Solarstone Solar Roof Configurator

Solarstone is a Nordic producer of building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). Their solar panels are not bolted on top of a roof. They are the roof: 2-in-1 modules that work as roofing material and power plant at the same time, sold across the Nordics and Europe for both new builds and renovations. That product logic creates a hard sales constraint. Every project is dimensional. Panel count, layout, and price all depend on the exact geometry of each customer's roof, and no two roofs are the same.

The Core Problem: Roof geometry had to be collected manually for every single inquiry, so both the customer and the sales team did the technical work by hand.

Before the configurator, Solarstone's salespeople spent a large part of their working time chasing precise measurements from clients. On the other side, customers trying to evaluate a solar roof were left googling, comparing, and running payback calculations on their own:

• When do the panels become cost-effective?
• How many should I buy?
• Is my roof even suitable?

Every manual handover between customer and sales was a chance for misunderstandings, incorrectly ordered products, and returns.

The frustrating part: the data to answer all of these questions already existed. Roof geometry sat in national databases. Product specifications sat in Solarstone's internal systems. Nothing connected them.

Our Goal: Connect public geodata, lidar measurements, and Solarstone's product data into one flow where the customer configures their own roof and sales receives a complete, ready-to-review inquiry.

We built Solarstone a browser-based solar panel configurator on the Wabric platform. Here is how it works:

• Address in, roof out: The customer enters their building address and the configurator pulls an aerial view of the house with roof dimensions from the Maa-amet geoportal. No forms, no measuring.
• Roof data loads automatically: Lidar data supplies roof size, slope, orientation, and alignment with the sun. These are exactly the inputs a customer could never reliably gather alone.
• Visual panel placement: The configurator generates digital roof sides, suggests suitable panels for the roof type, and lets the customer choose which sides get panels and rearrange the layout freely.
• Live price and energy output: Solarstone's panel specifications drive real-time price and roof productivity calculations as the configuration changes.
• A complete inquiry, not a lead form: When the customer confirms, a properly formatted inquiry lands with Solarstone's sales team. The salesperson reviews the data briefly and answers the questions that actually need a human.

The visual step matters commercially, not just technically. When a customer sees the product on their own roof, confidence in the purchase goes up and expectations match reality before anyone picks up the phone.

Reaching Architects Before the Tender Exists

A Solarstone roof is often decided at the building design stage, long before anyone requests a quote. If architects cannot place the product in their design software, it does not get specified. This is a common blind spot for roof and facade manufacturers: the sale is won or lost in the BIM model, years before tender.

So the product data was put to work on that front too. Together with Tulitec, we created parametric BIM models of Solarstone's roofing panels for Revit and Archicad, distributed through the ProdLib library and backed by a centralised digital product catalog covering dimensions, weights, certifications, PDFs, and static and parametric 2D AutoCAD drawings.

The models are intelligent: they recognise roof surfaces inside the building model and automatically generate a Solarstone roof with precise dimensions and panel counts. Architects design with the real product, and the specification carries through to tender.

he technical work moved from people to the system. The real-world impact:

• Sales freed from measuring: Roof data comes from lidar and geoportal sources automatically. Salespeople no longer spend their days collecting dimensions from customers.
• Fewer errors, wrong orders, and returns: Configurations are built on verified roof data instead of customer guesses, which cuts misunderstandings between the buyer and the sales department.
• A dramatically shorter customer journey: The path from first idea to submitted inquiry shrank. Customers no longer research, compare, and calculate alone; the configurator does the analysis for them.
• Specified into projects early: Parametric BIM models put Solarstone roofs into building designs at the planning phase, before competitors are even in the conversation.

The Human Impact

The salesperson's role changed shape. Instead of starting every deal by gathering data, they start with a finished configuration backed by verified roof geometry, and spend their time where it counts: clarifying, advising, and closing. The customer, in turn, arrives at the conversation already confident, because they have seen their own roof with the panels on it.

What does the Solarstone configurator do?

It lets a customer enter their building address, see their actual roof from aerial and lidar data, place solar panels on it visually, and get a live price and energy output estimate. The finished configuration reaches Solarstone's sales team as a complete inquiry.

Where does the roof data come from?

From public sources. The Maa-amet geoportal provides the aerial roof view, and lidar data supplies roof size, slope, orientation, and sun alignment. The customer never measures anything.

Can a configurator like this be built for other roof or solar products?

Yes. The same approach works for any dimensional building product: roof or site geometry in, priced configuration, technical documents, and BIM objects out, all from one parametric model.