Orange Button Solar Finance Standards, Final Public Review Launched
SunSpec Alliance and XBRL US announced today the start of a second 30-day public review period for the Orange Buttonsm data standards for solar financing. The digital dictionary of terms, called a taxonomy, was developed through Orange Button which is a U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office-funded program, that aims to make it easier to exchange solar data, facilitating more efficient and cost-effective financing of distributed energy projects.
“This is the final public review of the Orange Button Taxonomy before we finalize its structure and content of the data fields that represent the life cycle of solar financing,” said Tom Tansy, Chairman of SunSpec Alliance, “We strongly encourage all solar energy stakeholders to review the standards now, and take this opportunity to provide feedback.”
Orange Button is a free, open data standard, designed to capture the many types of data needed over the life of solar PV systems to finance, design, build and operate solar implementations, which include financial, text and energy data fields. Orange Button was developed using the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) standard because it is uniquely suited to handle financial data; and has been adapted to work with energy and power-related data.
Content available for public review participants includes the Orange Button Taxonomy, which contains over 3,700 data fields; sample documents prepared using Orange Button; a guide to navigating the taxonomy and providing feedback; and beta access to XBRL-specific APIs (application programming interface), and documentation. The XBRL APIs can extract and create any XBRL data, including Orange Button content.
The taxonomy can be viewed, and comments can be submitted, through a review tool called Yeti, contributed to the Orange Button program by CoreFiling, a global supplier of XBRL-enabled financial reporting software. A detailed Taxonomy Guide will be published on the public review page next week, to provide participants greater detail about working with the taxonomy.
XBRL US is a nonprofit standards organization that has built XBRL data standards for regulatory and industry-led initiatives that seek to improve efficiencies in data collection and processing through standards.
“Orange Button data standards, combined with APIs standardized to work with XBRL data, provide solar participants the tools necessary to immediately begin creating and sharing Orange Button data. Software developers, investors, and solar finance professionals should avail themselves of the tools available during this public review to start gaining efficiencies from Orange Button standards right away,” said Campbell Pryde, President and CEO, XBRL US.
Orange Button standards represent the life cycle phases of solar financing, including feasibility, design, construction, finance and operations. To access the public review, go to: https://xbrl.us/events/sunspec-20180209
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.
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.
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