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Hallo PVSol Team, I was wondering how PVSol calculates the rating of circuit breakers needed after the inverter and after the bidirectional meter for a system. z.B. the following system uses Solaredge SE7K 3 phase inverter with max output current per phase of 11,5 Amp. PVSol suggested a 16A breaker. Could you please explain how this suggestion was made? Thanks.

Hi electricalchild, if all goes well, you should see PV*SOL premium 2020 R1 starting from tomorrow until the end of the week. Maybe next week, it always depends on how well the tests go. Please understand that we can't give exact dates. Kind regards, Martin

Dear Remu, there are a whole lot of reasons why simulation results differ between PVGIS and PV*SOL. 1. The climate data used is different. Most of all the irradiation data, which has the strongest influence on the results. The standard in PV*SOL are climate data from Meteonorm, while PVGIS uses its own compiled climate data. See these forum threads here: 2. The simulation models (and even the simulation approaches) are completely different. We follow a time-step based approach (in one-hour or one-minute intervals) that is simulating very accurately the irradiation on module, their temperature, shadows and so on, the electrical generation inside the PV module (with the two-diodes model), the interconnection of various modules and the superposition of their IV characteristics, the inverter behaviour, grid behaviour and what not. PVGIS is following a factor based approach, as you can read in their documentation. In the example you posted here, they just apply a loss factor of 15% to the results and that's it. I'd say, PVGIS is more a tool for a first good guess of the energy yield of a PV system. They do a really good job in integrating meteorological data from various sources, and the web interface is superb. You can click very easily on every point in Europe and see how much a average PV system would generate. PV*SOL is more a tool for designing and simulating PV systems that you are really going to build in real life. You can select real world PV modules, inverters, choose and modify their configuration and so on. You can't really compare the tools, as the scope and the input data used are so different. If you want to dig deeper in our simulation models, have a look here: https://help.valentin-software.com/pvsol/calculation/ Here is also a link to the documentation of PVGIS: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/PVGIS/docs/methods Hope that helps, Martin

Hi Joao, thank you for reporting this bug, it is already fixed in the next major release. Unfortunately the zoom level isn't something we can easily control as it is an integer value that is given to the various map APIs. There are no values possible between e.g. zoom level 16 and 17. At least not with the tool that we use to access the APIs at the moment. Hope that helps, kind regards, Martin

Some of Valentin's PVSOL Premium potential customers might have, as I did, decided to buy the software based on 3D modeling and shading simulation capabilities. Several anecdotal evidences of this capability can be found on this forum, and on promotion materials spread across several media by Valentin Software sales team. Let me give some examples below... Above - PVSOL Online Shop suggests drone usage for photogrammetry Above - Youtube tutorial suggesting the use of photogrammetry software for 3D import (Pix4D) Above: Feature advertised online since 2017, note the mention to "3D objects created with photos taken from a drone" I guess these examples should be enough to prove the spin over 3D photogrammetry and real life 3D models import into PVSOL. Most people most probably will do the same as we did, download the software and try it out with simple small examples, and it does work, how nice... we then decide to buy the software. Unfortunately it's only when starting to use it for real, with real projects, real data, real photogrammetry, that the trouble starts... errr... ok... let's go smaller then... decimate 3D model and retry... oops... there is a limit of ONLY 500.000 vertices! Anyone with the thinnest experience in photogrammetry knows 500k vertices is nothing, any model with such a low count of vertices is either a single building alone with very little detail and very decimated, or the scene is in terribly low quality with lots of 3D defects. This 500k vertices limit renders the 3D photogrammetry almost useless. In order to work with photogrammetry 3D models one has to decimate the model to a number of vertices really below the 500k vertices limit, because as reported in this other thread (without answer for weeks now) the vertices count is wrong and includes some own PVSOL vertices as overhead, limiting even further the model quality. We have no choice but to comply with the previously unmentioned limits, and we decimate the model further, making the 3D almost unrecognizable, and voila it finally loads and we can start designing the PV system believing all is well now, apart from the 3D miserable quality: This illusion ends as soon as we press the "Start shading frequency" button with the option to show shading percentages on the modules. With the example above, with only 320 modules, the application crashes with an "out-of-memory error": Now this is very strange because this is a 16GB machine and memory usage by PVSOL process never went above 1.4GB on all of the tests we did, so there is a nasty bug here. Valentin official answer is to just say we ran out of memory (despite proof we did not), and telling me "We would use the planning mode with map section.", yes really! So we are working with a 3D model decimated already to just a few hundred vertices, and still PVSOL can't cope with it. Astonishing! We did not give up, and went to the extent of DELETING part of the 3D model objects, parts that would not interfere with shading on the modules, and decimated even further. The result was an .obj file with just 82.034 vertices, that’s 16% of what PVSOL claims to be able to handle, and guess what... it still crashes and can't simulate shading. Conclusion: Don't be fooled by Valentin Software claims over the use of 3D import of photogrammetry models, it's nothing but a toy for micro systems, it's not for professional use. Hope this narrative is useful to anyone considering buying PVSOL Premium based on 3D photogrammetry imports. PS: I have found PVSOL capabilities in regards to computation to be flawless thus far, if you don't mind a miserable 3D component, it's worth it. The 3D module however is just lame. PPS: The worst part on this is that Valentin Software refuses to admit it has a memory management bug, and provides no real assistance nor solution apart from dropping 3D import.

Hi @Leon Norris, In order to prepare yourself to much bigger trouble, read this thread first. Judging by the size of your file, you'll have to do lots and lots of decimation first before even succeeding in importing into PVSOL. If your software doesn't support decimation and you don't want to spend lots of money, I recommend the freeware MeshLab, it does a decent job at this. Going back to the thread above, please remember you'll have to get bellow ~400k vertices to be able to import into PVSOL - your scan will get very low quality. Use .obj file format, it's the best one to import in PVSOL according to VS, and I do recommend you use .png for the texture file format, we found problems when using .jpg. GOOD LUCK!

Dear Remu, yes, if you click "Add Row" below your first string, you can add a row for each module area (for each roof). Then select "Connect strings in series". Then all rows with the same string number will be connected into one electrical string. Hope that helps, kind regards, Martin

Dear Remu, you can view and edit the configuration when you select the tree view node named "System 1: Arbitrary [...]" and then click "Edit Configuration": Kind regards, Martin

If the program was released after your maintenance ends, the program will start as test version. To fix this : Uninstall this version and install a version released before your maintenance end. Renew the maintenance.

Dear Bernard, unfortunately this is not directly possible, no. But you could do the following: copy the data of the horizon line table to the clipboard, paste it in Excel subtract 180 from the azimuth values copy both azimuth and height values to a text file use space as a value separator save the file as *.hor Of course this would only include the horizon line and no near objects. May I ask the use case for the hor-export function? Perhaps we should consider implementing it in the future. Thanks, Martin

Dear Bernard, thank you for your interesting question. The hor files only contain the horizon line value pairs. That is, those values only apply for shading objects that are far away from your pv system (=horizon or very distant houses or the like). The horizon line always has a transmittance of 0%. For near shading objects like trees you should not use hor files, but real 3D objects instead. In the 3D planning environment in PV*SOL premium you can choose from several objects like chimneys, walls and said trees. Those trees can have custom transmission factors. The difference between the shading by the horizon line and the near shading objects is that if the sun is behind the horizon line, there is only diffuse irradiance. There is also no shadow caused by direct sunlight since there is no direct sunlight anymore. Near shading objects however can cast a hard shadow on the pv system, depending on the sun's position and the geometries of the object and the pv systems. Those shadows can lead to important changes to the I-V characteristics when parts of the pv system receive full irradiance and others only the diffuse fraction (as described here: https://help.valentin-software.com/pvsol/calculation/pv-field/ ). Hope that helps, Martin

The program needs a relative constant and stable internet connection. If this is not guaranteed, then the program aborts the download of data. Alternatively you can also try to download the latest program version from the download section of our webpage: http://www.valentin-software.com/en/downloads/products Please execute the downloaded setup file. The old program version doesn't need to be uninstalled.

Dear Joao, thank you for your feedback. I was not saying that I do not know what multitasking is, and I also do not need reprehension from your side. I was just saying that you already found a work-around to a problem that probably won't be fixed in the next releases. There are a lot of feature requests from customers, and yours will be handled with the same priority as all the others. We prioritize the features and bugs according to our rating system and plan the releases accordingly. Since we have a non-infinite amount of team members, we can't take care of all items. I am sure that this is understandable. If you don't like the software, you are free to give it back and your money will be refunded. We do our best to develop a software that helps people to design PV plants. If it doesn't meet your expectations in this intensity, I guess you will be better off giving it back. Kind regards, Martin

Dear Joao, when the 3D visualisation is open, the DirectX component is used to render the scene constantly. This causes the CPU and GPU load. If you want to avoid PV*SOL using the CPU and GPU while being idle, just close the 3D environment, as you already found out. Kind regards, Martin