Solar Planner software

[SolarCity]

Has anyone tried this www.loadcad.com - Home ?

Looks excellent. We've been looking at something like this to help us with designing field mount and flat roof mount systems. And for the complicated roofs that PV Sol struggles with. I'd love some feedback if anyone has been using it.

I love software so I'll probably end up dipping my toe unless I get some bad feedback.

 

[Les Player]

Solar Planer 2011 is now available in UK rebranded as Visual Building Solar Designer. You can download an evaluation copy from Visual Building Home
The software is intended for solar installation companies.

 

[IronLiver]

The models generated in the Solar planner software look impressive, but from the brochure it's difficult to tell whether it does any actual analysis of the system output. Have you got any more details? If it doesn't then as a free alternative you could use google sketchup in conjunction with PVSol as you can generate realistic models very easily in sketchup and can import locations from google maps for accurate shade analysis. I tend to use sketchup to work out all the dimensions and distances of objects before creating a 3D model in PVSol. There is a brief tutorial on using sketchup for PV shade modelling here:

Using Google Sketchup to Visualize Array Shading - YouTube

The downside is that you have to create your own components in sketchup, but once they're done you can use them again in the next project.

Here is an image of a ground mounted system in sketchup



And a bungalow install



I was hoping that some clever bod would build a plug in for sketchup that would create a very user friendly alternative to PVSol. Having gotten used to using a 3D modelling package like Sketchup or CAD, I personally found PVSol infuriating to use at first and I still think that the 3D interface is clunky and inaccurate.