Collecting and reporting project data contributes up to 30% of solar project costs, making data exchange more expensive than solar hardware.
With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, SunSpec Alliance joined with Smart Electric Power Alliance, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, kWh Analytics, Solar Energy Industries Association, and more than 500 industry practitioners to simplify the exchange of solar project data using the Orange Button℠ data standard.
Market Benefits of the Orange Button Data Standard
Drive Down Soft Costs for Residential, Commercial, and Utility Projects
Accessible Project Data
Data standards enable investors, project developers, and asset managers to instantly share data without time consuming manual data entry and validation.
Lower Project Costs
A standardized solar data format significantly lowers the cost of capital by reducing process inefficiency throughout the project development and operational lifecycle.
Extensible for New Technologies
Stakeholders can add data fields to extend Orange Button, incorporating energy storage and other distributed energy resources.


A Common Data Language for All Solar Project Partners
Orange Button Offers
RESTful web services OpenAPI
JSON encoding
Open source code library on GitHub
More than 4,500 defined solar industry terms
More than 15,000 defined U.S. GAAP terms
Harmonized with XBRL, IEEE, IEC, and SunSpec standards
Resources
All of the source code is hosted under the SunSpecOrangeButton organization on GitHub.
Download the Orange Button Fact Sheet.