solarSim: Professional Solar Design Application
A professional Windows application for designing solar panel layouts, calculating electrical string properties, and generating detailed reports, aiding in efficient solar system planning.
Design & development
problem
Solar installers and designers often lack an intuitive, visual tool to quickly lay out solar panels, simulate electrical string configurations, and generate preliminary design reports. Existing tools may be complex, lack real-time feedback, or require cloud synchronization.
process
Developed as a Windows desktop application, solarSim leverages C# and .NET 8 for its core electrical engine and domain logic, ensuring testability and robustness. The primary user interface is built with WPF, offering comprehensive roof, equipment, and BOM features. An experimental Unity + C# client provides a focused panel lab experience. Optional Python integration with pvlib enables advanced yield estimation.
result
solarSim is a publicly available Windows application (v2.4) that allows users to visually design solar arrays, including roof tracing from satellite maps or Google Solar API. It provides real-time electrical calculations (Pmax, Vmp, Voc, Imp, Isc), supports component placement (panels, inverters, batteries), generates detailed bills of materials, and exports comprehensive HTML/PDF reports with single-line diagrams and array layouts.