Getting started with energy system designer

Before you start designing

The energy system designer incorporates many tools essential to designing an effective PV energy system. When done correctly, the design can closely resemble reality and provide great insights into the system's feasibility.

Generally, the designer’s design process can be divided into two phases, where different assessments and steps should be performed. These are summarized in the following table.

Remember: you can prepare and save several system designs and compare their simulation results to find the optimal solution for your case.

The planning and system designing phase

Required energy system output and site examination

These two steps are interconnected and affect each other. You should know what your required PV energy system output is and whether the site can incorporate an installation of such size. You can use our Prospect application to perform the initial site feasibility check and build the PV energy system in the Evaluate after.

Consider the following before commencing the design process:

• The area the PV energy system with required power will cover.

• The installation site character - restricted areas, trees, shading objects, terrain slope, and other factors.

• System’s grid connection - the proximity and character of the nearest grid connection point and its available capacity.

PV energy system design

Once you have established the site’s suitability and required power output, you can start designing your first energy system. First, you must set the simulation data input to determine the required simulation granularity. The energy system designing process then generally involves the following:

• Placing your arrays, either at the reference point or inside a segment.

• If required, adding additional inverter transformers or power transformer. The system’s algorithms will do this for you automatically by default.

• Create maintenance paths, restricted areas, and add shading objects.

The arrays can be edited and resized at any time. You can have multiple segments covered with arrays and connected based on requirements.

System optimization phase

Space and electrical optimization

After you have placed and configured your arrays, you can proceed to the optimization phase:

• Configure your arrays and inverters by replacing the generic components, adjust spacing, string sizes, table geometry, inverter positioning, and other parameters.

• Review and adjust the default cabling, auxiliary, and degradation losses and set unavailability due to external factors.

• Validate the system and re-optimize based on results and requirements.

The optimization process may involve several iterations of adjusting different system parameters, changing components, and re-validations. We advise running system validation periodically to ensure that changes you implemented did not affect the system's validity. The validation is also done automatically every time you save your system using the “Save” button.

Simulating your energy system

If your design is completed, all parameters meet your criteria, and the system validation has passed, you can save your system and run a simulation in Evaluate.

The simulation will generate feasibility data for your new energy system at the designated location using our advanced PV Simulator and selected simulation data inputs. The results will give you a detailed overview of the system's expected performance and associated losses.

Bill of materials and Collada export

If you want, you can download a simplified bill of materials included in the energy system design. The bill includes the number of PV modules in the design, table construction type with the number of tables, and the number of inverters or inverter transformers.

The Collada export file lets you download complete energy system specifications you can later use in third-party software if required. The export includes information about the size and positioning of the project, array dimensions, restricted areas, and other relevant information.

Both downloads are located in the energy system designer under the system properties section.