June 24, 2026
A recent Canadian entrant into the highly contested North American solar software market aims to provide Canadian solar installers with a complete solution that fills the ‘gaps’ left by several US solar software companies. Power Lilywhich has been around in a commercial version for two years, was developed by the founders of Watts Up Solar, an installation company based in Wilmot, Nova Scotia. The software is priced at a low fixed cost, unlike competitors with endless add-on costs, said Tom Rendle, the founder and director of Watts Up, in an interview with S.B.
Canada-specific solar software is critical, given the various limitations of competing software for Canadian installers, Rendle says. A shortcoming of the competition is that the US licensing rules are not the same as those in Canada and do not cover different software.
Another shortcoming among competitors is that Canada doesn’t have a comparable financial network to that in the United States, making financing options for Canadian projects more difficult to package into quotes with competing software, he says. And some widely used international satellite imaging services fail to update much of rural Canada more than once a month, or once a quarter, he points out.
Including feedback from installers
One thing that makes Powerlily different from other solar software solutions is its frequent version upgrades. “We work directly with solar companies whose crews are on rooftops every day. They shape the roadmap, run the software on live deals, and tell us when something is slowing them down. That feedback loop makes Powerlily feel different the first time you use it,” the website suggests.
Working with installers to improve the software dramatically reduces the time between version releases compared to the monthly or quarterly updates that competitors release. Powerlily offers “new shipping options every week based on live customer feedback,” the company says.
The benefits of the software can be tangibly measured, as evidenced by Watts Up’s user teams. “Users report speeding design/quotation workflows from 20 minutes to less than 5 minutes while achieving a high close rate of 30%,” Rendle said.
Powerlily’s core capabilities
Powerlily’s many capabilities include features for design and sales, customer success, and business. Design and sales features include 3D design tools and interactive proposals, a CRM and pipeline management function, and native mobile apps for field teams. The software offers integration with AP Systems, Enphase and SolarEdge inverters, with more integration expected.
To enhance local image sources, Powerlily offers the use of Google and Bing maps, Google HD images, EagleView pictometry integration, Nearmap HD and True Ortho images, a digital surface module (DSM) and the ability to import drone images from installers, Rendle says. Competitors typically use two or three of these databases.
The design tool uses a detailed shading engine that tracks rays through 3D scenes, including trees, chimneys and buildings, for more accurate production estimates. Powerlily has recently been enhanced to handle complex commercial solar designs using custom drone imagery, the company notes.
Customer success features in Powerlily include a branded customer portal, fleet management, monitoring and remarketing for upsales and referrals. Unlike some solar monitoring companies that charge nearly $100 per installation plus a monthly fee, Powerlily includes the service within the total subscription price.
Features of the Powerlily business tool include a billing and payments module, an equipment library of catalogs and documentation with unlimited file storage, and a knowledge base of business articles and resources. A key differentiator is that “Powerlily Lead lets you create your own mix of available incentives [municipal, provincial and federal] with a simple calculation structure, so you choose how it is set up,” says Rendle.
Facing major competition in solar software
Although Powerlily was conceived and designed as an easy-to-use solar software, the same idea is now common in the industry. Bhavani Radhakrishnan, the Managing Director of Sungravein San Francisco, notes that “when Enphase acquired SolarGraph in 2021, we really focused on providing a tool that is not only easy to use, but also affordable. So you can take someone off the street and train them in half an hour, but still give installers and financiers confidence in the accuracy of the system designed,” she suggests in an interview with S.B.
“A lot of it is actually AI-powered, so if you use the tool you can quickly design a system in two minutes,” says Radhakrishnan. “We also have a really good advantage in that we can connect to Enlighten, Enphase’s monitoring platform. Whatever you design in Solargraf, you can create in Enlighten. We have access to the production numbers of the millions of sites that Enphase has actually set up, so we know how a design compares to actual production,” she says.
When it comes to solar financing in Canada, the lack of national financing networks that U.S. installers can tap into is an opportunity for improvement in the solar software used in Canada. “The challenge with the financial sector in Canada is that it is actually much more fragmented than in the United States,” says Radhakrishnan. “However, we have prepaid lease and loan modeling capabilities on the platform that cover pretty much all the things you need to get a quote to the homeowner,” she adds.
Image capture can also be a challenge in Canada if refresh rates are infrequent. “We have built high-definition imagery from Nearmap, Google and Azure into the platform. What we have recognized is that the refresh rate of images is higher in densely populated areas, but outside of that the frequency has issues. That’s why we use LiDAR data to augment the imagery to create the 3D view,” says Radhakrishnan.
The differences between Canadian and U.S. licensing standards also pose a challenge for solar software. “We have a team that cleans the AHJ [Authority Having Jurisdiction] data, which is very crucial because the rules keep changing every year. We have a database of over 28,000 AHJ records that is constantly updated,” says Radhakrishnan. “We have also integrated a standard, industry-accepted source for rates and utilities, which some other platforms don’t have,” she adds.
Size and experience are very difficult advantages for newer and smaller solar software companies to duplicate. “Solargraf has submitted over three million proposals and one million permits. The homeowner can select which language they would like to see and view the proposal in. Not many of our competitors can make such a claim!” Radhakrishnan emphasizes.
Bridging the gap between residential and commercial designs is also a challenge for solar software. “Our platform is being expanded for commercial designs up to 5 megawatts. Installers should be able to use a single platform for both,” says Radhakrishnan. Adjusting software through installer feedback is also a crucial exercise. “We continually take feedback and release updates every month,” she adds.
Recent updates in US solar software
Powerlily is facing a rapid evolution of capabilities and tools within US solar software. For example, Solargraf recently started offering more robust Single Line Drawing (SLD) sets for electrical design and complete sets of permitting plans. A new tool is the ability to switch from solid copper to aluminum wire for higher voltage projects, as well as user-defined pipe sizes. Solargraf now also enables site-specific markings in plan designs, including the front of the house, street location, roof access points, gas meter and heat detector locations. Property line designation is also now standard.
Solargraf has also improved the integration of equipment vendor product descriptions into plans, with automatic SKU IDs for Enphase and Tesla products. Similarly, the software now allows designers to select the amperage of breakers for combiner boxes, instead of a default value of 20 Amps.
Aurora Solar updates released on April 2 include: “Sales mode customization updates (for admins); Multiple template support; New out-of-the-box templates; Improvements to the template editor UI; Sales mode updates (for reps); New database > Proposal templates page; Template selection in sales mode; Updated storage section in the default template; and updated financing section in the default template,” a website blog indicates. A split-screen style tutorial of these updates is also available on the website. Aurora declined an interview for this story.
Different pricing strategies
Powerlily has pursued an all-in pricing approach to facilitate the increasing use of the software by installers. It offers “one price for your entire team. Unlimited users, unlimited quotes. No hidden fees, no per-seat charges,” the website indicates. “One price gives you access to all our imagery, with Eagleview, Nearmap, Google and Bing; there are no additional costs as other companies require,” says Rendle. The company also offers installers a free trial period, where user data is retained for 90 days.
Powerlily provides many of the same tools to installers as Aurora and Solargraf, but at a lower price, Rendle suggests. Powerlily Pro costs $184.99 per month, with unlimited users, unlimited quotes and all features. “When you have a sliding scale for what it’s going to cost to do a project, it’s a lot harder to try and plan, so with a solution that’s all inclusive and only costs once, they automatically know what the overhead is going to be,” Rendle points out.
By comparison, Solargraf’s Starter plan costs $2,799 for two users and support for 240 projects, according to the website. Additional user subscriptions cost $1,440 each, and additional projects cost $11 each, the website indicates.
Similarly, Aurora Basic pricing starts at $159 per user per month, supporting 50 projects per month, with additional charges for additional usage, according to the website. Aurora’s Premium plan costs $259 per user per month, with support for 50 projects. Premium also includes several features not offered in Basic, including: LiDAR-assisted modeling; affordable shadow reports; and battery storage modeling for backup, self-consumption and arbitrage. Aurora Enterprise is also offered for an unlimited number of users at a custom rate per project, with another twenty features (some at an additional cost) than the Premium plan. The cost for Enterprise is not listed on the website.
Charles W. Thurston regularly contributes to Solar builder.
Keywords: Canada, software
