How to access Premium Imagery and Content from Nearmap on a Pay-Per-Project (PPP) Basis in OpenSolar

In OpenSolar, you now have the flexibility of including premium high-definition imagery content in your proposals on a per-project basis. This is available for Australian and New Zealand solar professionals.  This will allow you to access Nearmap imagery only on projects that need premium, high-definition content. We've created this feature to give you the most cost-effective solution for your design process. Read below and watch the video to learn more.

Firstly, we'd like to introduce you to your OpenSolar "Wallet". Your wallet can be used to pay for third party premium services on OpenSolar, such as high-resolution imagery from Nearmap.  

1. To activate your wallet, navigate to Control > Other > Your Wallet. 

Here, you will need to read through and agree to our T&Cs, then click "Set up your Wallet"

2. Activate Premium Imagery for your wallet by clicking this link:

3. Then you'll click the checkbox below to enable Premium Imagery as a service on OpenSolar. This does not charge you anything, you are simply agreeing to have this feature activated on your account. 

Here you will notice the price per project of premium imagery (in the example above for Australian users, it is $5.45 plus $0.55 GST). This per-project cost gives you access to:

• A library of all historical vertical images captured at the project location.
• A library of all historical 3D imagery captured at the project location.

4. Now, navigate back to other > Your Wallet on the left toolbar. You can then add funds to your wallet to pay for premium imagery. You have two ways to top up funds in your Wallet:

• Enable auto-top up: this will automatically top up your wallet using the credit card details provided in the section below. It will auto top-up when your funds fall below the balance set in this area. 
• Add funds manually: this allows you to manually top up when you need to add more funds to your wallet. To do this, click the blue hyperlinked text on this page "Add Funds Manually".

Great! Now you've topped up your wallet, let's go and access premium imagery on a project.

5. Create a fresh project as you normally would. You'll now notice directly after entering the address that the project might have this text at the bottom left of the screen:

This means that there is premium imagery available at the location of this project. Click "create" at the top right, and navigate to the design tab. Then at the top right corner, open the "design mode" tab. Here you can select either 2D or 3D options for Nearmap premium imagery.

Click the hyperlinked text shown in the screenshot above to read the T&Cs before clicking "select". Once you click select, it will activate the premium imagery for this project and funds will be subtracted from your wallet (for e.g. in Australia, it will subtract $5.45 + $0.55 GST from your wallet's balance).

You can navigate back to your wallet at anytime to view transaction history. In control > other > Your Wallet > click on "wallet activity" at the top right to see a history log of funds added, and funds debited from premium content services such as Nearmap imagery. Here you can also export a CSV of wallet activity by clicking "download". Note: each wallet activity line item has an ID, and when you click on it, it will open up the invoice page for that transaction (in case you might require it for tax purposes.)

Permissions and access to Your Wallet and Premium Imagery features:

Only admins of your OpenSolar organisation will be able to access Your Wallet and Premium Imagery settings in the control zone. For all other users, these sections will not appear.

You can give access to team members to use Premium Imagery and other purchased content in their projects by enabling it in custom roles. To do this, go to Control > Company > Custom roles. Edit/create a role, scroll to the bottom, and click this toggle:

This will provide team members with that role the ability to activate Premium Imagery and other purchased content for their own projects. 

PPP imagery access periods

• 0-30 days - Complete access to all historical 3D and vertical imagery, can add as many views as needed all included in the purchase.
• 30-90 days -  Can only access the views that have been added in the initial period and any new views would require an additional purchase.
• 90+ days - Access to imagery has expired and to continue using NM imagery (even the ones added to the project), a repurchase will be required.

Find out more about Nearmap coverage here.

If you need additional support on Nearmap, please check out this how-to page.

If you have any questions, please reach out to support@opensolar.com anytime. We'd love to hear from you!