SolarHacks

A web app that estimates a home's renewable energy potential based on its address. Pulls real data from Google Solar, NREL, EIA, and more to generate solar cost projections, payback timelines, reduced carbon impact, and available incentives.

Built for Cheesehacks 2026.

What it does

1. User enters a home address (Google Places autocomplete)
2. Google Solar API loads roof imagery and building insights. The user can adjust panel count with a slider on the map
3. Clicking Analyze kicks off parallel backend calls to estimate solar production, wind feasibility, geothermal suitability, electricity rates, and carbon offset
4. A Monte Carlo simulation models 20-year savings under randomized utility inflation, panel degradation, cost overrun, and production variance
5. Results page shows:

• Solar cost breakdown and payback period
• AI-generated summary (GPT-4o)
• Carbon offset with EPA equivalencies
• 20-year savings fan chart
• Panel count comparison
• IRA rebates and state/local incentives (after entering household income)
• Financing estimates by credit score and loan term
• Wind and geothermal feasibility

Tech stack

Client — React 18, Vite 5, Tailwind CSS, Recharts, Google Maps JS API

Server — Python / FastAPI / Uvicorn, NumPy, OpenAI SDK

Project structure

├── client/
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/     # React UI components (cards, charts, panels)
│       └── utils/          # GeoTIFF parsing + solar overlay rendering
│
└── server/
    ├── routers/            # FastAPI route handlers for each API endpoint
    ├── utils/              # cost calculations, Monte Carlo, carbon lookups
    └── tests/

APIs used

API	What for
Google Solar API	Building insights, roof data layers, GeoTIFF flux maps
Google Maps / Places	Address autocomplete, map rendering
EIA Open Data	State electricity prices and residential usage
Rewiring America	IRA rebates, state/local incentives
NREL Wind Toolkit	Wind speed at 40m hub height
Open-Meteo	Historical air + soil temps for geothermal suitability
OpenAI	GPT-4o for generating a plain-English summary

Running locally

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Python 3.10+
• API keys for Google Maps/Solar, EIA, NREL, Rewiring America, and OpenAI

Server

cd server
pip install -r requirements.txt

Create server/.env:

EIA_API_KEY=your_key
REWIRING_AMERICA_API_KEY=your_key
NREL_API_KEY=your_key
GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=your_key
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key

uvicorn main:app --reload

Server runs on http://localhost:8000.

Client

cd client
npm install

Create client/.env:

VITE_GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=your_key
VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000

npm run dev

Client runs on http://localhost:5173.