Solar design/shading analysis tools

[Ga Rick Lee]

An email received by the DKA Solar Centre -

Hi
I have just recently completed the solar grid connect and solar design training courses and have completed a few installs as part of a team. I have been told about some SMA application for an iphone which I don’t have and have found out they are quite expensive to buy. Do you know of any other tools I could use to present a quick summary on the site of installation as I am going to be doing work for a company installing predesigned solar systems and they want me to confirm on the day of installation the technical design. I have had a look at a couple of websites mainly American and am a bit confused about the amount of products and their effectiveness and ease of use. The iphone and SMA application I was talking about was shown to us at the TAFE training institute when I was doing the course and it seemed quick and effective to give a rough estimate on the design figures.
I would appreciate any advice and suggestions you could give me.
Regards
...

[Ga Rick Lee]

Hi,

Thanks for your email.

I have not had any personal experience with the SMA iPhone application that you referred to. SMA do have a free software tool called Sunny Design, which you can download from their website here -
http://www.sma-australia.com.au/en_AU/products/software/sunny-design.html

I do not have an iPhone myself and just use computer based software for solar design/modelling. In particular, I use SMA Sunny Design, RETScreen, HOMER and PVSyst (google for web addresses). You can get Sunny Design, RETScreen and HOMER for free but PVSyst must be purchased. PVSyst has 3d shading modelling, but I have not found it to be very user friendly. A solar pathfinder tool for shading analysis might be more useful if you're onsite.

Others may have additional thoughts on this.

Best regards,