Solar Panel Cost Estimating with Google Maps

Recently the city of San Francisco created a solar mashup using Google Maps and their own technology that allows residents to enter their building address in the City and instantly see the energy and money savings that going solar could provide to them. Since Google recently expanded their own offices to include a building in downtown San Francisco near the Giant's Stadium area, I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up using their own technology to map out future solar expansions.

The San Francisco Google Maps solar system has great benefits if you are a business owner or real estate mogul and have property in the downtown area. This is a great step in the right direction to empower more people to consider solar and go beyond the standard red tape to get this kind of thing done including building restrictions, homeowners associations, and structural limitations. Unfortunately the Google maps solar mashup currently does not work for anyone outside of San Francisco but we'll keep you updated as the program expands and hopefully moves to other large cities in the US and abroad. In the mean time, we here at Solar Power Authority have launched three Google maps of our own charting out different clean car charging and fueling stations around the US including solar electric.