Solar Feasibility Forecast

Quickly evaluate any site for solar project feasibility.

Gain critical insights in minutes with a powerful tool designed for the earliest stages of solar project development. Skip costly manual engineering upfront and get reliable approximations fast.

Inform your project site selection process, decide which projects to bid on, and vet project concepts before investing in more comprehensive feasibility studies or preliminary site plans.

Rapid, data-driven results

Evaluate site feasibility and design without full surveys or engineering data.

Backed by high-quality datasets

Leverage public data assets for topography, hydrologic features, and infrastructure to identify optimal site layout. 

Automated calculations

Evaluate terrain, grading constraints, and construction complexity to assess logistical and financial viability.

Simple and flexible

A user-friendly web interface enables rapid experimentation with multiple project constraints.

Optimize early decisions

Iterative comparisons support high-level optimization, saving time and resources on early project concepts.

The ORCaS Solar Feasibility Forecast empowers solar project leaders to make informed decisions quickly and confidently, ensuring smoother progress from concept to development.

Solar panel rows over a green field, seen from above.

How it works

    • New here? No problem. We can run a forecast for you. Let us know if you want to request a consult.

    • ORCaS partners can access all Feasibility Forecast results and build on viable site layouts with full studies for detailed project design and optimization.

    • Target project size (in megawatts DC): Set a target based on project/financial objectives, or estimate a realistic output based on the acreage of the site.

    • Ground coverage ratio (GCR): GCR directly affects row pitch, or distance between rows, and is often regulated by local jurisdictional authorities. 

    • Allowable pile reveal window: Larger reveal windows can increase potential output on a site, but also increase construction complexity and cost. Practically speaking, reveal window should decrease as project size increases.

    • North-South tracker slope limit: A limit of 8.5 degrees aligns with common tracker/foundation manufacturer specifications. More aggressive slopes can be considered if your project is expected to use solar foundations with higher tolerance.

    • Solar trackers/foundations of interest: The outputs of the Feasibility Forecast include automated setup for more detailed Planning & Optimization Studies, which support direct comparison of different trackers and foundations. So choose any trackers you would like to consider in the full project design.

  • The web interface support two simple methods:

    1. Upload a KMZ or KML file, or

    2. Use the web map to draw one or more polygons around your site construction boundaries.

  • We’ll send you forecast results in about 15 minutes. You’ll get…

    • A brief assessment of your project’s estimated output with the input constraints

    • A reference image of the optimized site layout

  • Become an ORCaS partner if you haven’t already. Request a consult and we’ll get in touch.

    If the project forecast is promising, you’ll have options to move forward with any of the following:

    • Underlying topographical data

    • Underlying hydrological data

    • Direct comparison of different solar trackers/foundations

    • Full Planning & Optimization Studies to support your detailed solar site design

    If the forecast reveals challenges or limitations in site feasibility, use insights from the analysis results to iterate on your project plans.

FAQ

  • Run the Feasibility Forecast as early in the project lifecycle as possible, ideally before any manual engineering or site design has been performed. The value of the forecast is that it provides a well-evidenced view of the site feasibility and design, based on the best underlying data available, with no investment or minimal investment of your project team resources. It is an excellent tool to align early project decision makers and stakeholders.

    If your project is already in the design stages, the full Planning & Optimization Studies will provide the detailed calculation, cross-parameter optimization, and high-fidelity figures needed to support the entire design and build  process.

  • The Feasibility Forecast models will attempt to create a site layout that achieves the target output and no more. It should be noted that the output estimate is high level and does not account for the detailed factors that would be analyzed in an ORCaS Planning & Optimization Study or a comprehensive Feasibility Study. If the forecast estimates that the target output is feasible and you want to understand how much more output the site can support within your project constraints, you can run subsequent analyses with higher targets or refined parameters.

  • In general, pure increases in target output will be achieved by setting…

    • Higher ground coverage ratio

    • Larger pile reveal window

    • Higher North-South slope limit

    Be aware that these parameters also influence complexity and costs for permitting and construction.

    If the estimated output from the forecast is within reasonable range of your project objectives, we recommend optimizing the site across solar design parameters with ORCaS Planning & Optimization Studies, which also account for grading, flood, and steel-usage calculations, as well as costs and benefits associated with various solar trackers/foundations.

  • The image of the calculated site layout is a reference tool intended to visualize the approximate locations of the installed solar panel rows.

    • Black lines mark the boundaries of the site you specified.

    • Parallel North-South white lines indicate feasible rows of solar panels.

    • Blue lines indicate “blue line streams” as recorded by USGS.

    • Green lines enclose bodies of water as recorded by USGS.

    • The earth-like base color tone illustrates the site topography: darker tone indicates flat terrain, with lighter tones highlighting areas of steeper slope.

    • The units along the horizontal and vertical axis are UTM meter coordinates as measured within the site’s UTM zone.

  • ORCaS partners can simply reply to the emailed forecast results. We’ll also have the project prepped for further Planning and Optimization Studies, based on your decision to move forward or to further refine parameters.

    If you’re not an ORCaS partner yet, we just need to do a quick onboarding to get everything set up for you. Request a consult and we’ll get in touch.