If you have ever tried to buy solar in Nigeria, you have probably heard a pitch built on guesswork: an installer quotes panels and batteries without a clear picture of what you actually use, or a spreadsheet assumes your flat runs on the same load as a restaurant. Solar Sizer on Latitude is built to close that gap. It is a step-by-step planner for residential and small commercial PV systems, grounded in Nigerian grid realities, fuel prices, and typical appliance loads.
You can use it before you talk to an installer, to sanity-check a proposal, or to understand whether solar makes financial sense for your situation. Everything runs in the browser — no account required to size a system.
What Solar Sizer helps you do
Understand your electricity demand — peak load (watts) and daily consumption (kWh) drive every downstream recommendation.
Size inverter, panels, and batteries — with sensible defaults you can adjust for budget, backup hours, and future expansion.
See a budget estimate — line-item pricing for major equipment and installation, useful for planning rather than as a firm quote.
Compare lifetime costs — solar vs your current mix of grid and generator power, including NERC tariff bands and realistic fuel assumptions.
Step 1 — Build your load profile
Start with the method that matches how much detail you have:
Use a preset — residential, commercial, and industrial profiles (small flat, family home, retail shop, workshop, and more) with typical peak load and daily kWh already filled in.
Enter custom values — if you already know your peak load and daily consumption, enter them directly.
Build from appliances — add devices one by one (lights, fans, fridge, AC, pumps, and others) with wattage, quantity, and hours per day. Quick-add chips make common items fast to add.
All three paths feed the same sizing engine, so you are never locked into one input style.
Step 2 — Size your PV system
Based on your load profile, Solar Sizer recommends:
Inverter capacity (kVA) — sized above peak load to handle motor and compressor startup surges.
Solar panel array — panel wattage and count, using peak sun hours and typical system losses.
Battery storage — lead-acid or lithium options, with target backup hours and peak sun hours you can tune.
Each section shows what was recommended and why, and you can change any value to match your budget or backup goals.
Step 3 — Summary & estimate
This step brings the configuration together: load summary, recommended equipment, and a budget estimate with line items for panels, inverter, batteries, mounting, cabling, and installation. Treat it as a planning range — final quotes depend on site survey, brand choices, and local installer rates.
Step 4 — Compare power sources
The Compare tab is where economics become tangible. Configure your current power situation:
NERC grid band (Bands A–E) with tariff and typical supply hours.
Generator type and runtime — petrol, diesel, or CNG, with hours per day alongside grid.
Solar Sizer then models scenarios side by side: your current mix, grid-only, generator-only (by fuel type), and solar PV. You get:
Cumulative cost charts over your chosen analysis period.
Payback timing vs your current mix.
Annual cost breakdown by source (capital, grid energy, fuel, maintenance).
Estimated daily energy split between grid, generator, and unmet load.
Fuel prices and analysis years can be adjusted in advanced settings. The methodology is documented on the page so you can see what is included — and what is not (for example, outage income loss or property value effects).
Who it is for
Homeowners and renters sizing backup or full off-grid systems.
Shop and office owners comparing generator spend against solar over several years.
Installers and vendors — customers who complete a sizing run arrive with load data, equipment preferences, and a budget band already defined.
Try it
Open Solar Sizer from the main navigation. Work through the four steps, then use Compare to see whether solar pays back against your real grid and generator costs. If you are an installer, the tool also offers a way to register interest in qualified leads from customers who have already sized their systems.
Solar Sizer is part of Latitude's broader focus on practical energy tools for Nigeria — alongside the Energy Map — helping people make informed decisions before they commit capital to power infrastructure.