Most of the software reviewed on this site answers the question “where do the panels go”. HOMER Pro answers a different one: “how much of everything should there be”. You give it a load profile, a fuel price, a solar resource and a list of candidate components, and it runs thousands of simulations to find the least cost combination of PV, battery, generator and grid. That is a genuinely different job, and it is the reason HOMER Pro has survived three decades while flashier design suites came and went. It also means HOMER Pro scores 27 of 50 on our review bench, and that number needs a caveat before you read another line: three of the five axes measure things HOMER Pro has never attempted. This review explains what it is worth, what it costs at list price, and the exact reader for whom it is the right purchase over anything else we cover, including our own sister product.
Direct answer. HOMER Pro is microgrid and hybrid system optimisation software from UL Solutions, originally developed at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It sizes PV, batteries, generators and grid against a load and a fuel cost. List pricing is $1,575 per year Base, $3,100 Professional and $4,650 Expert. It scores 27 of 50 on our bench because it produces no layout and no proposal. Buy it when diesel is in the design.
This is a review, not a switching guide. If you are comparing platforms across the whole category, our solar design software pillar and the best solar design software ranking do that job. What follows is the evaluation you run before you buy a HOMER seat.
What HOMER Pro Is
HOMER stands for Hybrid Optimization Model for Multiple Energy Resources. It was originally developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the US Department of Energy’s renewables lab, and is now enhanced and distributed by UL Solutions, which states both facts plainly on its own HOMER Pro product page. The same page puts the installed base at more than 250,000 energy professionals across 190 countries. We report that as a vendor claim, not an audited figure.
The software nests three functions that most people mistake for one:
- Simulation. It models the operation of a hybrid power system across a full year, in time steps from one minute to one hour, deciding at each step which source serves the load and what the battery does.
- Optimisation. It searches across every combination of the component sizes you allow and ranks them by net present cost using the HOMER Optimizer algorithm.
- Sensitivity analysis. It repeats that whole search across ranges of uncertain inputs, most commonly diesel price, load growth and solar resource, so you can see at what fuel price the answer flips.
The base licence covers solar PV, wind, batteries, diesel generators and grid connections. Extra capability comes as named modules: Biomass Generation, Run of River Hydro, Advanced Grid, Advanced Load, Hydrogen, Advanced Storage, Combined Heat and Power, Multi-Year and MATLAB Link, per the vendor’s own pricing page.
The critical thing to understand before you spend money is what comes out of the other end. HOMER Pro outputs a sized system, a cost of energy, a net present cost, a fuel consumption figure and a dispatch profile. As of August 2026 the vendor’s published feature list carries no array layout, string plan, single line diagram, bill of quantities or customer facing proposal, and that matches what we saw in the product. That is not a gap somebody forgot to fill. It is the product’s definition of itself.
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.
Book a free SurgePV demo → Compare pricingThe 5-Axis Review Bench
Every tool on this site is scored on the same five axes, out of 10 each, for a total out of 50. This is the Heaven Green 5-Axis Review Bench, and we publish the axes so you can disagree with a score and still use the method.
HOMER Pro is a specialist. Scoring it against a design suite without saying so would be dishonest arithmetic, so the Notes column states, for every axis, whether the tool is even competing on it.
| Axis | What it measures | HOMER Pro | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design and simulation depth | Hour by hour physics, dispatch logic, sizing search, sensitivity | 7 / 10 | The highest scorer on our bench for dispatch and sizing. No array geometry, no shading model, no module level electrical design. Competing, and wins on half the axis. |
| Compliance and documentation output | Plan sets, SLD, BOQ, CAD export, stamped drawings | 3 / 10 | Not competing. HOMER exports results tables and charts. It was never a documentation tool and does not claim to be. The 3 is for the exportable results set, not a failure to ship drawings. |
| Proposal and sales workflow | Branded customer proposal, financing, e-signature, CRM | 2 / 10 | Not competing. There is no proposal builder and no intent to build one. Penalising this would be like marking a torque wrench down for not measuring voltage. |
| Price against value | Cost per finished decision, including modules and seats | 8 / 10 | $1,575 per year for a tool that can move a capital decision by six figures is cheap. Modules push a full stack to $4,650. |
| Support and onboarding | Training, documentation, responsiveness, community | 7 / 10 | Professional and Expert plans bundle 6 hours of training. Documentation is strong and the academic user base is enormous. The interface is dated and the learning curve is real. |
| Total | 27 / 50 | Three axes carry a not competing caveat |
Read that total correctly. A 27 here does not mean HOMER Pro is worse than a 32 elsewhere. It means HOMER Pro is playing a five hole course on three holes. On the two axes where it is genuinely in the game, simulation depth and value, it scores 15 of 20, which is the second highest pairing of any tool we have benched.
Verdict. HOMER Pro is the reference tool for sizing generation and storage against a load and a fuel price, and it is not a design or proposal product. Score it as an economic optimiser that happens to ship a solar library, and the 27 makes sense.
Pricing
HOMER Pro publishes list pricing, which by itself puts it ahead of several tools in this series. The figures below are as published on the vendor’s pricing page in August 2026, for a single user licence.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Modules included | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | $187.50 | $1,575 | None | Basic plus updates |
| Professional | $373.50 | $3,100 | Any 4 modules | Basic plus updates plus 6 hour training |
| Expert | $568.50 | $4,650 | All modules | Basic plus updates plus 6 hour training |
The vendor states the annual option carries a 33 percent saving over monthly billing, and that volume discounts of 25 percent apply from four licences upward. Shared licences, enterprise arrangements and academic pricing all route through a sales conversation, so those are negotiated numbers rather than list. We did not obtain a negotiated quote for this review and will not publish an estimate of one.
💰 Real numbers
Work out which modules you actually need before you buy. If you need only Advanced Storage and Advanced Grid, Professional at $3,100 covers you with two module slots spare. Expert is $1,550 a year more for capability most PV plus battery teams never open.
One correction worth publishing openly. Two older pages on this site quoted HOMER Pro at roughly $1,200 a year and at a $500 to $5,000 range. Neither matches the vendor’s current published table. The figures in this review are the ones fetched from the vendor page, and the older pages are being corrected.
What HOMER Pro Does Best
Diesel displacement economics, ahead of every other tool we have benched. This is the sentence the product has earned on our bench. When a site runs a generator, the design question is not “how many panels fit”. It is “at what PV and battery size does the fuel saving stop paying for the next increment of capital”, and that answer moves with diesel price, load shape, generator minimum loading and battery round trip efficiency all at once. HOMER Pro searches that space directly. The rooftop design tools on our bench start from a roof rather than from a load, so that search is not what they are built to do.
Sensitivity analysis as a first class output. Most tools give you one answer. HOMER gives you the map of answers across a fuel price range, a load growth range and a resource range, so you can hand a client the tipping point rather than a point estimate. On a project where diesel is 40 percent of the operating budget, that map is the deliverable.
Dispatch logic that reflects how hybrid plants really run. Generator minimum load ratios, cycle charging versus load following strategies, battery state of charge limits and grid outage schedules are all first class inputs. Our solar plus storage design software guide explains why dispatch modelling depth, rather than PV modelling depth, is what separates storage tools.
Load first thinking. HOMER makes you build a load profile before it will let you size anything, which is exactly the discipline most solar teams skip. Half the bad hybrid designs we have reviewed were bad because the load was assumed flat.
Value per decision. At $1,575 a year, one avoided oversizing on a single 500 kW hybrid project can cover the licence for a decade. That is why the price axis scores 8.
Where HOMER Pro Falls Short
It produces no layout, and this is the big one. In the version we tested, and on the vendor’s published feature list as of August 2026, there is no roof model, no ground mount row layout, no shading geometry, no string sizing and no inverter selection at the electrical level. HOMER tells you that 780 kW of PV is optimal. It does not tell you whether 780 kW fits on the available roof, or what it does in the shade of the plant room at four in the afternoon. You will run a second tool for that. Budget for it.
No documentation output. We found no single line diagram, bill of quantities, CAD export or permit set, and the vendor’s own pages describe none. If your deliverable is a drawing, HOMER is upstream of your deliverable. Where a stamped or CAD level package is needed, that is an engineering service, and our sister engineering practice handles it directly through rooftop detailed engineering design.
No proposal, no financing view a customer can read. The financial output is net present cost and levelised cost of energy, which is the right language for an engineer and a development bank, and the wrong language for a factory owner deciding between capex and an opex model. See our glossary entry on LCOE for why that distinction matters commercially.
The interface shows its age. HOMER’s ancestry is a 1990s national lab tool and the Windows desktop interface still reads that way. It is learnable and heavily documented, but on our bench it scores poorly for polish, and in practice we have only run it on Windows.
Component libraries need maintenance. Module, inverter and battery costs are inputs you own. If your capital cost assumptions are stale, the optimisation is confidently wrong, and it is confidently wrong to four decimal places, which is worse than being obviously wrong.
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Who Should Buy HOMER Pro
There is a reader for whom HOMER Pro is the correct purchase over every other tool on this site, including ours. Here is that reader, precisely.
You develop or engineer hybrid and off-grid systems where a generator, a fuel bill or an unreliable grid is part of the design. Telecom towers, mine sites, island utilities, rural health networks, industrial plants running 8 to 12 hours a day on captive diesel, and any C&I site where the grid fails often enough that reliability is a design input rather than a footnote. Your first question on a new project is not “how many panels fit” but “what is the least cost mix”, and your client’s business case is dominated by fuel, not by tariff.
For that reader, nothing else we have benched comes close. This is why our Nigeria design software guide and our South Africa guide both place HOMER second overall despite it having no rooftop workflow at all. In markets where diesel displacement and load shedding drive the design, the sizing question outranks the layout question, and HOMER owns the sizing question.
Two more readers should buy it:
- Universities and research groups. HOMER is the default teaching and publication tool for hybrid system studies, and academic pricing exists.
- Development finance and consulting teams. If your output is a feasibility report for a lender or a donor agency, HOMER’s net present cost and sensitivity tables are the format that audience already reads.
Who Should Not Buy HOMER Pro
Grid tied rooftop installers. If your projects are 3 kW to 100 kW rooftop systems on a reliable grid with net metering, HOMER answers a question you do not have. A design and proposal platform is the correct category, ranked in our best solar design software guide.
Anyone whose bottleneck is closing deals. There is no proposal, no e-signature and no branded customer document. Compare proposal first tools in our solar proposal software guide.
Teams that need PV yield reports in the format lenders ask for. HOMER’s PV model is adequate for sizing and, in our view, is not a substitute for a full 8,760 hour PV simulation with P50 and P90 confidence bands. That is PVsyst’s territory, and on utility scale layout it is RatedPower’s.
Indian residential installers at volume. The PM Surya Ghar rooftop business tracked by MNRE runs on high throughput 3 kW to 10 kW grid tied jobs with a subsidy calculation and a fast proposal. HOMER fits none of that. Our India design software comparison covers what does.
Anyone expecting a modern interface. If desktop software from the national lab tradition will not survive contact with your team, that is a real objection and you should take it seriously before spending $1,575.
HOMER Pro vs SurgePV
Disclosure, stated plainly: SurgePV is a sister product of Heaven Green Energy, and we run it on our own EPC projects every day. That is first party operating experience and also a commercial interest. Read the table with both facts in view.
These two tools are not really competitors, and the table is more useful if you read it as a division of labour rather than a contest.
| Axis | HOMER Pro | SurgePV | Honest read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core question answered | How much of each component | Where the array goes and what it produces | Different questions. |
| Generator and fuel modelling | Deep, with minimum loading and dispatch strategy | Not equivalent | HOMER, decisively. |
| Sensitivity across fuel price | Native, multi variable | Not native | HOMER. |
| Array layout and 3D roof | None | AI 3D roof from a satellite address | SurgePV. |
| Shading simulation | None | 8,760-hour module level | SurgePV. |
| SLD and BOQ | None | Native auto generated | SurgePV. |
| Branded proposal | None | Native, white label | SurgePV. |
| Structural stamping | None | Not available in SurgePV | Neither tool. Do not buy either for this. |
| Racking database | Not applicable | Thinner than its module and inverter libraries | A real SurgePV gap. |
| Brand track record | NREL ancestry, decades of citations | Launched 2025, thin brand recognition | HOMER. |
| Published price | $1,575 to $4,650 per year | $1,299 per user per year, 5-User Team | Both publish. Rare and creditable on both sides. |
SurgePV’s named weaknesses sit in that table on purpose. It launched in 2025 and carries far less recognition than a tool with a national lab lineage, it has no drone capture, it does not do structural stamping, and its racking library is thinner than its module and inverter libraries. It also has nothing resembling HOMER’s generator dispatch modelling, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The workflow that actually makes sense on a hybrid project is sequential. Size the system in HOMER, then take the resulting PV and battery capacity into a design platform to check that it fits, to run the shading, and to produce the drawings and the document the client signs. SurgePV’s generation and financial tool covers that second half. Neither replaces the other.
How Heaven Green Energy Uses This In Practice
We build solar across residential, commercial and industrial segments out of Gujarat, and the honest answer is that most of our pipeline never touches a hybrid optimiser. Grid tied rooftop under PM Surya Ghar with net metering does not have a fuel price variable, so there is nothing for HOMER to optimise against.
Where it earns its place is the industrial segment. A ceramics unit in Morbi or a textile plant in Surat running diesel backup through the evening peak is a genuine hybrid problem, and the question the owner asks is always the same one: how much battery, and does it beat just running the genset. That is a load profile question, a fuel price question and a battery cycle life question, and it is worth modelling properly before anyone draws an array. On those projects the sizing exercise comes first and the design platform comes second.
The mistake we see partners make is running the optimiser without a measured load profile. HOMER will happily optimise against a synthesised flat load and return a beautiful, wrong answer. Put a data logger on the incomer for two weeks first. Battery chemistry choice matters just as much, and our partners at QBits cover the practical side in their guide to off grid battery bank sizing in India, alongside our own battery storage glossary entry.
For readers on the buying side rather than the building side:
- Commercial Solar: 10 to 100 kW with ROI modelling and accelerated depreciation planning.
- Industrial Solar EPC: 100 kW+ turnkey, where the diesel question is a real line in the business case.
- Solar Calculator: subsidy and 25 year savings in 60 seconds.
Related evaluations in this series: PVsyst review, Scanifly review, RatedPower review and Enact Solar review. Global capacity context for hybrid and off grid markets is tracked by IRENA.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does HOMER Pro cost in 2026?
HOMER Pro publishes list pricing for a single user licence: $1,575 per year for the Base plan with no modules, $3,100 per year for Professional with any four modules and six hours of training, and $4,650 per year for Expert with all modules. Monthly billing is $187.50, $373.50 and $568.50 respectively, and the vendor states annual billing saves 33 percent. Volume discounts of 25 percent apply from four licences upward.
Is HOMER Pro a solar design tool?
No. HOMER Pro is an optimisation tool. It sizes generation, storage, generators and grid capacity against a load profile and a set of costs, and reports net present cost, levelised cost of energy and a dispatch profile. It does not produce an array layout, a shading analysis, a single line diagram, a bill of quantities or a customer proposal. In our experience HOMER users run a separate design platform for those outputs.
Who owns HOMER Pro?
HOMER Pro is owned and distributed by UL Solutions, which states on its own product pages that the software was originally developed at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory and has since been enhanced by UL. HOMER stands for Hybrid Optimization Model for Multiple Energy Resources. We have not sourced a public date for the change of ownership from a primary vendor page, so this review does not state one.
What are HOMER Pro modules and do I need them?
Modules are paid add-ons that extend the base licence beyond solar, wind, batteries, generators and grid. The published list is Biomass Generation, Run of River Hydro, Advanced Grid, Advanced Load, Hydrogen, Advanced Storage, Combined Heat and Power, Multi-Year and MATLAB Link. Most PV plus battery teams need only Advanced Storage and Advanced Grid, which fit inside the Professional plan’s four module allowance at $3,100 per year.
Is HOMER Pro better than PVsyst?
They are not substitutes. HOMER decides how much PV and battery a hybrid site should have. PVsyst produces the energy yield report in the format lenders typically ask for once the plant exists on a layout, with P50 and P90 confidence bands. On a financed off grid or hybrid project you may well need both, HOMER for the sizing case and PVsyst for the production warranty.
Does HOMER Pro work for grid tied rooftop solar in India?
Rarely. Grid tied rooftop under PM Surya Ghar with net metering has no fuel price to optimise against, so the sizing question collapses to roof area and consumption. HOMER earns its place on Indian projects that include diesel backup or genuine grid unreliability, which in practice means industrial and commercial sites rather than homes. For rooftop work a design and proposal platform is the correct purchase.
Why does HOMER Pro score only 27 of 50 on your bench?
Because three of the five axes measure things HOMER Pro does not attempt. It scores 3 on documentation output and 2 on proposal workflow, not because it fails at them but because it has never competed on them. On the two axes where it is genuinely in the contest, simulation depth and price against value, it scores 15 of 20, which is among the strongest pairings we have recorded.
What do I still need to buy alongside HOMER Pro?
At minimum a design platform that produces the layout, the shading study and the drawings, because HOMER produces none of those. If the project is financed you will likely also need a yield report in the format lenders typically ask for, produced by a tool their technical advisers already recognise. Costing HOMER honestly means costing that second seat at the same time, which for most teams lands somewhere between $1,150 and $1,500 per user per year.
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