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 for modeling distributed generation. Its primary focus is on microgrids or multi-generator island or village utilities, but it can also model unreliable grids, grid extension, and a broad array of control strategies. 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, from solar plus storage to more complex systems including wind, backup generators, and combined heat and power. This page focuses on some of the important differences between the two HOMER models. You can also check out this handy flowchart that walks you through the decision with a series of easy questions.

 
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
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 None
  • Customizable incentive templates: Production-based, capacity- or capital-based, depreciation
  • Certain specific incentives: ITC, SGIP, Bonus Depreciation,
Dispatch Six dispatch choices for minimizing cost of energy in each time step (no 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 Mostly reliable grids, but with potential concerns for infrequent extended outages (e.g. disasters) or shorter, unpredictable outages (e.g. unscheduled blackouts)
  Try HOMER Pro
Learn more 		Try HOMER Grid
Learn more
  HOMER Pro versus HOMER Grid Infographic