Best Solar Design Software in New Zealand: 10 Ranked

📘 Regulation note

Distributed generation connection in New Zealand is governed by Part 6 of the Electricity Industry Participation Code administered by the Electricity Authority. Installation work sits under the Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010 and AS/NZS 3000, with AS/NZS 5033 for the array and AS/NZS 4777.2 for inverter grid interaction. The connection application itself goes to your local lines company, not to a national body, and the terms differ by network.

Bring one of your own sites to a free SurgePV demo. We will build the 3D roof from a satellite address, run the 8,760-hour shading simulation, and hand you the SLD, BOQ and branded proposal on the call.

Lines Company Connection: Why One New Zealand Design Does Not Travel

There are around 29 electricity distribution businesses in New Zealand, and each publishes its own distributed generation connection process. Vector covers Auckland and Northland. Orion covers Christchurch and central Canterbury. Powerco covers much of Taranaki, Manawatū, the Wairarapa and the Bay of Plenty. Wellington Electricity, Unison, WEL Networks, Aurora Energy in Otago and the smaller lines companies each have their own forms, fees, timeframes and technical annexes.

Two practical consequences. First, a design template that assumes Vector’s thresholds will occasionally be wrong on a Powerco rural feeder, and the correction arrives after the customer has signed. Second, where export limiting is applied, every kilowatt-hour above the limit is worth self-consumption value only, which in New Zealand terms means it is worth roughly three times what an exported unit is worth. That is an argument for batteries and for load shifting, and it is only visible in a tool that models generation and consumption at half-hourly resolution against each other.

Half-hourly resolution is not a luxury here. New Zealand retail metering is half-hourly, and most retailers will supply a customer’s consumption history on request. A design tool that can ingest that file and compute a real self-consumption fraction produces a savings figure the customer can verify against their own bills. A tool that assumes a generic load profile produces a figure they cannot.

Get your sizing sanity-checked. If you want an independent second opinion on array size, export limit and payback before you build the design, run it through our free solar calculator or talk to our engineering team.

The Heaven Green New Zealand Self-Consumption Bench

This is the framework we use before deploying any design platform on our own solar EPC work in a no-subsidy, retailer-priced market. Four axes, 1 to 10 each, 40 total. We do not deploy below 32.

1. Self-consumption fidelity. Half-hourly generation against half-hourly load, ability to import a real consumption file, separate valuation of self-consumed and exported energy, retailer buyback rate tables including tiered and time-varying rates, battery dispatch modelling.
2. New Zealand regulatory depth. AS/NZS 5033 and AS/NZS 4777.2 labelling on the generated single line diagram, AS/NZS 3000 conventions, lines company export limit handling, drawing output an electrical inspector accepts without redraw.
3. Maritime and southern-latitude yield accuracy. Separated diffuse and direct components, transposition suitable for high diffuse fraction, low winter sun elevation and long shadow handling, monthly rather than annual reporting.
4. Total cost of ownership in NZD. Seat licence plus add-ons plus onboarding time, measured per finished design across a five-person team.

Scores across the ten platforms: SurgePV 36, OpenSolar 33, SolarPlus 32, PVsyst 30, Aurora Solar 29, HelioScope 28, Enact 26, PVcase 24, SolarEdge Designer 21, SMA Sunny Design 20. OpenSolar and PVsyst each gain a point on cost against our earlier scoring, because their verified prices are lower than the figures this page previously carried. The scoring is ours and it is opinionated. OpenSolar and SolarPlus sit three and four points behind, which does not justify a migration for a shop already fluent in either.

Top 10 Solar Design Software in New Zealand Compared

Pricing is 2026, quoted in the vendor’s own billing currency and verified against each vendor’s live pricing page on 2 August 2026. Where we show a New Zealand dollar equivalent we convert at roughly NZ$1.68 per US dollar. Treat converted figures as planning numbers, not quotes.

The honest read: positions one through four are full-workflow contenders in New Zealand. Five and six are engineering specialists, and PVsyst at number five is a ranking of fit rather than quality. Positions seven through ten each solve one problem well and leave the rest of the job to another tool.

1. SurgePV

What it does best. SurgePV runs the whole motion in one browser licence: satellite address to AI-generated 3D roof, 8,760-hour module-level shading, string sizing, AS/NZS-labelled single line diagram, bill of quantities, financial model and white-label proposal. For New Zealand specifically, the financial engine is the reason it ranks first. It values self-consumed and exported energy separately, takes retailer buyback rates as a configurable table rather than a single blended number, accepts a customer’s half-hourly consumption file, and reports the self-consumption fraction as a headline output rather than a buried assumption. Where a lines company applies export limiting, the limit is an input to the model rather than a footnote.

The yield side handles the maritime problem properly. The simulation separates diffuse and direct components rather than scaling a single global figure, which is what makes a Dunedin or West Coast estimate defensible, and it reports monthly generation against monthly consumption so the winter gap is visible before the customer discovers it in July. The shadow analysis module is on every plan rather than a higher tier, and the solar simulation software produces P50, P75 and P90 outputs in the format commercial lenders typically ask for. Clara AI takes plain-English instructions such as “lay out a 6 kW north-facing array on this roof with 5 kW export limit and model 45 percent self-consumption”.

Pricing. NZ$2,180 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so NZ$10,900 for five seats. Individual seats sit near NZ$3,190 per year. Enterprise is quoted. Free trial with no card.

Who it suits. Installers and EPCs doing five or more designs a month, teams selling residential retrofit alongside commercial rooftop, and shops that have outgrown what OpenSolar’s free platform can do on commercial roofs and half-hourly tariff modelling.

Honest limitations. Three real ones, and they matter here. There is no New Zealand retailer tariff pack shipped as a maintained library, so your team enters and updates buyback rates and import tariffs itself, and when a retailer changes its export offer nobody at SurgePV pushes that change to you. Brand recognition in New Zealand is thin next to OpenSolar, which has been the ANZ residential default for years, and that affects hiring: a designer arriving from another installer probably knows the competitor’s interface. And SurgePV is not a CRM and not a job management tool, so lead follow-up, scheduling and the Certificate of Compliance paper trail still live in a second system. For an installer doing three residential jobs a month the licence is not justifiable against OpenSolar’s free platform, and we would say so on a sales call.

Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real New Zealand site with twelve months of half-hourly data so you can test the self-consumption engine on your own numbers.

2. OpenSolar

What it does best. OpenSolar was founded in Australia and is the most widely used design and proposal tool across Australasia, funded by hardware referral margin rather than seat licences. The residential template library is the deepest here, the interface is genuinely fast for straightforward jobs, and a large share of the ANZ installer workforce learned solar selling inside it. For a new New Zealand entrant it removes the licence decision from year one entirely.

Pricing. The core platform is free, and that is the whole platform rather than a stripped tier. From 16 April 2026 OpenSolar charges for API Access, billed per project when the project is created, and for Connectors as a flat monthly fee, but it has not published those rates and they vary by geography. On cost OpenSolar beats SurgePV outright, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Who it suits. Solo installers, two-van outfits and anyone whose volume does not yet justify a paid licence.

Honest limitations. The New Zealand layer is thin: no lines company library, no retailer buyback table, and a self-consumption model that is coarser than the market needs. The economics steer you toward hardware partners, which is fine until procurement changes. Commercial rooftop and ground mount expose the ceiling quickly. Our OpenSolar alternative comparison covers where a bundled licence earns its price, which is on capability rather than on cost.

3. SolarPlus

What it does best. SolarPlus treats design, tariff modelling, battery sizing and proposal as one continuous job. Its self-consumption and battery dispatch modelling is better than most cloud tools at this price, which matters a great deal in a market where export is worth a third of import. Tariff handling is thorough and adapts reasonably well to New Zealand retailer structures even though it was built for Australian ones.

Pricing. Quoted in US dollars, not Australian or New Zealand dollars, which is a common mix-up. Starter is US$135 a month, Pro US$260 and Complete US$450 on annual pre-pay, or US$150, US$300 and US$520 paying monthly, with Enterprise quote-only. Commercial capacity caps are 900 kW, 2 MW and 3.9 MW respectively.

Who it suits. Residential and small commercial shops selling solar with storage, particularly teams that want tariff-accurate savings modelling without maintaining a spreadsheet.

Honest limitations. The 3D roof modelling and shading engine are lighter than SurgePV, HelioScope or PVsyst, so complex multi-plane roofs and heavily treed southern sites need manual work. Ground mount is outside its scope. The tariff libraries are Australian-first, so New Zealand retailer plans are configured by hand. The interface carries visible legacy.

4. Aurora Solar

What it does best. Aurora has the deepest residential design and sales workflow in the category, mature templates and the largest installed base globally. AutoDesigner handles roof plane detection well on New Zealand suburban housing stock, and the LIDAR-informed shading is strong where data coverage exists.

Pricing. Basic is US$135 per user per month billed annually (US$1,620 a year, US$159 if you pay monthly) and Premium is US$220 billed annually (US$2,640 a year, US$259 monthly), with Enterprise on custom pricing. Five Basic seats is US$8,100 a year and five Premium seats US$13,200, roughly NZ$13,600 and NZ$22,200. Each plan covers 1 user and 50 projects a month. LIDAR modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling are Premium-only, plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, and site models start at US$9.99.

Who it suits. Larger residential operations arriving with Aurora templates and training already in place.

Honest limitations. The regulatory and financial layer is built for the United States. There is no AS/NZS labelling, no lines company handling, and a financial model designed around net metering and federal tax credit mechanics that do not exist here, so your team rebuilds the New Zealand economics inside templates and then maintains them. Per-seat monthly pricing scales painfully as you hire. See our Aurora Solar alternative breakdown.

5. PVsyst

What it does best. PVsyst remains the reference simulation engine, and its diffuse and transposition modelling is unusually well suited to New Zealand conditions because every assumption is exposed and adjustable. When a bank or an independent engineer wants a second opinion on a 5 MW Canterbury project, the PVsyst loss diagram is the document they ask for.

Pricing. CHF 700 per user per year on the Professional annual subscription, so CHF 3,500 for five seats before the 5 to 20 percent group discount. That is materially less than SurgePV’s NZ$10,900 for five, and worth stating plainly rather than glossing over. Education is CHF 420, Training and Research CHF 560, Student CHF 25 and PVsystCLI CHF 3,000.

Who it suits. Consulting engineers, technical due diligence teams and developers who need lender-grade reports rather than customer-facing documents.

Honest limitations. Desktop only, a steep learning curve, no proposal generation, no CRM, no collaborative cloud workflow, no AS/NZS drawing output and no retailer buyback logic. It is a physics tool rather than a business tool. Our PVsyst alternative guide sets out where PVsyst genuinely beats every cloud platform on this list.

6. HelioScope

What it does best. Commercial and industrial yield simulation that engineers accept without argument, with module-level 8,760-hour modelling and a readable loss tree. For a 400 kW warehouse roof in Penrose it is a defensible choice.

Pricing. US$159 a month on Basic (US$1,620 a year) and US$259 on Pro (US$2,640 a year), each covering 1 user and 10 projects a month, with DC design caps of 1.25 MW on Basic and 5 MW on Pro. Five Basic seats is US$8,100 a year, roughly NZ$13,600. HelioScope is Aurora-owned.

Who it suits. Engineering consultancies and C&I-only teams whose deliverable is a yield report rather than a homeowner proposal.

Honest limitations. No AI 3D roof capture, weak proposal tooling that forces a second licence, no AS/NZS labelling, and no self-consumption engine worth the name, which is exactly the capability New Zealand commercial deals turn on. Read our HelioScope alternative guide before committing five seats.

7. Enact

What it does best. Fast quote-to-proposal with credible storage scenarios and a clean customer-facing output. For a residential sales-led team that wants a decent design and a good-looking document in the same hour, Enact covers the motion without the depth tax of an engineering suite.

Pricing. US$279 a month covering 2 users on annual billing, or US$299 a month paying monthly, with a cap of 10 commercial projects a month. PVCAD is US$267 a month and PVCAD with AutoCAD US$333. Asset Management and enterprise tiers are not publicly listed.

Who it suits. Residential sales teams and small installers who sell more than they engineer.

Honest limitations. Shading depth trails the engineering-led tools, complex roofs need workarounds, and the compliance output is not AS/NZS-labelled. New Zealand tariff and buyback structures are entered manually. It is a sales tool with design attached rather than the reverse.

8. PVcase

What it does best. Terrain-aware ground-mount layout inside AutoCAD. New Zealand’s pipeline of farm-scale and utility solar in Canterbury, Waikato and Northland is real and growing, and on rolling terrain a few degrees of slope changes row spacing and the pile schedule.

Pricing. Not publicly listed. PVcase is quote only, and any per-seat figure in a software directory is an unverified third-party estimate. You also need your own AutoCAD licence on top.

Who it suits. Ground-mount EPCs and utility-scale developers.

Honest limitations. No residential capability, no proposal workflow, no self-consumption modelling, and it assumes an AutoCAD-competent operator. For the rooftop work that is most of this article’s audience it is both overkill and a mis-fit.

9. SolarEdge Designer

What it does best. Free, and accurate inside its own hardware world. The string and optimiser layout checks are trustworthy because the manufacturer wrote them, and module-level optimisation is genuinely useful on the small, shaded, multi-plane roofs common in older New Zealand housing.

Pricing. Free.

Who it suits. Installers who fit SolarEdge on most jobs.

Honest limitations. A manufacturer tool. Mixed-inverter fleets, competitive hardware comparison and independent yield reporting are outside its remit, the self-consumption modelling is basic, and the proposal output is thin next to the commercial platforms.

10. SMA Sunny Design

What it does best. Free string sizing and system configuration with a reasonable self-consumption estimator attached, and a long history of getting the electrical arithmetic right. It is also the tool many New Zealand apprentices meet first, which gives it a training role beyond its commercial one.

Pricing. Free.

Who it suits. SMA-standardised installers, trainees and anyone sanity-checking a string design done elsewhere. Note that the PRO tier is not free: SMA lists it at EUR 600 per year net, whatever third-party directories say.

Honest limitations. No 3D roof modelling, no hourly shading, no proposal output, no AS/NZS drawing set, and it naturally assumes SMA inverters. Treat it as a calculator rather than a design system. The underlying sizing arithmetic is explained well in our sister team’s solar inverter sizing guide.

The Self-Consumption Problem New Zealand Software Gets Wrong

Three specifics decide whether a New Zealand design survives contact with a power bill.

Export is worth a third of import, so the fraction is the whole model. Take a 6 kW Hamilton array generating roughly 8,000 kWh a year. At 30 percent self-consumption with a 12 cent buyback and a 30 cent import price, the customer saves about NZ$1,392 a year. At 55 percent self-consumption, on the same generation, they save about NZ$1,752. That is a 26 percent swing in the payback period driven by nothing but load coincidence. A tool that reports annual kWh and applies one blended rate cannot express the difference, and the difference is the sale.

Winter is where the complaint comes from. A Christchurch array producing at three times its June rate in December is normal, and the customer’s heat pump runs hardest in the months the array produces least. Presenting a monthly generation and consumption chart in the proposal converts fewer deals in the room and creates far fewer angry calls in August. That is a trade worth making, and it requires software that reports monthly rather than annually.

The carbon argument is weaker here, so lead with money. New Zealand’s grid already runs at roughly 80 to 90 percent renewable generation in most years, dominated by hydro with a substantial geothermal base, as tracked by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment energy statistics and benchmarked internationally by the IEA. A marginal kilowatt-hour of rooftop solar in New Zealand displaces far less carbon than the same kilowatt-hour in a coal-heavy market, and a well-informed commercial customer knows it. The defensible arguments are bill reduction, price certainty over 25 years, and hedging against dry-year hydro shortages that push wholesale prices sharply higher. Software that generates a large carbon savings headline and a vague financial one is arming your competitor.

The Numbers Behind the New Zealand Market

Figures below come from the Electricity Authority, MBIE energy statistics, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and the IEA, plus our own pricing analysis.

Licence price is the wrong unit for this decision. At fifty designs a month a bundled five-seat licence costs about NZ$18 per finished design, less than the fuel and time for one wasted site visit between Auckland and Whangārei. At ten designs a month it is closer to NZ$91, still defensible if it removes a second licence. At three designs a month it is not close, and OpenSolar’s free tier is the correct answer until volume changes the arithmetic.

Mistakes New Zealand Installers Make Choosing Design Software

1. 1
   Buying an Australian-configured tool and inheriting its assumptions. The STC line, the CEC filter and the state feed-in tariff library are all irrelevant here, and the self-consumption engine you actually need is often the weakest part of the same product.
2. 2
   Quoting one blended electricity rate. Self-consumed energy is worth the full retail price including lines charges and GST. Exported energy is worth the retailer's buyback. Blending them overstates savings on low-coincidence sites and understates them on high-coincidence ones.
3. 3
   Ignoring the lines company until after the sale. Connection terms, export limits and application timeframes differ by network, and a Vector-shaped assumption applied on a Powerco rural feeder produces a redesign nobody is paid for.
4. 4
   Reporting annual generation only. It hides the winter gap, and the winter gap is what generates the first complaint call in a heating-dominated market.
5. 5
   Selling carbon savings to a customer on an 85 percent renewable grid. It reads as either uninformed or dishonest to a commercial buyer. Sell price certainty and dry-year hedging instead.

The delivery failures those buying errors produce are covered in our common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar writeup.

Should a New Zealand Installer Standardise on SurgePV?

Verdict. For a five-person New Zealand installer covering residential retrofit and commercial rooftop, SurgePV wins on self-consumption fidelity and on bundled scope, with the caveat that you maintain the retailer rate tables yourself. It does not win on headline price: OpenSolar’s core platform is free and PVsyst is CHF 3,500 for five seats against SurgePV’s NZ$10,900. For a two-van residential outfit, OpenSolar is genuinely the right answer. For a battery-led shop, SolarPlus models dispatch more thoroughly. Run the New Zealand Self-Consumption Bench yourself during a trial rather than taking our scoring on faith.

How Heaven Green Energy and SurgePV Help New Zealand Teams

Heaven Green Energy has delivered more than 10,000 solar installations, and our engineering group builds the software we use ourselves. SurgePV came out of that: a design suite written by people who had to produce inspection-ready drawings and defensible savings numbers on deadline. For New Zealand teams the useful reference points are:

• Solar design software pillar guide for how the category is structured.
• Best solar design software for the global ranking without the AS/NZS layer.
• Solar design software Australia for the neighbouring market, and specifically for how much of it does not transfer.
• Best solar design software in Canada for the other high-latitude, high-diffuse problem set.
• Generation and financial modelling for the self-consumption and export split.
• Commercial solar and industrial solar for how we use these outputs on live projects.
• Heaven Designs solar design software resource centre for the engineering-services view of the same tools.

References worth bookmarking: the Electricity Authority for Part 6 distributed generation rules, Standards New Zealand for AS/NZS 5033 and AS/NZS 4777.2, EECA for efficiency and generation programmes, and IRENA for benchmarking New Zealand deployment against comparable markets. Choosing the best solar design software in New Zealand comes down to one question that almost no global vendor asks: how accurately does it value a kilowatt-hour the customer uses versus one they sell back.

Related Solar Design Software Guides

• Solar Design Software 2026: 7 Tools Compared and Priced
• 3D Solar Design Software 2026: Top Tools Compared
• AI Solar Design Software 2026: Top Tools (SurgePV)
• Cloud Solar Design Software 2026: 6 Browser Tools
• Commercial Solar Design Software 2026: 5 Tools Compared

Compare Other Markets and Tool Categories

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best solar design software in New Zealand in 2026?

SurgePV ranks first on our New Zealand Self-Consumption Bench with 36 of 40, at about NZ$2,180 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so NZ$10,900 for five seats. It bundles AS/NZS 5033 and AS/NZS 4777.2 labelling, 8,760-hour shading, half-hourly self-consumption modelling and export limit handling in one licence. OpenSolar scores 33 and SolarPlus 32, and both remain sensible answers for solo installers and battery-led shops respectively. OpenSolar’s core platform is free, so on cost alone it beats everything here including SurgePV.

Does New Zealand have a solar feed-in tariff?

No. There is no national feed-in tariff and no government-set export rate. Each electricity retailer decides what it pays for exported energy, commonly between 7 and 17 cents per kWh in 2026, with some applying daily caps, tiered rates or higher evening-peak rates. Retail import prices typically sit around 28 to 34 cents per kWh including lines charges and GST, so a self-consumed unit is worth roughly two to three times an exported one.

Which standards apply to solar design in New Zealand?

AS/NZS 5033 for PV array installation and safety, AS/NZS 4777.2 for inverter grid connection including volt-watt and volt-var response, and AS/NZS 3000, the Wiring Rules, over both. They are published through Standards New Zealand and given force by the Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010, with WorkSafe Energy Safety as regulator. Connection to the network is governed separately by Part 6 of the Electricity Industry Participation Code administered by the Electricity Authority.

Is New Zealand solar design the same as Australian solar design?

The array standards are shared, and almost nothing else is. New Zealand has no Small-scale Technology Certificate scheme, so there is no upfront rebate in the quote. There is no accreditation body gating that rebate and no approved product list to filter against. Export is priced by retailers rather than by state schemes. Irradiation is lower with a much higher diffuse fraction, and the southern latitude produces a far sharper winter trough.

How do lines companies affect a solar design in New Zealand?

Each of the roughly 29 distribution businesses runs its own distributed generation connection process with its own forms, fees, timeframes and technical requirements. Vector, Orion, Powerco, Wellington Electricity and the rest are not interchangeable. Single-phase inverter capacity around 5 kW per phase is widely accepted without study, larger systems commonly trigger a full technical application, and export limiting appears on constrained feeders. Confirm terms before quoting, not after.

Why does self-consumption matter more in New Zealand?

Because the value gap between a self-consumed and an exported kilowatt-hour is large and permanent in the absence of a feed-in tariff. On a 6 kW array generating 8,000 kWh a year, moving self-consumption from 30 to 55 percent changes annual savings by roughly NZ$360 with no change to the hardware. That swing decides payback, and only half-hourly modelling against real consumption data can quantify it before installation.

How much does solar design software cost in New Zealand?

Free at the SolarEdge Designer end, and free at OpenSolar, whose whole core platform costs nothing. SMA Sunny Design is free with a PRO tier at EUR 600 a year net. SurgePV bundles at about NZ$2,180 per user per year on the five-seat plan. Quoting each vendor in its own currency: SolarPlus is US$135, US$260 or US$450 a month on annual pre-pay, Enact is US$279 a month for 2 users, HelioScope is US$159 or US$259 a month per user, and Aurora is US$135 or US$220 per user per month billed annually. PVsyst is CHF 700 per user per year, which at five seats is cheaper than SurgePV. PVcase and RatedPower do not publish pricing at all.

What is SurgePV’s biggest weakness for New Zealand installers?

The lack of a maintained New Zealand retailer tariff library. Buyback and import rates are entered and updated by your team, so a retailer changing its export offer will not propagate to your quotes automatically. Brand recognition against OpenSolar is also thin in this market, which affects hiring, and SurgePV is not a CRM or job management tool, so lead follow-up, scheduling and Certificate of Compliance records still need a second system.