Introduction to Evaluate

Solargis Evaluate application - what is it?

The Evaluate application is expertly designed to support you during the planning and projection phases of solar energy systems. With its comprehensive features and cutting-edge models, it empowers you to design solar energy systems with remarkable precision and depth.

You can create projects for almost any location in the world, analyze solar energy resource data, create energy systems, simulate them, analyze their data and prospective energy yield, and generate detailed reports.

It uses the Solargis Time Series and calculation models derived from almost 30 years of data.

You can learn more about the models and methods it uses in our Methodology documentation.

Evaluate Home page

You will see the home page upon opening the Evaluate application. It provides access and offers tools for creating and managing your projects.

1. The list of existing projects is in the middle of the page, each complemented with its basic data such as project name, GHI value, primary energy system type, installed capacity, its performance ratio, project stage, or important dates. Any of the columns can sort projects by clicking it.

2. Filters and labels to filter the displayed projects are to the left.

3. Every project has its options menu, allowing you to change its properties, rename it, change an owner, assign labels to it, or archive/unarchive it. If the project has been activated for Early evaluation, you can upgrade it to Full evaluation from here, too.

4. The top toolbar provides a button to create a new project, a project search facility, and a toggle between map and list view.

5. If you want to return to the Home dashboard or switch to a different application, use the application selector menu. You can access the account admin from here as well.

Labels create additional attributes you can use for filtering the projects. You can learn how to create and assign them to projects here.

Working with your projects

Clicking the name of a project will open it. Depending on the project type and subscription status, you may see the following:

1. Currently selected dataset or energy system - you can switch between all available datasets and energy systems to show associated data. Use the three-dot menu to the right to display more information or edit the energy system.

2. Project navigation menu - from project overview to data analysis and downloads, you can create reports and explore all available project data.

3. The main section shows cards with project info, primary energy system data, location, and data analytics overview. The detailed analysis link in every section will redirect you to the related data category to explore it in more detail.

4. The indicator of the selected dataset/energy system status (Calculated, Not calculated, Not configured).

If your project is registered under an early-stage subscription, you can update it to a full-time series subscription anytime. However, this update will deduct additional SGUs from your account allowance.

Project details

The Project section contains information about your project, such as general project information, details about its location, and energy systems available for the project.

The energy system category is where you will access the energy system designer and create your energy systems. Learn more about how to create energy systems here.

Simulations tracking

If you want to learn how many simulations are running at any given moment, navigate to the Simulations page. Here, you can track who executed the simulations, their status, installed capacity, date and time submitted, and their location address.  

Analysis

The Analysis section contains solar, meteorological (Climate), and environmental data related to your project. You may see two sets of data depending on the selected energy system:

• Solar resources, Climate, and Environment data for the project’s location. These are calculated automatically by our system upon subscription assignment and are derived from 30 years of data. This data is also shown after initial project activation, which is calculated from the selected time series dataset.

• PV statistics, PV system losses, and PV long-term degradation if a PV energy system has been selected. This part displays data calculated using our advanced PV Simulator to give a detailed overview of energy system feasibility and losses at the selected location. Among others, the calculation considers criteria like shading, cabling losses, or snow and soiling losses.

Learn how to work with the Analysis section here.

The availability of categories in the Analysis section depends on your project activation stage and status of the selected energy system. Not all may be showing for your current project.

For example, if you have selected an energy system that has not yet been simulated, there will be no Solar resource data available and Climate and Environment sections will show summaries only.

Project exports and downloads

The purpose of the Evaluate application is not only to calculate and provide solar resource data for the project location, but also to create and download various types of reports.

Additionally, you can download your project data in numerous industry-standard formats to process your data further or use them in third-party applications.