PVcase’s Summer Product Updates: fresh and ready

From smart parcel selection and comprehensive flood data to advanced electrical design tools and precise yield simulations, our latest features are built on our users’ feedback and address the evolving needs of the solar industry. 

Check them out and discover how they can benefit your whole project, from conception to completion.

PVcase Prospect

Zoning Parcel Search 

The days of conducting manual zoning map searches and calling county offices are over. Thanks to the new Zoning Data feature, finding the ideal parcel for your project is a quick and easy process. It integrates extensive zoning information directly into your parcel table, enabling efficient organization and filtering of parcels based on specific zoning requirements. This eliminates the need for manual zoning map searches or calls to county offices. 

Flood Data Update 

Get more accurate and forward-looking flood hazard assessments for your projects. The Premium Flood Data provides climate-adjusted flood risk assessments from the latest version of First Street Foundation, offering greater granularity and broad nationwide coverage. This moves beyond the limitations of public data like FEMA, which often underestimates flood risks due to its historical focus and incomplete coverage. 

Italy Layers 

Kickstarting a solar project in Italy just got a whole lot faster. The new Interactive Parcel Layer allows users to directly search, click, and integrate official, vector-format parcel boundaries into projects. This rich dataset includes unique parcel codes (parcel label, national cadastral reference, administrative unit, Inspire ID) — a level of detail rarely available in Italy — saving significant time and enhancing site identification and analysis accuracy within PVcase Prospect. 

LMP Data Update

Stay ahead in project planning with the LMP 2024 Data Update, providing access to the most recent Locational Marginal Pricing data across the US. This crucial layer enables more accurate financial modeling and a clearer understanding of electricity cost dynamics, sharpening financial accuracy and mitigating investment risk.

PVcase Ground Mount

Harness Manager

Accurately incorporate detailed cable harnesses into ground-mounted PV designs with the new Harness Manager, accessible via the Electrical Devices tab. This feature offers three distinct endpoint positioning options (Parallel, End, Motor) and customizable string counts per harness, which the system automatically applies to streamline the creation of precise electrical layouts. Aside from making harnesses easier to add to any system type, it also introduces a "Trunk-CI" system type for designs with a central trunk for harness collection.

AC-Coupled BESS 

Hybrid energy projects can finally take full advantage of PVcase’s Ground Mount potential. This feature provides native support for AC-coupled BESS, allowing users to create, place, and connect BESS containers, as well as generate accurate electrical designs, including SLDs and Bill of Materials, all within a single workflow. 

Update to SLD for Central Inverters 

PVcase Ground Mount now provides an updated SLD representation for central inverters, clearly depicting the inverter and associated transformer within a single, distinct block, enhancing visual clarity and reducing misinterpretation. This update ensures clear differentiation, particularly in complex designs with AC-BESS connections, and streamlines, in turn, your electrical designs and minimizes the risk of errors.

PVcase Ground Mount Precision

Design utility-scale solar projects for maximum output in PVcase Ground Mount and seamlessly transition to PVcase Yield for instant, precise, and optimizable performance insights. 

This combined workflow allows users to optimize energy impact from the start by comparing different layouts, fine-tune designs for peak energy output by swiftly evaluating how design changes affect energy yield, and strengthen viability insights early on. Additionally, it enables affordable access to energy modeling by leveraging preliminary energy yield estimates, lowering initial costs, and making it accessible for a wide range of projects.

PVcase Roof Mount

E-W System Separation 

This major upgrade includes generating, copying, pasting, and converting layouts into single East or West module configurations, eliminating previous East-West pairing restrictions and enabling precise, real-world designs that optimize every inch of available roof space — allowing for accurate layout creation with singular East or West-oriented columns or rows, even down to a single module. In a nutshell, it ensures reduced design time for east-west systems. 

PVcase Yield

Cell String Simulations

Aiming to offer our users even more accurate energy performance simulations, we’ve implemented improved ray-tracing and thermal-electrical models. These eliminate the limitations of low-resolution electrical models for shaded systems (like the 5 MW limitation often found in other tools), resulting in significantly more precise electrical shading loss calculations and optimized project designs for projects of any size. 

Mixed Fixed-Tilt and Tracker Systems Simulation

No more separate analyses in tools like PVsyst. PVCase Yield now allows you to simulate both fixed-tilt and tracker systems within a single, unified environment. Modelling complex solar installations is finally an efficient, accurate, and quick process.

P75, P90, P95 Energy Estimates

Not only are the PVcase Yield’s simulations becoming more efficient and accurate, they’re also more reliable from a financial standpoint: We've implemented the capability to calculate P75, P90, or P95 energy estimates, which provides users with a means to perform complete risk assessments and projections for stakeholders. Moving beyond single-point estimates ensures higher confidence in investment and operational decisions.

All Products

License Manager 

Get back to your project faster. License Manager simplifies PVcase access by providing a unified and secure login for managing all PVcase products and licenses. It eliminates the need to navigate multiple logins and license locations, offering a single, intuitive interface with Single Sign-On (SSO) for higher security across PVcase Prospect, PVcase Yield, PVcase Ground Mount, and PVcase Roof Mount. 

See the new updates in action

All of the above new features and updates have been developed with the help of our users, directly responding to their feedback. We hope this reflects our commitment to providing the most powerful and efficient tools to move solar development forward. 

If you’re curious to see the actual impact of these new releases live, wait no more. Book an exclusive PVcase demo and explore all the benefits the PVcase platform offers.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates – happy summer prospecting and designing!