Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, and the HelioScope product line (now part of Aurora) all handle PV system layout, shading and irradiance modeling, and single-line diagrams for a residential or commercial install. None of them fix the part installers actually complain about most: utility interconnection applications, a process so inconsistent and manual at the utility's end that some installers dedicate a full-time employee to nothing but fighting with interconnection portals.
Most installers pick a design platform based on which one a sales rep demos fastest, then discover the real bottleneck in their business isn't system design speed at all, it's what happens after the design is done: generating a correct interconnection application package and then chasing a utility's portal through approval. We start from your actual design volume, residential or commercial scale, and how much of your team's time currently goes to interconnection paperwork versus design itself, then match the platform to that instead of the flashiest shading-visualization demo. Getting the platform running is only half the fix: if your interconnection application process is eating a full-time role's worth of hours, we build the automation that generates and tracks those applications directly from your design data, instead of leaving a person to re-key the same system specs into a utility portal by hand.
Aurora Solar, OpenSolar, and HelioScope all produce accurate shading analysis and single-line diagrams reasonably fast. The real time sink most installers report is what happens after the design is approved internally: generating the interconnection application and then manually tracking it through a utility's often-inconsistent portal process.
Active designs, shading analyses, and permit plan sets for projects already in the pipeline need to move into whatever platform you land on without a project stalling mid-permit because a design file didn't transfer cleanly.
No major design platform automates the actual back-and-forth with a specific utility's interconnection portal, because every utility's process is different. When that gap is costing your business real staff time, we build the tracking and document-generation layer that pulls directly from your design data instead of leaving someone to re-enter system specs by hand.
Your actual design volume, whether you're mostly residential or working commercial-scale systems, and how much staff time currently goes to interconnection paperwork versus design itself, decides this more than a shading-visualization demo. Tell us where your real time goes and we'll tell you honestly which platform fits, what a real project-history migration looks like, or whether interconnection tracking needs something built custom.
Get a free quote → →Both handle shading analysis and single-line diagrams well; the real differences show up in pricing model, Aurora charges per seat with add-ons, OpenSolar is free with its core tools, and in how deep each platform's permit-set generation goes for your specific jurisdiction mix. We check that against your real design volume.
Not fully, and that's by design on the vendors' part, every utility's interconnection process and portal is different enough that no platform automates it end to end. That's specifically the gap we build custom tracking and document generation for when it's costing your business real staff time.
Yes, if migrated carefully, which is what we do before switching platforms. We move active designs and permit documentation in so a project mid-permit-review doesn't lose its paperwork during the switch.
Usually not. PVsyst and similar tools are built for larger commercial-scale engineering work with more rigorous modeling requirements than most residential installs need. If your business is genuinely moving into larger commercial systems, it's worth a direct conversation; for residential volume, Aurora or OpenSolar is typically the right tier.
We do. Aurora and OpenSolar build and support their own design platforms; building the automation that generates interconnection documents from your design data and tracks them through a utility's process is work we handle directly, since no vendor sells that off the shelf.
Usually two to four weeks once we understand which utilities you deal with most and what their application requirements actually look like. A full platform switch, with project history migrated, typically adds another two to three weeks on top of that.