We Heard Your Feedback. Here’s What We’re Actually Doing About It.

We love hearing your suggestions and feedback through our quarterly surveys, research and support sessions, and the (?) in the top-right corner of the OpenSolar app. Your answers and opinions help us shape our platform, ensuring OpenSolar continues to meet your needs.

Earlier this year, we introduced a new question to our quarterly survey, giving you the opportunity to vote directly on the areas you’d most like us to improve. More than 650 solar professionals responded to our Q2 survey and selected their top three priorities from 13 areas of OpenSolar.

We’ve reviewed the results, and want to share the five areas you told us matter most, what we’re already working on, and what’s coming next.

Your top five priorities from our Q2 survey

1. Design tools & imagery quality

58.8% of respondents selected design improvements and imagery quality as one of their top-three priorities, putting it firmly at the top of the list this quarter.

This week, we’re introducing new Design changes that make it easier to navigate your design, see what’s complete or missing, and find the right components for your system.

We’ve also recently expanded our Imagery Marketplace with 3D Plus, giving pros in supported areas access to higher-quality imagery to help create more accurate designs and professional customer proposals.

We’ll continue to look at ways to improve the design experience based on your feedback.

2. Battery ROI modelling

35.8% of respondents selected this as a top-three priority.

We know how important it is to be able to understand and clearly explain the potential value of battery storage to your customers.

We’ve been working on improvements to battery ROI and payback modelling, including a new battery deep-dive feature that gives you more visibility into the figures behind a battery’s projected performance.

The feature is currently in beta and will be rolling out more widely soon.

You can learn more about our battery modelling improvements below.

3. Proposal customisation

29.5% of respondents selected proposal customisation as a top-three priority.

We’ve recently introduced side-by-side proposal template previews, allowing you to see your changes as you make them and giving you greater control over how your proposals look before sharing them with customers.

We’ll continue looking at ways to make proposal creation and customisation easier. Exclusive templates or fully bespoke proposals can also be purchased through our Enterprise Services packages. 

4. Single Line Diagram (SLD) accuracy & flexibility

24.4% of respondents selected this as a top-three priority.

We’re continuing to improve SLDs to better support the different systems you design in OpenSolar.

In our most recent release, we added support for larger SLD configurations. Generated string-inverter SLDs now support up to 2 inverters, 3 MPPTs per inverter, and 4 strings per MPPT. MPPT numbering restarts for each inverter, and string labels follow the selected template language. 

More improvements will follow thanks to your feedback.

5. Pricing & adder setup

20.2% of respondents selected this as a top-three priority.

We’re currently reviewing pricing and adder setup with our user research team to better understand where improvements could make the biggest difference to your workflow.

Improving battery ROI modelling

Battery ROI was the second-highest priority in our Q2 survey, selected by more than a third of respondents.

To understand where we could make the biggest improvement, we combined feedback from Pro interviews, NPS responses and a follow-up survey with product usage data from more than 1,300 organisations.

Previously, OpenSolar included a battery assistant within Design that automatically suggested batteries for a project. Usage showed that this wasn’t how most Pros selected batteries in their day-to-day work, so the feature was removed.

Our research showed that many Pros already have a shortlist of batteries they work with based on factors such as supplier relationships, finance eligibility and the brands they regularly install.

Instead, one of the biggest challenges was understanding why similar systems could produce very different battery ROI and payback results, and having an easy way to explain those figures to customers.

What we’re working on:

We’ve developed a new battery deep-dive that provides greater visibility into what is driving the ROI and payback figures shown in OpenSolar.

This will make it easier to understand unexpected results and give you more information when discussing the potential value of battery storage with customers.

The new battery deep-dive is currently in beta and will be rolling out more widely soon.

We’re also exploring how this information could be presented directly to customers within the proposal experience.

Improving OpenSolar on mobile

Mobile wasn’t included within the 13 areas you could rank in this quarter’s survey, but it’s something we’ve heard consistently through your wider feedback.

We know navigating OpenSolar on a phone can be difficult, particularly when working on more detailed parts of a project such as system design.

This is especially important for Pros who use mobile devices throughout much of their workflow, from capturing leads and completing surveys to creating an initial proposal while out in the field.

What we’re working on:

We now have a dedicated project focused on improving the OpenSolar mobile experience.

This includes improvements across:

• Navigation
• Project lists and project views
• Energy inputs
• Proposals
• The Design Studio

We’ll share more as these improvements get closer to release.

Help us decide what to build next

Your feedback directly helps us understand where we should focus our development resources.

Everything above has been shaped by feedback from Pros, whether that’s through our quarterly surveys, NPS responses, support conversations, research sessions or feedback submitted directly through OpenSolar.

If you’d like to take part in one of our research sessions and speak directly with the team about the areas we’re working on, register your interest here.

You can also turn on beta features in your account settings to try selected new features before they’re rolled out more widely.

Have your say in our next survey

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Q2 survey. More than 650 of you told us what matters most, and those results are helping shape what we work on next.

Our Q3 survey is now open, giving you another opportunity to tell us what’s working, what could be improved, and which areas of OpenSolar you’d most like us to prioritise. Keep an eye on your emails or click the ad in app to take part. 

You can also share feedback at any time using the (?) in the top-right corner of the OpenSolar app. Everything submitted there is logged and reviewed by the team.

Thank you for continuing to help us make OpenSolar better for solar professionals around the world.