Every parameter and its default

Every input ships with a working default, so a first run needs none of them changed. Select a boundary file, click Generate Layout, and the plant is built from the values on this page. The boundary file is the only input with no default — see Boundary files.

The inputs sit on five stage tabs under the pinned Generate Layout button: Site · Array · Electrical · Yield · Tools. Every card on a tab is a collapsible group, expanded by default. Two things change what you see: the mounting type decides which array cards appear, and the inverter topology retitles the inverter card and relabels several rows. Both are chosen at launch; the ribbon's design chip ("Fixed tilt · String inverter ▾") opens another window for a different combination — see Choosing a design mode and The main window.

The tables below are in tab order, then card order, and the rows within each table follow the order of the fields on screen.

The five tabs

Site tab

Input Boundary File

A read-only path field with the placeholder "Select a boundary file…", a Browse… button, and a round ⓘ button that opens the KMZ File Preparation Guide. Under the field a line reads "Supported formats: KMZ, KML, DXF, DWG, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF"; while the field is empty an Open sample site link beside it loads the bundled sample — one boundary with a pond, a transmission line and an obstruction. Once a file is read that line becomes the boundary summary, for example "1 boundary · 1 obstacle · 1 line obstruction".

In depth: Boundary files, CAD drawing and Image boundary.

Site Parameters

These settings decide how much ground is available before a single table is placed, and how much equipment goes on what remains. In depth: Site parameters.

The corridor tooltip recommends raising the setback for higher-voltage lines, for example 30 m per side for a 400 kV line.

Structures & Shadow (keep-clear)

A grid with the column headers L, W and H: Length (E-W) × Width (N-S), plus a Height that drives the shadow footprint. The compact fields carry no unit; the row labels do ("ICR (m):"). In depth: Structures and shadow.

Every length and width accepts 0.0–500.0 m and every height 0.0–200.0 m, to one decimal place, and the ranges are the same for all four structures. The two arrester fields are the exception in the card: they accept a value and then feed nothing at all, not even the project file.

Topography (slope-aware exclusion)

Does nothing until enabled. In depth: Topography.

Any terrain failure — no network, an unreadable file — is non-fatal: the layout proceeds without terrain exclusion. Contours draw green for low ground through blue to red for high, switched on by the Contour / terrain row of the Layers ▾ popover, and the excluded area is reported in acres.

Array tab

The tab opens with a read-only MOUNTING chip — "Fixed-tilt MMS tables" or "Single-axis tracker" — that records the choice made at launch.

Module Specifications

Shown in both designs. In depth: Module specifications.

• Load .PAN fills in the wattage, the long side and the short side. When the file declares a bifacial module it also ticks Bifacial module and fills φ, and it recomputes the temperature loss. Dimensions are accepted in metres or in millimetres. The file row then shows the module label in green.
• View opens the read-only viewer with the tabs Basic data, Sizes and technology, Model parameters, Additional data and Graphs.
• Loading a module file asks nothing. String sizing is opened from the Size… button beside Modules per row (fixed tilt) or Modules per string (N–S) (tracker) — see String sizing and the string-sizing fields below.

The bifaciality tooltip gives a typical φ of 0.65–0.80 and a typical bifacial energy gain of 5–15 % over a monofacial module.

MMS-Table Configuration

Fixed tilt only. In depth: Table configuration.

Table dimensions follow from the counts and the gaps:

table width  = modules per row × module E-W dimension
             + (modules per row − 1) × gap between modules E-W

table height = rows per table × module N-S dimension
             + (rows per table − 1) × gap between modules N-S

Both options at the bottom of the card are covered together on Maximize placement and half tables.

Spacing & Tilt

Fixed tilt only. Both values are derived from the site latitude unless you override them. In depth: Spacing and tilt.

The automatic rules, both shown in the card's own tooltips:

tilt  ≈ latitude × 0.76 + 3.1°
pitch = L·cos(tilt) + L·sin(tilt) / tan(solar elevation)

L is the table height in the tilt plane. After a layout runs, the derived values are reported inline — "Auto → 12.3° (latitude-based)", "Auto → 7.42 m (no-shading, latitude-based)" — and pre-filled into the still-greyed-out boxes so you can start from them. Reported GCR is the table height divided by the row pitch.

Tracker Configuration

Tracker only. This one card replaces both the table card and the spacing card; its sections are Tracker Geometry, Row Spacing and Tracker Parameters. In depth: Tracker configuration.

The unit dimensions as placed:

n along tube    = strings per tracker × modules per string
aperture (E-W)  = modules across × module E-W dimension
                + (modules across − 1) × gap between modules E–W
length (N-S)    = n along tube × module N-S dimension
                + (n along tube − 1) × gap between modules N–S
modules/tracker = modules across × strings per tracker × modules per string
N-S step        = length + N–S service gap

A green preview line under the card reports Aperture (E-W), Length (N-S), GCR and Modules/tracker as you type. Treat it as indicative: it leaves the module gaps out of the first two, so on the shipped defaults the previewed length is 1.10 m short of the placed one.

Electrical tab

String Inverter, or SMB – String Monitoring Box

The card title and the row labels follow the topology: String Inverter in a string design, SMB – String Monitoring Box in a central design. In depth: Inverters.

• Load .OND shows the manufacturer and model on the row. Its PmaxOut figure drives the plant AC capacity, falling back to Pnom when absent. Loading it does not set the inverter efficiency on the Yield tab.
• View opens the read-only viewer with the tabs Main parameters, Efficiency curve, Additional parameters, Output parameters and Sizes and technology.
• In a central design a maximum of 4 central inverters are housed in one control room building.

Cables

In depth: Cable options.

Yield tab

Run Energy Calculation

Not inputs, but the card the tab opens with: Calculate Energy, 📊 Show Energy Chart, an Interval: selector (1 min, 10 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour) for the time-series export, Export TMY data CSV, and a status line. All are disabled until a layout exists. In depth: How yield is calculated and Time series.

Energy Yield

Nothing here affects where a table goes — it decides what the placed plant is predicted to generate.

Weather Data Source

Two mutually exclusive tick boxes. In depth: Weather data.

Selecting the file option pops Hourly GHI File — Required Format: exactly 3 columns in order — an hourly timestamp, GHI in W/m², and ambient temperature in °C. A full year is 8 760 rows, and a header row is optional and detected automatically. The application accepts more than that reminder suggests — column names are matched flexibly, and an in-plane irradiance column is accepted as well:

When the file carries a temperature column, monthly average temperatures come from the file instead of from the seasonal model.

Irradiance and site conditions

The four mounting configurations and their coefficient pairs:

They feed the module temperature, and through it the temperature loss:

T_module = T_ambient + G × exp(a + b × W)
Loss (%) = |μPmpp| × (T_module − 25)

W is the wind speed and μPmpp is the module's power temperature coefficient, read from the module file. G is the average operating irradiance derived from GTI as the smaller of 900 W/m² and GTI × 1000 / (365 × 8), or 600 W/m² when GTI is still 0. Once a module file is loaded a formula trace under the wind speed shows the working. See Temperature losses.

ADVANCED expanders

Three expanders, collapsed by default, each header carrying a live summary.

Performance-ratio losses (summary "≈ 19.0 % combined" on the defaults). Every loss is a percentage, and together they give the performance ratio the yield is multiplied by. In depth: Losses and performance ratio.

Degradation & lifetime (summary "0.40 %/yr · 30 yr"). In depth: Lifetime and P-values.

Year 1 (actual) = capacity (kWp) × specific yield × (1 − 1st year degradation)
Year n (n ≥ 2)  = Year 1 (actual) × (1 − annual degradation)^(n−1)

Uncertainty & exceedance (summary "P50 / P75 / P90"). The three probability rows of the Summary view are named from these fields, so read the row label rather than assume P50, P75 and P90.

The tooltips give the two standard cases:

P75 = P50 × (1 − 0.674 × σ)
P90 = P50 × (1 − 1.282 × σ)

Tools tab

No parameters — this tab edits the generated layout, so it is locked until one exists (tooltip "Generate a layout first"). Its cards are Obstructions (Draw Rectangle, Draw Polygon, Undo Last, Clear All), the tip "Tip: Click and drag a blue ICR to reposition it.", Main Control Room & Objects (Place MCR, Remove MCR, Place Object, Remove Objects) and Studies (Simulation with AC Capacity, Robotic Module Cleaning, Shadow View (row spacing)). See Obstructions and Site equipment; the studies' own inputs are in the next section.

Parameters set outside the input panel

Four windows carry their own inputs, with defaults of their own.

String sizing

Opened from Size…. It needs a module file and an inverter file. In depth: String sizing.

Simulation with AC Capacity

Needs a module file and an inverter file. In depth: Sizing from an AC capacity.

Robotic module cleaning

In depth: Robotic module cleaning.

Nothing is bridged unless you tick it in the list of gaps.

Pile layout

Opened from Piles: OFF or Edit-Pile ▸ Define Pile Layout…. In depth: Piles.

The pattern is defined on one reference table, origin at its south-west corner, and stamped onto every table in the plant.

What a project file keeps

A saved .slp project stores the module, table, tilt and pitch, tracker geometry, road width, LA radius, ICR block, corridor, max strings per inverter or SMB, the Calculate cables tick, the weather source and file, GHI and GTI, every loss, the ambient temperature, wind, mounting type and albedo, the degradation and P-value settings, plus the layout, sketch edits, SLD, BOM and terrain result.

Not saved, so a reopened project shows the defaults for them: the three cable allowances, everything in Structures & Shadow (keep-clear), everything in Topography (slope-aware exclusion), Maximize placement, half tables, the Place Lightning Arresters tick, the shading auto tick and ground clearance, and the terrain file path. See Projects.

Values the application derives rather than asks for

Where to go next