Solar API overview

European Economic Area (EEA) developers

The Google Maps Platform Solar API is a service focused on helping accelerate solar and energy system installations. The Solar API generates detailed rooftop data based on Google's extensive geospatial data and computing resources in order to evaluate rooftop solar energy potential.

Why use the Solar API

The API accepts requests for three endpoints:

buildingInsights: This service endpoint returns insights about the location, dimensions, and solar potential of a building.
dataLayers: This service endpoint returns URLs for raw solar information datasets for an area surrounding a location.
geoTiff: This endpoint fetches rasters with encoded solar information, including a digital surface model, an aerial image, annual and monthly flux maps, and hourly shade.

This data can help users:

Remotely design a solar power system
Reduce solar site assessment time
Prioritize installation locations
Create more accurate proposals
Increase customer conversion rates
Provide insightful details to educate consumers

Solar API country and region coverage

See Solar API supported countries and regions for the latest coverage details, on a country-by-country basis.

Try the Solar API demo

To learn more about the capabilities of the Solar API, check out the Solar API demo web app. You can also optionally reuse the code used to build the demo in GitHub.

How to use the Solar API

1	Get set up.	Start with Set up your Google Cloud project and complete the instructions that follow.
2	Get insights about the location, dimensions and solar potential of a building.	See Make a Building Insights request.
3	Get raw solar information for an area surrounding a location.	See Make a Data Layers request.