Astronautics Solar Meter does something I genuinely appreciate: it tries to give you a realistic picture of solar investment rather than just cheerleading for the technology. You plug in your country, the number of panels, their wattage, and it auto-fills a bunch of values — local electricity cost, peak sun hours — which saves a lot of guesswork. The Mission Report screen then spits out daily, monthly, and yearly energy estimates alongside actual savings in dollars and a payback period. For a free utility that handles all that math, it's hard to complain too loudly.
That said, there are some friction points worth naming. The PSH default for my region felt a bit optimistic, and while you can override it manually, there's no clear explanation of what 'performance ratio' actually means for someone who isn't already familiar with solar terminology. The CO₂-to-trees equivalency is a nice touch — genuinely more intuitive than raw kilograms — but I'd like to see the methodology behind it. At this price point (free), the core calculator is solid value; the Roof Planner feature adds a visual layer that helps you sanity-check how many panels actually fit on your roof, which is more useful than it sounds.
To be fair, the dragon-and-space aesthetic is a strange choice for a solar calculator, and it does make the interface feel a little cluttered on smaller screens. The data presentation is clear enough once you get past the visual noise, though. For what you get, this is a genuinely useful planning tool — just go in prepared to double-check the auto-filled defaults against your own local data.
That said, there are some friction points worth naming. The PSH default for my region felt a bit optimistic, and while you can override it manually, there's no clear explanation of what 'performance ratio' actually means for someone who isn't already familiar with solar terminology. The CO₂-to-trees equivalency is a nice touch — genuinely more intuitive than raw kilograms — but I'd like to see the methodology behind it. At this price point (free), the core calculator is solid value; the Roof Planner feature adds a visual layer that helps you sanity-check how many panels actually fit on your roof, which is more useful than it sounds.
To be fair, the dragon-and-space aesthetic is a strange choice for a solar calculator, and it does make the interface feel a little cluttered on smaller screens. The data presentation is clear enough once you get past the visual noise, though. For what you get, this is a genuinely useful planning tool — just go in prepared to double-check the auto-filled defaults against your own local data.
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