The Open PV Project

The Open PV Project brings together the public, industry and government to collaborate on the creation of a comprehensive database for photovoltaic installation information across the United States. The project is based off of an open contribution platform that allows users and providers to voluntarily add information about the use of photovoltaic systems. The database provides a real-time snapshot of the current state of photovoltaic usage because it is actively updated by contributions from users. Open PV also provides the web application installations Over Time, which allow users to map specific fields of PV coverage as well as their expansion over time. The project was created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which seeded the baseline database through contributions from utility providers and state- run incentive programs. Because of the open source contribution architecture, NREL monitors contributions to the database in order to maintain the validity of the project.