Solar Photovoltaic Simulation Application
1. Multilanguage: the simulation report was already available in several languages, but now the software itself is (partly) available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and soon Portuguese. This is not yet a full translation: only the most used parts - especially regarding grid connected systems - were translated up to now. This is a very time-consuming job (more than 200 dialogs, and hundreds of information/warning pieces to the user), and we will continue it progressively. On the other hand we don't intend to translate the Help at the moment.
2. Multi-fields: you have now the opportunity of defining several field types for a given project (with different PV modules or inverters, number of modules in series, etc). Their parameters are detailed on the final report, but the simulation results concern the whole installation.
3. Inverter: their definition includes many parameters which were not operational in the simulations up to now. Multi-MPPT devices: you can define a specific sub-field for each input. Possibility of Master/Slave operation: the Inverter's cascading is taken into account in the simulation process. For some models: power limitation when running under a specified input voltage, is now taken into account. Efficiency profile for 3 different input voltages.
4. Heterogeneous orientations: systems with 2 different orientations may now involve different sub-fields in each orientation, and/or a subfield for which the strings of a given inverter are distributed on both orientations (with mix of the I/V curve for correct calculation of the MPP).
5. Database management: the big lists of components stored as individual files, which took very much time to be loaded in the previous version (and sometimes caused bugs) are now replaced by centralized databases (CSV files). This results in an immediate access, and facilitates the updates of the DB of the software. Only the files you are creating or modifying by yourself will still be stored as individual files as before. This concerns: The PV modules (which should approach 5'000 modules in the DB of 2009), The inverters, The geographic site database (of which the list shows now the source of data).
6. Favorites: you can now define a list of your favorite components in the database, which drastically simplifies the use of big component lists.
7. Near Shadings: the full dialog and tool have been improved. You can now: Easily read and write a scene or a building directly from the 3D tool. Multiple selection allows to define groups of objects, that you can replicate or save on a file. Define/fix the characteristics of the view you would like to appear in the final simulation report. Register the shading's animation as a little video.
8. Special tracker devices with PV modules rotating on a tracking frame (with either N-S or E-W axis), are defined as special shading objects (with database of existing devices).
9. Shading of thin objects, like electrical wires or handrails, is now possible by weighting their effect on the "Module shading" part of the shaded areas.
10. Shading on strings: you can put a weight on the effect of the shading according to strings, in order to better approach the real shading effect on the electrical production (not only an upper limit) in the simulation.
11. Import Horizon profiles directly from Somletric SunEye, Carnaval software, Meteonorm.
12. Synthetic hourly data generation: the diffuse part may be renormalized to specified monthly data when available. This was not possible in the previous versions.
13. Improvement of the sizing tool for grid systems. You have now the opportunity of specifying either the nominal power, or the available area as starting point. The software indicates the required ranges for the number of modules in series and in parallel. A new powerful window shows all the constraints when sizing a field, i.e. The voltages of the operating array by respect to the inverter's specifications, Histogram of the waited power production of the array, compared to the inverter's nominal power. Estimation of the overload losses (and visualization of their effect on the histogram). This tool allows to determine precisely the ratio between array and inverter Pnom, and evaluates the associated losses.
14. The default losses management has been improved, especially the "Module quality loss" which is determined from the PV module's tolerance, and the mismatch on Pmpp which is dependent on the module technology.
15. Losses between inverters and grid injection have been implemented. These may be either ohmic wiring losses, and/or transformer losses when the transformer is external.
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