Assess

Combining electricity data, local weather-station feeds and satellite imagery, we help you calculate the optimum solar and battery combination for your site.

What is a Beam Assessment?

When you run an Assessment on the Beam Platform we use a combination of electricity data from your energy retailer, local weather-station data and satellite imagery to simulate hundreds of solar and battery combinations on an hourly basis for a year.

Our simulations calculates the capital cost, annual savings, emissions reduction and ongoing financial return from each combination, enabling us to find the optimal renewable energy system for your site.

Parameter #1: How much solar could we fit at your site?

One of the first questions we need to answer is how many solar panels we can physically fit on your site and how they could be mounted. It often makes the most economical and environmental sense to build rooftop solar in Australia. However there are many sites without a usable or large enough roof space so the panels will need to be mounted on purpose-built racking. We might also want to maximise your output by tracking the sun or even build carpark or floating solar.

We build a dataset of potential solar configurations that looks something like this:

Field Segment	Array Size	Tilt	Azimuth	Array Type
North building roof 1	261	7	28	Rooftop (Flush Mounted)
North building roof 2	220	7	208	Rooftop (Flush Mounted)
South building roof 1	80	7	28	Rooftop (Flush Mounted)
South building roof 2	80	7	208	Rooftop (Flush Mounted)
Ground area	800	0	0	Single Axis Tracing
Main car park 1	145	15	118	Carpark Shade
Main car park 2	145	15	298	Carpark Shade

We automate the process wherever possible, using large datasets of buildings and addresses combined with estimation algorithms, or one of our solar engineers maps the site by hand.

Parameter #2: How much power does your site need?

While it sometimes makes financial sense to build the largest solar and battery system possible, often we want to match power generation with power consumption. We collect half-hourly electricity data from your energy retailer (shown in blue) combined with our solar generation estimates (shown in orange), giving us a complete picture of electricity inputs and outputs to your site.

Parameter #3: How much will your project cost?

The Beam Platform is not only used for assessing the viability of renewable energy systems but it is also a marketplace and procurement system. The best vendors in the industry, rigorously vetted by us, submit offers through our platform, giving us a unique window into price movements in the industry. With this combination of public and private pricing data, we are able to make an accurate price estimation for each potential solar system.

Parameter #4: How much power will the panels generate?

A key part of determining the optimum size and mounting of your solar arrays is an estimation of their power generation over the course of a year. We use hourly solar irradiance data from nearby weather stations to predict the generation of each panel configuration, taking into account factors such as the size of the panels, the panel type and their orientation to the sun.

Parameter #5: How much does your electricity cost from the grid?

Electricity costs vary significantly from place to place in Australia, depending on the source of power, distance it needs to travel, economies of scale and many other factors. We use the most recent bill from your site's energy retailer combined with estimates of future rates to build an electricity cost profile like the one below:

Putting it all together

We combine all of the available information for your site, as well as our predictions, estimations and calculations, into an assessment report. You can also explore the data from the Beam Platform and even drill down to see what any of our suggested systems will do on any hour of the year.