SunSpec Alliance and XBRL US Announce Public Review of Orange Button Solar Data Standards

Investors, developers, software providers are encouraged to
participate

SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SunSpec Alliance and XBRL US announced today the launch of a 30-day
public review period for the initial draft of Orange Button data
standards for solar financing. The digital dictionary of terms, called a
taxonomy, was developed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot
Initiative’s Orange Button SM program that aims to make it
easier to aggregate and share solar data, facilitating more efficient
and cost-effective financing of distributed energy projects. SunSpec
Alliance heads the Orange Button project team that is tasked with
establishing an open, easy-to-adopt, solar data architecture, and
standards.

“Standardizing data collection is a critical means to reduce the soft
costs of solar financing,” said Tom Tansy, Chairman of SunSpec Alliance,
“All solar energy stakeholders owe it to themselves and their businesses
to review the standards and give us feedback. Every participant has a
chance to influence the final standards that will be the industry norm
in solar financing. That will benefit participants’ companies, and
ultimately, the entire industry.”

The XBRL data standard was chosen for Orange Button because it is a
free, open, global standard, uniquely suited to financial data. XBRL US
is a nonprofit standards developer that built XBRL data standards for
public companies, mutual funds, and credit rating agencies, under
contract with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. XBRL US leads
the effort to build the financial portion of Orange Button standards,
leveraging elements from the U.S. GAAP Taxonomy for public companies,
and from existing solar data standards.

Public companies in the solar industry, such as electric utilities,
investors, and solar developers, already format their financials in XBRL
which will ease the path to Orange Button adoption. The value of
standards increases as more companies use them. A growing number of
companies and applications are adopting, implementing, and facilitating
this initiative, such as Sunnova Energy Corporation and Wells Fargo,
among others. In Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Reporting Cloud
Service, the Disclosure Management capability enables the creation of
XBRL files based on the Orange Button taxonomy.

“XBRL is the ideal standard for Orange Button given the need for
consistent, comparable financial information in solar financing,” said
Campbell Pryde, President and CEO, XBRL US, “XBRL US, along with
SunSpec, has a strong interest in the success of Orange Button, and we
look forward to continuing to develop, refine and expand on the taxonomy
to cover more use cases, and to continue to meet the needs of the
industry as they evolve.”

Orange Button standards represent the life cycle phases of solar
financing, including feasibility, design, construction, finance and
operations. Content available during the public review includes the
digital dictionary of data fields and definitions, which can be easily
viewed, and commented on, through a review tool called Yeti, contributed
to the Orange Button program by CoreFiling, a global supplier of
XBRL-enabled financial reporting software.

To access the public review, go to: https://xbrl.us/events/sunspec-201710113/

About the SunShot Initiative

The U.S.
Department of Energy SunShot Initiative is a national effort to
drive down the cost of solar electricity and support solar adoption.
SunShot aims to make solar energy a low-cost electricity source for all
Americans through research and development efforts in collaboration with
public and private partners. Learn more at energy.gov/sunshot.

About the SunSpec Alliance

The SunSpec Alliance is a trade alliance of developers, manufacturers,
researchers and service providers, together pursuing information and
communications standards for the distributed energy industry. SunSpec
standards address most operational aspects of PV, energy storage and
other distributed energy power plants on the smart grid—including
residential, commercial, and utility-scale systems—thus reducing cost,
promoting innovation, and accelerating industry growth. More than 100
organizations are members of the SunSpec Alliance, including global
leaders from Asia, Europe, and North America. Membership is open to
corporations, non-profits, labs, governments and educational
institutions. For more information about the SunSpec Alliance, or to
download SunSpec specifications free of charge, please visit www.sunspec.org.

About XBRL US

XBRL US is the non-profit consortium for XBRL business reporting
standards in the U.S. and represents the business information supply
chain. Its mission is to support the implementation of business
reporting standards through the development of taxonomies for use by
U.S. public and private sectors, with a goal of interoperability between
sectors, and by promoting XBRL adoption through marketplace
collaboration. XBRL US has developed taxonomies for U.S. GAAP, credit
rating and mutual fund reporting under contract with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission, and has developed industry-specific taxonomies
for corporate actions, solar financing and surety processing. To learn
more about XBRL US, visit http://xbrl.us

Links:

Access the Orange Button taxonomy: https://xbrl.us/xbrl-taxonomy/2018-solar

Review and comment on Orange Button: https://xbrl.us/events/sunspec-201710113/

Learn more about the Department of Energy SunShot Initiative: energy.gov/sunshot

Contacts

SunSpec Alliance
Tom Tansy, 831-227-1073
[email protected]
or
XBRL
US
Michelle Savage, 917-747-1714
[email protected]