Solar glossary
Solar sizing scenarios (sc1, sc2, sc3): what it means and why it matters
Three ways of sizing the same roof: solar only, solar plus battery sized to full demand, and solar plus battery sized to what the building spends today.
Why it matters in Nigeria
Quoting a saving without naming the scenario is meaningless. Every figure on our data pages says which scenario it belongs to.
How PureWatts measures it
Total KWp (Solar only)
sum_sc1_kwp
Sum over the buildings in the group. Installed PV capacity.
Solar only: PV sized to cover DAYLIGHT demand: kwp = min(demand x daylight_frac x 1.10 / net_yield, pv_max_kwp)
Understates value where the load is evening-peaked, which is most residential.
Sum over the buildings in the group.
Total KWp (Solar + battery)
sum_sc2_kwp
Sum over the buildings in the group. Installed PV capacity.
Solar + battery: PV sized to cover FULL demand including round-trip losses: kwp = min(demand x (daylight + (1-daylight)/0.90) x 1.10 / net_yield, pv_max_kwp); battery = night demand / (0.80 DoD x sqrt(0.90)), capped at 2.0x PV kWp
Sized to LATENT demand — the energy the building would use if it could. Against a cash baseline that only reflects today's spend this looks oversized; that is what sc3 exists to fix.
Sum over the buildings in the group.
Total KWp (Merit-order sized)
sum_sc3_kwp
Sum over the buildings in the group. Installed PV capacity.
Solar + battery, merit-order sized: Same engine as sc2, but the target is what the building CONSUMES today x 1.5 (MO_SIZING_UPLIFT) rather than full latent demand.
In Osun, sizing sc2 to latent demand while crediting it only with displacing current spend produced a 6x-oversized system and a negative IRR that said nothing about solar. sc3 is the fix, not an alternative opinion.
Sum over the buildings in the group.
See these numbers for your area
Every state and local government area page reports solar sizing scenarios (sc1, sc2, sc3) for its own rooftops. Browse the Nigeria rooftop solar data.
Related terms
How these numbers are produced
Approach A — energy value (upper bracket)
Sizes the system to the building's full latent demand and values that energy at the mixed grid/generator tariff. It answers what the energy is worth — not what anyone currently pays.
Approach B — cash saved (lower bracket)
Sizes the system to demand that is actually served today, values it by merit order (solar displaces generator kWh first) and caps it at current spend. It answers what a building stops paying.
Cohort: Viable rooftops (≥0.6 kWp potential).
- Demand is modelled latent demand, not metered consumption.
- Fuel is priced at ₦1,800/litre (operator-set). NBS reported ₦3,277/litre for May 2026 — on that basis every naira figure here is roughly 1.8× understated.
- Generator ownership is a model output, not a survey result: it follows from the grid-availability scale and the 25% demand-suppression assumption.
- Approach A prices energy nobody currently buys. Its savings must never be read as cash saved.
- Demand is MODELLED LATENT demand, not metered consumption.
- Generator ownership is model output, not survey.
- Medians do not combine across groups — re-derive from the histograms.
- Per-building files are float32 with 4 significant figures; cast to float64 before summing, because polars keeps Float32 sums in Float32.
- Null scenario fields mean the roof cannot host 0.6 kWp, not zero savings.
- `genset` was previously named `diesel` and now uses the segment's real fuel.
- Ordering holds by construction: grid savings < mixed < genset.