OpenSolar Release Notes - 2.2.0

February 2022

Roles and Permissions 

With this new functionality, admins can assign predefined or custom roles to each team member and provide separate access permissions. Six new, predefined roles have been created (as well as a Non Admin role if you had Non Admins on your team) which allow Pros on OpenSolar to have more control over what specific permissions each role has. Pros can also create custom roles and define each specific permission. Pros have more control over which specific projects each role can see which allows them to create levels of sales teams on OpenSolar. Pros also have the ability to get email notifications for specific updates on projects which allows greater communication between roles on the OpenSolar account. 

Shade Report 

OpenSolar pros can now generate a detailed PDF report on shading impacts of their system designs. This includes an easy to understand breakdown of shading impacts on each module panel group with beautiful graphics and includes metrics such as Sun Access, Tilt Orientation Factor (TOF) and Total Solar Resource Fraction (TSRF).

Adder Library 

OpenSolar pros can now create a library of cost or price or both cost and price adders that they can apply quickly to their systems. We have also added the ability to set auto-apply conditions to the Adders that allows the Pros to quickly auto-apply Adders that satisfy certain system/project conditions such as system size, project sector (residential/commercial), project location, etc with just a click of a button. 

Pricing and Costing Enhancements

• Moved the Supplier and Job Shipping costs from COGs to Fulfillment costs
• Updated the Purchase Price and System price in the Design page to be agnostic of the payment option specific values. 
• Updated the label Cost information to Costing Scheme. 
• Added ability to archive Costing Schemes.
• Added the ability to specify extra costs based on the number of phases at the site.
• Enhanced Markup pricing scheme to allow markup pre or post incentives. 
• Pros can now apply a Costing Scheme on the system level instead of the project level. 
• VAT improvements - tax for material and non-material costs can be split out for UK/EU projects and will automatically be done so based on the % of material costs to the system price
• Add ability to set whether the pricing scheme is inclusive or exclusive of tax
• Add ability to set the tax on each system
• Added the ability to add a labour cost to each component

Auto-Apply Enhancements

Enhanced the auto-apply functionality to also allow filtering the system or project on 

• Minimum System size
• Maximum System Size
• Sector (Residential/Commercial)
• Component Applied (CSV of codes)

This is in addition to the state, postcode and priority filter. 

Also increased its scope to allow “auto-apply” of Costing Scheme and Adders. 

Tariff Enhancements - Support for NEM 3.0

Overview of NEM 3.0

Modeling California’s Proposed NEM 3.0

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is proposing to update their Net Energy Metering policy in 2022, commonly referred to as NEM 3.0. OpenSolar will be updating our utility bill calculator to support modelling these changes in anticipation of these changes. This includes:

• Adding a new export compensation model we call “Net Billing with Credit Carryover”,
• Adding a new charge and credit based on installed PV capacity to model the Grid Participation Charge and the Market Transition Credit,
• Ability to set the grandfathering period of NEM2.0 before customers are forced onto NEM3.0. Currently it looks like the grandfathering period will be shortened to 15 years from 20 years. This will allow our California users to accurately model the project financials before the sunset of NEM2.0 mid this year.

Battery Modelling

OpenSolar is now enabling our pros to build their own battery control logic to model exactly how the batteries they install will behave. This includes the ability to control when a battery can discharge to the grid or load, when it can charge from solar or the grid, as well as the maximum rate the battery can charge at, and the minimum state-of-charge the battery must maintain at any given time. This will be especially useful for modelling battery behaviour when a customer joins a VPP, or if they install a device to control the battery dispatch to achieve maximum savings.

Translation Update

• Added support for German and French translations. 

Document Template Enhancement - PDF Upload

With this new functionality, OpenSolar pros can directly upload PDF documents as document templates or contracts on OpenSolar and add placeholders on the templates using drag and drop. This functionality is available for Docusign and our normal signing process.

Standalone Docusign Templates

Users can now send Docusign envelopes out to customers outside of the contract signing flow. This can be done by creating a new Document Template via the PDF Drag and Drop functionality, choosing the Generic Document type, and then adding Docusign tags while they configure the template. The user can then send these documents to the customer(s) via the Generate File button in the info page.

Others

• Allow customers to accept PPA payment options directly on the OpenSolar Online Proposal.
• Add a warning to inform pros that dealer fee is not automatically applied to their Brighte Payment options. 🇦🇺
• Added a warning on the Project Explore page if a project already exists on the organisation with the same address. 
• Disabled the “Select” button next to inactive/database components in the component selector popup for non-admins. 
• Automatically clear the previous search from the search bar.
• Added filter for Modified date in the project list page.  
• Added performance ratio placeholder and feature figure.
• Add Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain incentives that will automatically be added to new organizations created.
• Hide performance based incentive credits in Bill Savings Table if not applicable
• Add new column in Bill Savings Table that shows NEM carryover credits
• Add ability to set inclusive or exclusive tax amounts on electricity utility tariffs.