Sphere Partners

Solar Revenue Intelligence

Solar Revenue Loss Calculator

Operators are losing 4–9% of annual revenue to soiling, undetected faults, and suboptimal dispatch — silently. Enter your fleet's MW capacity, location, and average asset age to see how much money is leaving the meter.

Your fleet

Defaults reflect industry-typical capacity factors and merchant pricing.

Aggregate AC nameplate across your portfolio (1–10,000 MW).

Sets capacity factor, soiling rate, and merchant price baseline.

Older fleets accumulate more undetected drift and dispatch gaps.

Annual revenue at risk

$437.1K

8.80% of gross revenue

Recoverable in year 1

$284.1K

~65% capture with detection + ops tuning

Annual generation

118,260

MWh / yr · $4,966,920 gross

Where the money is going

share of total loss

  • Soiling

    $223.5K

    Dust, pollen, and particulate buildup that suppresses module output between cleanings.

    51.14% of loss

  • Undetected faults

    $139.1K

    String failures, MPPT drift, inverter underperformance, and tracker faults that go untriaged.

    31.82% of loss

  • Suboptimal dispatch

    $74.5K

    Curtailment, schedule misses, and missed price-signal optimization across the day.

    17.05% of loss

Want a site-level breakdown?

Sphere's engineering team can wire SCADA, inverter telemetry, and market signals into a per-asset loss attribution model — typically delivered in under six weeks.

Request a workshop

How the model works

The estimator combines three industry-validated loss bands with a regional capacity factor and merchant price baseline. It is a desktop-grade screen — useful for sizing the prize, not for closing the books.

Soiling

Climate- and dust-driven; ranges 1.5–6%. We use NREL-aligned regional bands; arid and high-particulate regions sit at the top of the range.

Undetected faults

Scales with asset age: 1–4.8% as drift, string failures, and inverter under-performance accumulate without anomaly detection.

Suboptimal dispatch

Curtailment plus missed price-signal capture, ~1.2% baseline drifting up with age. Excludes structural transmission constraints.

Disclaimer: results are directional estimates based on public benchmarks. Actual losses vary with module technology, tracker configuration, market structure, PPA contracting, and O&M maturity. Pair with on-site instrumentation before committing capex.