Best Solar Proposal Software NZ: Top 10 Ranked 2026

📘 Regulation note

Distributed generation connection is governed by Part 6 of the Electricity Industry Participation Code, administered by the Electricity Authority, but the application itself goes to your local lines company. Buyback is a commercial matter between the customer and their retailer, with no regulated floor. Nothing in that chain resembles the Australian STC and state feed-in tariff structure, so an Australian proposal template describes a market that does not exist here.

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.

Retailer Buyback: Why the Proposal Must Name the Plan

Export income in New Zealand is whatever a retailer chooses to pay, and the spread is wide enough to change the recommendation. Rates across the main retailers commonly sit between 7c and 17c per kWh. Several apply a daily export cap or a two-tier structure where the first few kilowatt-hours a day earn the headline rate and everything after earns less. At least one product pays a materially higher rate during evening peak, which rewards a battery rather than a bigger array. Meanwhile the customer buys power back at close to three times the low end of that range.

The practical rule is simple and almost nobody follows it: a New Zealand proposal that does not name the customer’s retailer and plan is not making a claim it can stand behind. Rates change, plans get withdrawn, and customers switch. Name the plan, date the assumption, and say in the document that the rate is not contractually fixed for the life of the system. That single paragraph prevents most of the complaints that arrive in year three.

The second consequence is sizing. When export is worth roughly a third of what an avoided import is worth, the optimal system is smaller and the optimal battery is larger than the Australian rule of thumb suggests. A proposal tool that maximises array size to maximise generation is optimising the wrong variable. What matters is the self-consumption fraction, and the only way to know it before installation is to model half-hourly generation against the customer’s own half-hourly consumption data, which every New Zealand retailer can supply on request because retail metering here is half-hourly by default.

Get your sizing sanity-checked. Send us one New Zealand job with twelve months of half-hourly data and our engineers will return an independent view on array size, battery and payback within 48 hours. Request a review →

The 5-Point New Zealand Full-Price Bench

Our own scoring frame, and you can run it during any free trial. Five axes, 1 to 10 each, out of 50. We do not put anything below 38 on a live pipeline in our solar EPC work.

1. Full-price presentation. No orphan rebate line, GST handled consistently, gross price and savings expressed on the same tax basis.
2. Retailer fidelity. Named retailer plan, tiered and time-of-use export bands, daily caps, separate valuation of self-consumed and exported units.
3. Consumption realism. Ability to import a customer’s half-hourly file and report the self-consumption fraction as a headline output rather than an assumption.
4. Connection honesty. Lines company export limit carried into the financial model, and an application timeline in the schedule the customer signs.
5. Cost per signed proposal in NZD. Licence plus add-ons over real monthly volume.

Axis two is where imported tools fail, because a single blended export rate is the default in almost every platform built for a subsidised market. Axis three is where they fail hardest, because a generic load profile produces a savings figure the customer cannot verify against their own bills, and unverifiable numbers lose to verifiable ones.

Top 10 Solar Proposal Software Platforms in New Zealand

Pricing is 2026, annualised, converted at roughly NZ$1.68 per US dollar where a vendor prices in USD. Treat converted figures as planning numbers.

The honest read: one through four are full-workflow contenders here. Five through eight are sales tools that assume the design happens elsewhere. Nine and ten each solve one problem and hand the rest back.

1. SurgePV

What it does best. SurgePV builds the design and the proposal in one browser licence, which matters more in New Zealand than in a subsidised market because the savings model is the sales document. Three behaviours earn the top spot. Self-consumed and exported energy are valued separately rather than blended, so the proposal shows the customer why a smaller array with better load coincidence beats a bigger one. Retailer buyback goes in as a configurable table that supports flat, tiered and time-of-use export bands, so a quote built on an evening-peak export product models the battery discharging into the paid window rather than averaging it away. And the platform accepts a customer’s half-hourly consumption file, reporting the self-consumption fraction as a headline number the customer can check against their own bills.

The connection side is treated as a sales fact rather than an engineering footnote: where a lines company applies export limiting, the limit is an input to the financial model, so the proposal never sells kilowatt-hours the network will not accept. Behind all of it sits an 8,760-hour module-level simulation with a proper diffuse split and monthly reporting, which is what makes a Dunedin or West Coast estimate defensible and what puts the winter trough in front of the customer before July does. The generation and financial modelling tool handles the self-consumption and export split, and proposals export as white-label PDF or as an interactive web link with e-signature.

Pricing. About 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 a year. Free trial, no card.

Who it suits. Installers and EPCs sending five or more proposals a month, teams quoting residential retrofit alongside commercial rooftop, and shops spending more staff time patching a free tool than a licence would cost.

Honest limitations. Four, stated plainly. There is no maintained New Zealand retailer tariff pack: the buyback table is configurable but your team enters and updates it, and when a retailer changes its export offer nobody at SurgePV pushes that change into your quotes. There is no lines company library either, so the connection thresholds and export limits for Vector, Orion, Powerco and the rest are knowledge your team holds rather than data the tool holds. Brand recognition here is thin against OpenSolar, which has been the Australasian residential default for years, and that affects hiring more than it affects selling. And SurgePV is not a CRM or a job management system, so lead follow-up, scheduling and the Certificate of Compliance paper trail live in a second tool. For an installer doing three residential jobs a month the licence is not justifiable, and we would say so on a sales call.

2. OpenSolar

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

Pricing. The core platform is free, for any number of users. OpenSolar has said that API Access, charged per project on creation, and Connectors, charged as a flat monthly fee, become chargeable from 16 April 2026, but it has not published those rates and they vary by geography. So a five-seat New Zealand team pays nothing today and cannot yet be quoted a 2026 add-on figure. Nothing else on this list is cheaper.

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 retailer buyback table, no lines company data and a self-consumption model coarser than this market needs, which is exactly the capability the proposal depends on. The economics steer you toward hardware partners, which is fine until procurement changes. Commercial rooftop exposes the ceiling quickly. Our OpenSolar alternative comparison covers where that crossover sits, which on today’s published rates is a question of staff hours rather than licence fees.

3. SolarPlus

What it does best. Tariff modelling and battery dispatch sit inside the quoting flow rather than beside it, which is the right architecture when export is worth a third of import. For a battery-led shop the savings arithmetic is more thorough than most cloud tools at this price, and the proposal reflects the dispatch logic rather than a flat assumption.

Pricing. SolarPlus bills in US dollars despite its Australian origin, so treat any AUD figure you have seen elsewhere as wrong: Starter US$135 a month, Pro US$260 and Complete US$450 on annual pre-pay, or US$150, US$300 and US$520 billed monthly, with Enterprise quote-only. At NZ$1.68 per US dollar that is about NZ$227 to NZ$756 a month. Commercial capacity is capped at 900 kW, 2 MW and 3.9 MW by tier.

Who it suits. Residential and small commercial shops where storage is the default rather than the upsell.

Honest limitations. The tariff libraries were built Australian-first, so New Zealand retailer plans are configured by hand, and the tiered and time-of-use structures local retailers use need care to represent. The 3D roof and shading engine are lighter than SurgePV or PV*SOL, so complex multi-plane roofs and heavily treed southern sites take manual work. The interface carries visible age.

4. Aurora Solar

What it does best. The most polished customer-facing document in the category, with mature templates, strong automated design and a workflow refined against enormous US residential volume. If you are losing deals on presentation quality alone, Aurora fixes that faster than anything else here.

Pricing. Aurora publishes US dollar prices: Basic US$135 per user per month billed annually and Premium US$220, so about NZ$227 and NZ$370 a seat per month at NZ$1.68 per dollar. Five Basic seats come to US$8,100 a year, roughly NZ$13,608, and five Premium seats to US$13,200, roughly NZ$22,176. Plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, and LIDAR modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling sit on Premium. Stated plainly: Aurora Basic at US$1,620 a year undercuts a SurgePV Individual seat at US$1,899.

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

Honest limitations. The financial layer is built for the United States, around net metering and a federal tax credit, neither of which exists here. No retailer buyback table, no export limit handling, no lines company awareness. Your team rebuilds the New Zealand economics inside templates and then maintains them forever. Premium per-seat pricing scales painfully as you hire, though Basic at US$1,620 a year undercuts a SurgePV Individual seat. See our Aurora Solar alternative breakdown.

5. Enact

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

Pricing. US$279 a month for 2 users on an annual commitment, or US$299 billed monthly, so about NZ$469 a month for the pair. Commercial projects are capped at 10 a month, and Enact’s Asset Management and enterprise tiers are not publicly listed.

Who it suits. Sales-led residential teams who sell more than they engineer.

Honest limitations. Shading depth trails the engineering-led tools, complex roofs need workarounds, and New Zealand tariff and buyback structures are entered manually. Finance product coverage is built for other markets. See the Enact alternative comparison.

6. Solargraf

What it does best. Speed. A remote site becomes a layout and a signable quote inside an hour, with e-signature built in and a learning curve short enough that a new salesperson is productive within days rather than weeks.

Pricing. Solargraf prices by plan rather than by seat, in US dollars: Starter US$2,799 a year covering 240 projects and 2 users, rising to Enterprise US$12,999 for 1,500 projects. API access is US$4,000 a year on every plan except Enterprise. At NZ$1.68 per dollar that is roughly NZ$4,702 to NZ$21,838 a year.

Who it suits. Volume residential operations where turnaround beats engineering depth.

Honest limitations. Yield and shading modelling are lighter than the engineering-led tools, which matters under a high diffuse fraction and a low southern winter sun. The product leans toward one manufacturer’s hardware, and there is no New Zealand retailer or lines company content. Our Solargraf alternative note covers where it stops.

7. Pylon

What it does best. Quoting and hardware procurement in one place, so the bill of materials you quoted is the one you order at a price you have already seen. For installers who spend an evening a week reconciling quotes against distributor stock, that is real time recovered.

Pricing. Pylon is not a seat licence. It charges per project: US$4.00 on Standard and US$10.00 on Pro, with no monthly minimum, so about NZ$6.72 and NZ$16.80. eSignature is US$0.80 a project, payments cost 2.50 percent a transaction, and the separate Solar CRM add-on starts at US$49 per user per month. For a low-volume New Zealand installer that model is dramatically cheaper than any per-seat product here, ours included.

Who it suits. Installers who want quoting and buying inside one system.

Honest limitations. Design depth is modest, and the procurement advantage depends entirely on supplier coverage, which is thinner in New Zealand than in larger markets. Commercial work is thin and the savings modelling is not close to what a full-price market demands. See our Pylon alternative page.

8. Sunbase

What it does best. CRM first: pipeline, lead routing, follow-up sequences and reporting, with proposal generation attached. If quotes sit unanswered for a fortnight rather than arriving wrong, that ordering is the correct one and the ROI is immediate.

Pricing. Sunbase publishes an entry point of US$59 per user per month, about NZ$99, and does not publish its higher tiers.

Who it suits. Sales-led firms that already own a design tool.

Honest limitations. As a proposal engine it is the weakest here on engineering depth and has no New Zealand content at all. The same pairing logic applies to QuickEstimate’s pipeline management, which handles the follow-up half of the job and leaves the design to a specialist tool.

9. SolarEdge Designer

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

Pricing. Free.

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

Honest limitations. A manufacturer tool. The customer-facing output is thin next to the commercial platforms, self-consumption modelling is basic, and competitive hardware comparison is outside its remit by design. Treat it as a design aid that happens to print something, not as a proposal system.

10. PV*SOL premium

What it does best. Detailed 3D shading, thermal behaviour and component-level simulation with a German engineering pedigree that commercial clients recognise. As a technical annex attached to a commercial bid, the output carries weight with a procurement panel.

Pricing. PVSOL premium is a subscription rather than a perpetual licence: EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, with standard PVSOL at EUR 585. That is roughly NZ$1,560 a seat at the rates used here. Five named users cost EUR 4,225, about NZ$7,800, which is less than five SurgePV seats at NZ$10,900. Licences bought before 19 November 2024 remain usable indefinitely, but maintenance renewals on them ended on 1 October 2024.

Who it suits. Consultancies attaching an engineering report to a sales document produced elsewhere.

Honest limitations. Windows desktop, no collaboration, no retailer buyback logic, no AS/NZS drawing set and no white-label sales proposal. You will pair it with something else, always. Our PV*SOL alternative guide sets out the trade.

The Numbers That Decide a New Zealand Proposal

Figures below draw on the Electricity Authority, MBIE energy statistics, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and our own pricing analysis.

Run that last figure against your own close rate rather than ours. At fifty proposals a month a bundled five-seat licence works out near NZ$18 per finished document, less than the fuel and time for one wasted site visit between Auckland and Whangarei. At ten a month it is closer to NZ$91, still defensible if it removes a second licence and a spreadsheet. At three a month it is not close, and OpenSolar’s free tier is the honest recommendation until volume changes the arithmetic. That crossover point, rather than any feature comparison, is the decision most New Zealand installers are actually making.

Connection Timelines Differ by Lines Company

Roughly 29 electricity distribution businesses each run their own distributed generation application, and the proposal is where that variation becomes a promise. Vector covers Auckland and Northland, Orion covers Christchurch and central Canterbury, Powerco covers much of Taranaki, Manawatu, the Wairarapa and the Bay of Plenty, and Wellington Electricity, Unison, WEL Networks and Aurora Energy each publish their own forms, fees and technical annexes.

Three things belong in the proposal rather than in an apology email later. The inverter capacity threshold that triggers a full technical review, commonly around 5 kW per phase but not universal. The application fee and expected timeframe, which ranges from free and a few days to a few hundred dollars and several weeks. And any export limit the network is likely to apply on a constrained or rural feeder, because every kilowatt-hour above that limit is worth self-consumption value only, which changes both the battery recommendation and the payback.

The failure mode is a template built on one network’s assumptions being sent into another network’s territory. A Vector-shaped timeline promise on a Powerco rural feeder produces a redesign nobody is paid for and a customer who has already told their neighbours the install date.

Proposal Mistakes That Cost New Zealand Installers Money

1. 1
   Quoting one blended electricity rate. Self-consumed energy is worth full retail including lines charges and GST. Exported energy is worth the retailer's buyback. Blending them overstates savings on low-coincidence homes and understates them on high-coincidence ones.
2. 2
   Reusing an Australian template. An empty rebate line, a CEC accreditation reference or a state feed-in tariff table tells a New Zealand buyer the quote was not written for them.
3. 3
   Leading with carbon on an 85 percent renewable grid. Sell price certainty, dry-year hedging and outage resilience instead. Those arguments survive an informed commercial buyer.
4. 4
   Reporting annual generation only. It hides the winter trough, and in a heating-dominated market the winter trough is where the first complaint call comes from.
5. 5
   Promising a date before checking the network. Application fees, thresholds and timeframes differ across roughly 29 lines companies, and the customer has already told their neighbours.

Every one of those is a promise the arithmetic or the network could not support. Sizing the inverter and battery against real half-hourly data before the quote goes out removes most of them, and the payback period you print should be the one that survives that check.

Should a New Zealand Installer Standardise on One Platform?

Verdict. SurgePV is the right default for a growing New Zealand installer because the self-consumption and retailer buyback modelling sits inside the proposal instead of in a spreadsheet, with the caveat that you maintain the retailer table yourself. OpenSolar is genuinely correct for a two-van residential outfit. SolarPlus models battery dispatch more thoroughly for a storage-led shop, and Aurora wins outright on document polish. None of the imported tools will do the New Zealand arithmetic for you.

How Heaven Green Energy Helps

Heaven Green Energy has delivered more than 10,000 solar installations, and our engineering group builds the software we use rather than buying a seat and hoping. That is why the weaknesses listed above are specific. For New Zealand teams the useful next steps are:

• Best solar design software in New Zealand for the engineering-side ranking, AS/NZS drawing output and the diffuse simulation question.
• Solar proposal software for the global version of this ranking without the New Zealand layer.
• Solar design software pillar guide for how the category is structured.
• Solar design software Australia for the neighbouring market, and specifically for how much of it does not transfer.
• Best solar proposal software in the UK for how a compliance-heavy market reshapes the same document.
• 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, MBIE for generation and price statistics, EECA for efficiency programmes, and the IEA for benchmarking New Zealand deployment internationally. Choosing the best solar proposal software in New Zealand comes down to one question nobody selling into this market wants to be asked: when the customer checks your savings figure against their own half-hourly data, does it hold. You can compare SurgePV pricing against what you run today before starting a trial.

Compare Other Markets and Tool Categories

• Best solar the full software stack in New Zealand
• Best solar proposal software in Australia
• Best solar proposal software in Canada

Frequently Asked Questions

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

SurgePV ranks first for installers sending five or more proposals a month, at about NZ$2,180 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so NZ$10,900 for five seats. It values self-consumed and exported energy separately, takes retailer buyback rates including tiered and time-of-use bands as a configurable table, ingests a customer’s half-hourly consumption file and carries the lines company export limit into the financial model. For a one-van installer, OpenSolar’s free tier is still the right answer.

Does New Zealand have a solar rebate like the Australian STC scheme?

No. There is no Small-scale Technology Certificate equivalent, no deeming period and no upfront certificate discount. A New Zealand customer sees the full installed price, commonly NZ$2,000 to NZ$2,700 per kW for a straightforward residential retrofit, and the entire case rests on avoided electricity purchase. Proposal software built around a rebate line renders an empty or zero field, which undermines the first number on the page.

What buyback rate should a New Zealand proposal use?

The rate on the customer’s actual retailer plan, named and dated in the document. Rates commonly sit between 7c and 17c per kWh, some plans apply a daily export cap or a tiered structure, and at least one pays a higher rate during evening peak. Since retail import sits around 28c to 34c per kWh including lines charges and GST, an exported unit is worth roughly a third to a half of a self-consumed one, so a blended rate distorts both the sizing and the payback.

Why does self-consumption matter so much in a New Zealand quote?

Because the gap between the value of a self-consumed and an exported kilowatt-hour is large and permanent with no feed-in tariff to close it. On a 6 kW array generating around 8,000 kWh a year, moving self-consumption from 30 to 55 percent changes annual savings by several hundred dollars with no change to the hardware. Only half-hourly modelling against the customer’s own consumption data can quantify that before installation, and retailers supply that data on request.

How do lines companies affect what a proposal can promise?

Each of the roughly 29 distribution businesses runs its own distributed generation application with its own forms, fees, thresholds and timeframes. Vector, Orion, Powerco and Wellington Electricity are not interchangeable. Inverter capacity around 5 kW per phase is widely accepted without a full study, larger systems commonly trigger a technical review, and export limiting appears on constrained and rural feeders. Confirm the terms before the proposal states an install date.

Should a New Zealand proposal lead with carbon savings?

Rarely. New Zealand generation already runs at roughly 80 to 90 percent renewable in most years, dominated by hydro with a geothermal base, so a marginal rooftop kilowatt-hour displaces far less carbon than in a coal-heavy market. A commercial buyer knows this. Lead with bill reduction, twenty-five years of price certainty, hedging against dry-year wholesale spikes, and outage resilience where a battery is part of the design.

Can free proposal software work for a small New Zealand installer?

Yes, for a specific profile. An installer doing a handful of straightforward residential jobs a month inside one lines company territory can work entirely within OpenSolar’s free tier, provided someone keeps the retailer buyback figures current and understands the local connection thresholds. The free route breaks down on commercial rooftop, on multi-network coverage, and on any job where the savings case depends on a battery discharging into a time-of-use export window.

How much does solar proposal software cost in New Zealand?

Most vendors bill in US dollars or euros rather than in New Zealand dollars, and they do not all sell the same unit. OpenSolar’s core platform is free and its 2026 API and Connector rates are not published. Pylon charges per project, US$4.00 Standard or US$10.00 Pro, rather than per seat. SurgePV is US$1,299 per user per year on a five-seat team, about NZ$2,180. Aurora is US$135 per user per month on Basic and US$220 on Premium billed annually, about NZ$227 to NZ$370. SolarPlus runs US$135 to US$450 a month by tier on annual pre-pay, and it prices in US dollars, not Australian ones. Enact is US$279 a month for two users. Solargraf sells plans from US$2,799 a year for two users and 240 projects up to US$12,999. Sunbase starts at US$59 per user per month. PV*SOL premium is EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, so EUR 4,225 for five, roughly NZ$7,800, which undercuts five SurgePV seats at NZ$10,900.