One of the hardest things to determine when thinking about going solar is, how much will it generate and how long will it take to pay for itself. Well imagine a mashup with Google Maps, Zillow and Lending Tree. Chris Bura founded RoofRay which now makes it possible for you to look at any roof through Google Maps and determine expected electrical output. So we put it to the test locally. We thought, why not show Duke how much the convention center might be able to produce utilizing the new tool from RoofRay. Take a look at the results for yourself in the image below:

So the total output for the main section of the Duke Energy Convention Center is calculated like this: According to Google Maps, the total rough square footage is 175,679 sq ft. Solar panels at a 41 degree pitch on a sunny day would yield roughly 12.91 watts DC giving the entire roof area a potential to generate a staggering 2,267,764.8 watts DC!

Here is how the site works: Enter any address which pulls up a satellite image of the buildings rooftop. Then utilizing the easy path drawing tool, simply outline the roof in focus. Using data from the National Renewable Energy Labs it automatically calculates slope of roof, power per square foot and overall total peak power.