Pylon

Pylon, sold as GetPylon by the Australian company Saru Technologies, is a web-based tool for solar installers. Teams use it to design PV systems on aerial imagery, run 3D shading analysis that accounts for obstructions and trees, model battery storage and load profiles, and turn the design into an interactive web or PDF proposal with financial projections. Its 3D shading tool won a Finder Award in 2021. It also generates single-line diagrams automatically and has a component library the vendor puts at more than 20,000 parts. The tool runs on desktop and iPad and is known for producing proposals quickly. There is no seat subscription. Teams buy credits and spend them per project: a Standard project, capped at 30 kW DC, costs $4, and a Pro project costs $10 and adds batteries, custom load profiles and commercial-sized systems. The pricing page mentions GST, so these prices are probably in Australian dollars. Every plan allows unlimited users and five designs per project. Enterprise pricing is by quote and adds SSO, API access and role-based permissions. Paid extras are a Solar CRM from $49 per user per month, eSignature at 80 cents per project, and a payment gateway that charges 2.5% per transaction. Listed integrations include Xero, MailChimp, ServiceM8 and Facebook, and reviewers also cite Nearmap imagery. Pylon suits residential and small commercial installers, mainly in Australia and New Zealand. Its main limitation is engineering depth. Reviewers say it struggles above about 100 kW and on complex roofs, it has no P50 or P90 bankable yield reports, and proposal templates offer limited customisation.