In order to make households in Sweden see and understand the full potential of solar energy we created The Suncell Guide. A digital tool and service making it easier than ever for people to find out how they could benefit from solar panels on their house. In order to create this tool we gathered geographic/solar data, solar panel effectiveness data and architectural data. And we presented the data in a very accessible and visible way. Just enter your street address, mark up your roof, adjust the roof-angles and set the cardinal directions of your house - and then you get your own personal calculation that shows the potential of solar panels for your household. It's the first time these different types of data has been combined and used in large scale.

The Suncell Guide is a responsive digital tool/service which can be reached through Vattenfall's website. After entering your address it shows you your house on Google Maps, where you can mark up the area you want to use for solar panels. In order to develop the tool we utilized databases, API:s and javascripts and made some serious calculations. The marked-up area in Google Maps shows how many square meters you have available for solar panels, while the roof-angels and cardinal directions calculate the amount of sun reaching you roof. When all is set the tool presents the amount of energy you can collect (in kWh) and the amount of money you’d save every year. Of course you also receive an attractive offer for solar panels from Vattenfall. The Suncell Guide made complex data accessible to anyone.

Our mission was to increase the number of estimate requests for solar panels. And we did. After the launch of The Suncell Guide, estimate requests have increased by as much as 370 percent, which is equivalent to a potential sales value of more than 5 million USD. Every day, all year round, hundreds of people are using the interactive tool to see what solar panels could mean for their energy and cost savings. Furthermore, the service was highly engaging. The average time spent on the Vattenfall website, testing the tool and reading more about solar panels is as high as 7 minutes. We can also see that a lot of people who first tried solar panels on their house, went on to try it on their companies facility. The future of renewable energy looks bright. Through the creative use of data we enhanced consumers experience. It's like the saying, "What you read you learn, what you do you understand".

This project brought together geographic/solar data, solar panel effectiveness data and architectural data in order to create a brand new type of digital tool. It also opened up the very same data to the target audience and made it possible for anyone to calculate their specific energy and cost savings with solar panels. This data driven project changed Swedish people's perception of solar cell panels. And made them aware that even though Sweden have long and dark winters, it is a country very well suited for solar panels.

The people of Sweden do agree with scientists that the sun is the energy source of the future. However, with long periods of darkness and few hours of daylight, a lot of Swedish home owners would never consider solar panels as an alternative energy source for their own home. In order to break the barriers and challenge the prejudice that houses in Sweden are not being able to produce solar energy we decided to provide users with a tool that would enable them to find out the possibilities for themselves. We created a new, fun and easy way for people to discover, test and see what solar panels could do for their specific household. Besides gathering all relevant data in order to make the calculations, we knew we also had to present the data in a new and accessible way.

One of Europe’s largest energy companies, Vattenfall, is always looking for new and sustainable ways to power the future. And the sun is the next big thing. However, in one of their core markets, Sweden, sunlight is a scarcity – making very few people even consider to invest in solar panels. What people in Sweden did not realise is that despite long periods of darkness, it is actually a good country for solar energy. We just had to come up with a way to open their eyes and make them see the potential of solar panels. The main objective was to lower the thresholds and make more people try and ultimately ask for an estimate for installing solar panels.