Aurora Solar updates platform to include home electrification and new financing tools

Aurora Solar, a company that makes the software many solar installers use to design and price home systems, has updated its platform to cover more than just solar panels. Installers can now include heating and cooling systems, EV chargers, and battery storage alongside solar in a single proposal for your home. The idea is to give you a fuller picture of how solar, electrification, and storage could work together, rather than pricing them out separately.

The update also adds new financing options, including more prepaid leases and prepaid power purchase agreements (PPAs), where a third party owns the system and you pay for the electricity or a set lease amount rather than buying the equipment outright. Aurora says this shift reflects how solar is actually being sold now: industry survey data cited in the announcement found that almost two-thirds of solar sales professionals expect more than half of their 2026 projects to use this kind of third-party ownership. Aurora also points to growing interest in deals tied to virtual power plants, where your payments could be reduced if you let a company use your battery to supply power back to the grid during peak demand, similar to programs already running with some battery providers in Texas.

These changes come as the federal tax credit for homeowner-purchased solar (Section 25D) has already ended, and the separate credit developers use for leased or PPA systems (Section 48E) is set to expire in about 14 months. Despite that, homeowner interest in solar remains high, partly because electricity prices keep rising.