About IMBY
The In My Backyard (IMBY) tool estimates solar photovoltaic (PV) array and wind turbine electricity production based on your specifications of system size, location, and other variables. IMBY uses a Google Maps interface to allow you to choose a system location with pinpoint accuracy. It then draws data for that location from one of NREL's renewable resource databases to estimate your potential electricity production.
IMBY can estimate the production you can expect from a PV array or wind turbine, but it cannot tell you if such a system is right for you. To learn more about choosing, sizing, and siting such systems see the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's small PV array and small wind turbine system Web pages.
IMBY Solar Estimator
The In My Backyard solar estimator is based on NREL's PVWatts™ calculator. However, unlike PVWatts, IMBY provides estimates only for fixed-tilt PV arrays. In addition, IMBY uses Perez data rather than typical meteorological year data. Perez data are satellite-derived, high-resolution data from visible channel images from geostationary satellites (GOES).
An added feature of IMBY's solar estimator is the ability to compare your electricity usage with your estimated electricity production. You can choose to compare a sample load profile for your region or your own custom profile.
IMBY Wind Estimator
The In My Backyard wind estimator provides wind electricity estimates for 30 U.S. states with available data. These data are based on AWS Truewind data and mesoscale model simulations and then validated against measured data by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Because of differences between the wind resource data and load data, IMBY cannot run comparisons of load and production for wind systems.
IMBY Analyses
NREL's In My Backyard tool was used in a recent analysis, "Interconnecting PV on New York City's Secondary Network Distribution System," for the Solar America Cities program. It was used for tasks such as estimating the amount of roof space suitable for PV arrays in various areas. The full report (PDF 5.4 MB) can be accessed on the NREL Web site. Download Adobe Reader.
