SolarSoiled · Tools

Find your roof, see what dirt costs it, and whether a cleaning is worth paying for

SolarSoiled finds rooftop solar in aerial photographs, measures how big each system is, and works out what dirt on the glass costs it per year. It then works out what a cleaning would get back, which around here is usually less than the cleaning costs. Both tools are free and neither asks who you are.

The SolarSoiled dashboard: detected rooftop solar across Santa Cruz over satellite imagery, one dot per household, sized and shaded by how much solar is on the roof

These are estimates, not a guarantee, and two limits are worth knowing. Dirt is estimated from weather records rather than from your roof, so the tools cannot reliably tell you your panels are dirtier than the neighbours'. The dollar figures assume Santa Cruz electricity prices and Santa Cruz rainfall. What is measured on your roof specifically is the size of your system, and size is what most of the dollar figure depends on.

How SolarSoiled works, and where it's going →
A person standing beside a ground-mounted solar array, washing the panels with a long-handled brush
Solar panels being washed by hand in Dornbirn, Austria. The calculator works out whether the extra power you get back is worth what this costs. Photo: Asurnipal · CC BY-SA 4.0

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