SolarEdge expands features on free commercial solar design tool

• As part of its continued growth in the global commercial PV market, SolarEdge is introducing an extended feature set on its Designer tool that specifically supports commercial PV systems.

To make commercial solar design faster and easier for large PV systems, SolarEdge is adding a variety of new features to its free, web-based PV design tool. With new features added at every stage of the design process, the Designer tool is stronger and more powerful than before.

To help maximize self-consumption in commercial projects, users can now select the most suitable consumption profile from a list of different commercial load profiles that represent typical energy consumption patterns, such as in factories, retail stores and office buildings. Modeling has also been made easier with a variety of new features, including multi-selection of objects, copy-pasting and improved edge alignment.

For the electrical design of commercial PV systems, Designer now provides an auto-string layout feature that, at a click of a button, quickly and automatically follows SolarEdge’s flexible design rules. Users can also duplicate wired blocks of modules by stringing them together and using the duplication feature to easily and quickly expand system size.

Comparable with industry benchmarks, Designer offers highly accurate energy simulations and reports by providing insight into expected energy production of the PV system being planned and designed. Included in the simulations are shading analysis as part of the energy simulation calculation and additional system losses. The advanced options for system losses include: soiling and snow, thermal loss, light induced degradation (LID), incidence angle modifier and system unavailability. Detailed irradiance analysis is also included in order to optimize PV design.