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July 07, 2022 Slope Aware Backtracking
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For the past several years, in the DC Field section of a Block Builder prediction, we have indicated that modeling your DC Field with trackers that follow the ground slope would be “Coming Soon”…. Soon has finally arrived! When modeling a DC Field on a sloped terrain, the transposition model will now recognize the North-South Slope (Trackers) and East-West Slope (Fixed Tilt) and adjust the POAI accordingly.  Furthermore, the backtracking algorithm has been updated to recognize the ground slope and adjust accordingly to avoid direct beam shading in the early morning and late evenings when the sun is low on the horizon.  As a result, you can now utilize PlantPredict to understand the impact that ground slope has on the production of your PV Power Plant. For our PlantPredict Premium subscribers, we have also updated our Advanced Plant Layout functionality within the Map Builder Slope Design tab so that you can specify if you want to use the traditional Flat Table Orientation or the new Sloped Table Orientation (with Slope aware Backtracking).  You can also specify if you want to use the 2D (fast and accurate) or the 3D (a little slower and slightly more accurate) shading algorithm.
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Ashrae Station Database has been updated
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We have also purchased and rolled out an updated data set of Ashrae weather station data.  When PlantPredict pulls the nearest Ashrae station, you will be pulling from a 2021 data set. SolarGIS API Integration has been updated For Plant Predict Premium customers who are also Solargis API Customers, you can now take advantage of a new and improved site-specific (high spatial resolution) Solargis API, which serves TMY60 (Typical Meteorological Year at 60-minute intervals) or TMY15 (15-minute intervals) using our 1 click weather file download feature.
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Solargis TMY files are calculated using long-term historical time series data (from 1994/1999/2007 to the end of 2021, depending on the regions). The data is also site-specific at upto 250m resolution levels. The TMY data is generated using the latest Solargis model each time the API request is placed (not pre-calculated). BUG FIXES
  • User Management screen would throw errors when trying to add new users – most (if not all) of the known issues here have been fixed.
  • We broke out 3D and 2D predictions into their own queues so that 2D predictions would not be log jammed if a long running 3D prediction was blocking the queue.
  • Maximum slope has been updated to support up to 30 degrees of slope (up from 10 degrees).