Homeowner dashboard - search any U.S. address to get started, with a Gemini-powered chatbot always available in the corner.
Live analysis of a real rooftop - locating the home, checking sun exposure, and pinning the exact address on a color-coded map.
Real system size, cost, savings, and payback period, backed by an actual property photo - plus matched local installers nearby.
One tap to request a real quote from your chosen local installer - no forms, no runaround, just your details sent directly.
The lender view: every county scored on solar opportunity, plus live homeowner quote requests ready to refer to OneEthos.
Hovering any county reveals its opportunity score, average savings, and current solar adoption - the data behind the color.
Instant OneEthos approval - real monthly payment, approved amount, APR, term, and a reference ID, closing the loop live.

SolarScope

Inspiration

Solar financing today is a slow, three-way disconnect. If you're a homeowner, you can't get a straight answer on what solar would actually cost or save you without talking to a salesperson first. If you're a lender who wants to finance installs, you have no easy way to find which neighborhoods are actually good bets. And the two sides rarely connect directly, so a homeowner's interest often just dies in a form somewhere.

We wanted to close that gap: give homeowners a real, honest answer in seconds, keep them engaged and informed at every step, and connect them straight to financing through OneEthos instead of losing them along the way.

What it does

SolarScope is a platform built around three parties: homeowners, lenders, and OneEthos, the financing partner that connects the two and makes the transaction actually happen.

If you're a homeowner

SolarScope removes the biggest barrier to going solar: not knowing if it's worth it. Using SolarScope, you can type in any U.S. address and instantly see a real solar estimate and how big your system would be, what it would cost after the federal tax credit, how much you'd save every month, and how long until it pays for itself. All of it is based on your building's actual rooftop and sunlight data.

From there, you can browse local installers, ask a chatbot follow-up questions grounded in your own numbers, and request a quote in one tap. Your request doesn't just sit in an inbox. It goes straight to OneEthos, which routes it to a lender, so you stay in the loop the whole way. From "just curious" to "financed" instead of getting lost after the first click.

If you're a lender

SolarScope solves the other half of the problem: knowing where to look. Instead of guessing, you get a live, scored map of counties ranked by real solar savings potential, energy cost burden, and existing solar adoption, so you can see exactly which underserved areas are worth financing next. And when a homeowner's quote request comes in through OneEthos, you can review and approve it from the same screen.

For OneEthos

OneEthos gets a steady pipeline of pre-qualified, already-informed homeowners on one side and a targeted map of lending opportunity on the other, so referrals aren't cold leads, they're transactions that are actually ready to close.

How we built it

Frontend: React, Vite, and Tailwind, built as a single-page app with two views (Homeowner and Lender) so both sides of the platform live in one place.
Address lookup: Google's Places API for real nationwide address suggestions as you type, resolved to coordinates through Place Details.
Solar estimate engine: Google's Solar API, which reads real rooftop and sunlight data for your building and returns system size, cost, savings, and payback numbers. We pick the financial scenario closest to a typical $150/month electric bill, and if your roof doesn't get enough sun, we offer a community solar alternative instead of just failing, so you always get a real answer.
Verification for homeowners: a live map plus a real captured image of your property, so you can see your own house reflected back at you, not just an abstract number.
Lender-side scoring: US Census data (income, population), EIA data (electricity rates), and NREL data (sunlight levels) combined into a single opportunity score for every county, matched to the correct county boundary for any address.
AI layer: Gemini powers a plain-English summary of your numbers and a chatbot that answers follow-up questions using your real results, so you stay engaged instead of walking away confused.
Financing loop: a simulated OneEthos referral flow connecting your quote request directly to a lender's review and approval, so the transaction is one continuous path instead of three disconnected systems.

Challenges we ran into

Making sure a homeowner's request actually reaches a lender in a way that's traceable end to end, instead of financing being a black box the way it usually is.
Getting real, live data (rooftop solar potential, county-level income and energy costs, existing solar adoption) to agree with each other well enough to produce one trustworthy score.
Handling the real-world edge cases where the happy path doesn't apply, like a roof that doesn't get enough sun, without just failing and losing the homeowner.
Keeping API costs and rate limits in check while still giving every homeowner a real, live answer instead of falling back to fake data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A real, working pipeline from address to solar estimate to a financing referral and not a mockup of one.
Giving homeowners a reason to stay engaged past the first click, with real numbers, real imagery of their own home, and a chatbot that can answer their actual questions.
A lender-side scoring model that turns underserved neighborhoods into visible, ranked opportunity instead of a guessing game.
Proving that all three parties which are homeowner, lender, and OneEthos which can share one continuous transaction instead of three separate, disconnected steps.

What we learned

The biggest barrier to solar adoption isn't interest, it's friction and uncertainty. Remove both, and homeowners stay in the funnel instead of walking away.
A financing platform is only as good as how easy it makes the handoff between parties. The value isn't the estimate itself, it's what happens right after it.
Building a platform people trust means handling its failure cases just as carefully as its successes.

What's next for SolarScope

Expand the lender opportunity map beyond south east region to cover the whole country.
Replace the simulated OneEthos referral with a real lender-matching system, with live application status you can track.
Let you compare offers from multiple lenders and installers side by side instead of just one.
Add accounts so you can follow your financing application over time instead of in a single session, staying involved through approval and installation.