PV Designer software is ideal for residential and small commercial systems. It enables you to quickly and easily: draw a roof outline, specify set-backs and keep-out regions, incorporate SunEye shade measurements at specific locations on the roof, drag-and-drop modules, size strings, check inverter limits, and calculate the AC energy production for your system.

It includes extensive world-wide databases of modules, inverters, and historical weather. You can easily try different design scenarios and compare their AC kW-hr outputs side-by-side to identify the best design.

Results can be exported in a PDF format and printed or emailed to clients.

More information can be found in the data sheet here. You can also watch the series of training videos part one, part two, and part three. Part four highlights the latest features available in revision 4.50 and later, including arbitrary roof shapes and obstruction “no module zones”.

Who can benefit from PV Designer?
PV Designer is the design tool of choice for designing systems of around 15 kW or less, however larger systems up to 100kW can also be designed in PV Designer. The software is easy to learn and easy to use, yet enables detailed analysis traditionally only available in complicated engineering tools.

Do I need a SunEye to use PV Designer?
You can certainly use PV Designer without shade measurements. However, one of the key benefits of PV Designer is the ability to easily incorporate shade effects in your system design. In order to obtain the necessary shading data, you’ll want and need a Solmetric SunEye shade analysis tool. If you don’t already own one, find out more here.