Which HOMER Model is Right For You?

Will my microgrid or distributed generation pay off? How long will it take? What’s my ROI?

Both HOMER Pro and HOMER Grid give you answers to these questions, and much more:

Determine the lowest cost hybrid, distributed generation system configuration and the costs and benefits the system provides.
Understand the economics of hybrid power system and the engineering of balancing energy supply and demand.
Almost unlimited graphs, views, and reports on every possible system, from both an economic and and engineering perspective.

HOMER Pro is like a Swiss Army knife - it can do many different things, some better than others. HOMER Grid was designed to meet an increasingly important modeling challenge that is not handled by HOMER Pro - minimizing demand and time of use charges for Behind-The-Meter projects. This table focuses on some of the important differences between the two HOMER models:


Applications	Island Microgrids Energy Access / Rural Electrification Unreliable Grids Grid Extension	Behind-the-meter distributed generation Commercial-scale solar + storage Value stacking: demand charge reduction, energy arbitrage, self-consumption
Approach	Determine the lowest cost hybrid, distributed generation system configuration and the costs and benefits the system provides. Understand the economics of hybrid power system and the engineering of balancing energy supply and demand. Create resilient designs (riding through major utility grid outages)
Tariffs	Manually create tariffs Time-of-Use and Real-time rates	Manually create complex tariffs Time-of-Use, Tiered, Ratchet, Real-Time, and many other complex rate structures Modify any existing tariff Download from database of tariffs (North America only)
Incentives	No	Customizable incentive templates: Production-based, capacity- or capital-based, depreciation Certain specific incentives: ITC, SGIP, Bonus Depreciation,
Dispatch	Five dispatch choices for minimizing cost of energy in each time step (no foresight or peak shaving capability)	Peak shaving dispatch to optimize monthly demand limits, using intelligent foresight
Components (Energy Supply)	Electric: Solar PV, Storage, Converter, Generators, Wind, Custom Component, Hydro, Hydrokinetic, Utility Grid Interconnection Combined heat and power: Thermal load controller, boiler, electric heater Hydrogen: Reformer, electrolyzer, hydrogen tank	Electric: Solar PV, Storage, Converter, Generator, Wind, Utility Grid Interconnection Combined heat and power: Thermal load controller, boiler, electric heater
Loads (Energy Demand)	2 Electric Loads 2 Thermal Loads Hydrogen Load Deferrable Load	2 Electric Loads (critical/non-critical) 1 Thermal Load
Grid Reliability	Unreliable grids that have frequent outages	Basically reliable grids, but with potential concerns for infrequent extended outages (e.g. disasters)
	Try HOMER Pro Learn more	Try HOMER Grid Learn more