Show HN: Helios – what plug-in solar could generate for any address in Britain

(helios.southlondonscientific.com)

48 points | by ruaraidh 4 hours ago ago

10 comments

  • domh a few seconds ago

    Would be good to be able to select multiple points on the compass and have it tell me the best place for it (front and back garden)

  • ltrg 2 hours ago

    Really cool stuff. Nitpick: it failed to grab an OSM ID for my house and fell back to postcode centroid, but then still reported LIDAR-derived shading at quite high precision.

    I'm wondering if it should fall back to a more general shading approach when no OSM building footprint is available, to avoid false precision? My street has a gap in the houses on the other side from mine, so picking the right location matters for the calculation.

    You could also try Inspire Index polygons instead of OSM? These correspond to actual lease/freehold boundaries.

    • ruaraidh 2 hours ago

      Thanks - I didn't know about Inspire Index, I'll check it out. I tend to agree about false precision. My first instinct was to use the synthetic horizon for addresses in that group, but I think that's over positive. A range might be better (if a bit more complex)?

  • redfloatplane 3 hours ago

    Huh, TIL about the National LIDAR Programme: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/f0db0249-f17b-4036-9e65-3091...

    Very interesting stuff and quite a large undertaking! I'm often impressed by the quality of the UK's open data.

    • kilroy123 2 hours ago

      I noticed this as well! Very interesting.

  • realty_geek an hour ago

    Nice. I'm working on a project called homestocompare to help people house-hunting in the UK.

    Would be nice to add this as an extra data point when comparing. Are you open to collaborating at all?

    • simonjgreen 12 minutes ago

      Let me know if you’d like access to alt net availability data

    • ruaraidh 37 minutes ago

      Absolutely! I have some other datasets that might be useful too (e.g. air quality). Drop me a line: ruaraidh[at]southlondonscientific.com :)

  • GordonS 3 hours ago

    This is really nice! Would be great if it could handle regular rooftop solar calculations too.

    • ruaraidh 3 hours ago

      Thanks! Should be doable, I just got excited by the new shiny thing first.