Methodology
Commercial Products
Commercial User GuideHobbyist and Research Products
Help & Support
Solcast Rooftop PV sites
How do I create a rooftop forecasting site? How do I enter my home solar system details? Where do I begin?
Creating a new Rooftop site
What to do first
First, you'll need to login to the API Toolkit, and scroll down to the "Rooftop" section, and select 'Add site'.
Entering details about your Rooftop PV system
In order to generate a forecast or estimated actuals for your Rooftop PV site, we'll need to know where it is, a name, and some details about your PV array. You'll enter those in the site creation page:
What are all of these required data points?Some of you may be new to Solar PV power modelling, so we've put together a bit more information on how to know what to enter in the above fields:
- What is AC or DC capacity?
- What is azimuth? How do I find my azimuth?
- What is tilt? How do I find out my tilt?
- What is the efficiency factor?
Getting the data!
All of the Solcast data products operate via an API (Application Programming Interface). The purpose of the API Toolkit, is to make this easier to understand, and get you the data you're after more quickly and easily.
The easiest way to interact with your data, is to look at the demonstration plots that are available on the "site detail" page for your newly created Rooftop PV site, which will appear at: https://toolkit.solcast.com.au/rooftop-sites
You can also retrieve the data in CSV, json or XML format via an API call, which you can build according to your desired outcome in the 'Download' section of this page. You can copy the URL from the "API" field and paste it into your web browser to view the data. From there, you'll need to download it into your favourite data analysis program (i.e. excel or google sheets for the newbies out there!).
