Project Sunroof.
Project Sunroof, then, connects users whose roof is suitable for solar panels with companies that install them.
Since launching last year, Project Sunroof has expanded from offering analysis of rooftops in two states to 42 states, from New York to California, Conkling said.