PVcase showed how linking site selection, plant design and yield analysis can cut weeks from solar project development.
Solar developers move fast, but their workflows often don’t. From site selection to electrical design and yield calculations, every step depends on data passing between people and tools. At Energy Tech Summit, Héctor Lucas Forasté, Pre-Sales Engineer at PVcase, explained how a connected design–yield–design workflow can speed up utility-scale PV design.
Héctor Lucas Forasté, Pre-Sales Engineer (Solutions engineer) at PVcase delivering a keynote at Energy Tech Summit 2024
The hidden complexity of solar projects
Lucas Forasté began with the reality of project development. Teams must cover geospatial analysis, mechanical and electrical design, and performance and energy yield calculations. At each stage, users face daily friction, such as waiting for a colleague’s email or reformatting work so others can read it.
To understand that friction, PVcase ran a workshop at the Solar Quality Summit in Barcelona with different groups of players across the PV industry. Participants answered surveys, mapped how information flows between them and even “played the blame game.”
The result was a dense mesh of interactions. It showed who sends the most information, who receives it and who gets left out entirely. In short, the PV industry runs on complexity.
Four pain points slowing PV projects
Lucas Forasté summed up that complexity in four pain points. First, data quality suffers, since information often gets adapted and partly lost between tools. Second, workflows become inefficient, as teams spend time on workarounds.
Third, the industry lacks common standards and reference points. As a result, the fourth problem emerges: many companies build their own in-house software to fill the gaps.
The cost adds up. According to PVcase’s conversations with industry players, teams sometimes spend up to 320 person-hours just working around these inefficiencies.
Connecting every stage of utility-scale PV design
PVcase’s response is to cover each stage in one unified environment. Prospect helps developers find and automatically analyze land parcels. Ground Mount handles the mechanical, electrical and civil design of the power plant. Meanwhile, Yield calculates performance and energy production.
Because the tools are connected, designers can move back and forth freely. They can create a design, send it for yield analysis, review the results and return to adjust the layout as often as needed. PVcase calls this loop the design–yield–design workflow.
In a live demo, Lucas Forasté showed the capacity iteration feature at work. After setting a few parameters, the software generated multiple design scenarios for comparison. Each could go straight to yield analysis in a couple of clicks, without manual data conversion. The resulting 3D model uses ray tracing to optimize results.
Faster projects, fewer data risks
The main benefit is time. According to Lucas Forasté, a project that might take around 12 weeks with traditional methods can move much faster with an integrated workflow. Teams can then reinvest that time in improving internal processes or developing more projects.
He was quick to anticipate skepticism. “This is not something that I am saying it is something that our customers are saying,” he said, pointing to case studies on PVcase’s website.
The integrated approach also cuts what PVcase calls data risk. Because all information stays in one environment, teams don’t lose data when passing it between third-party tools, and they can access it at any time.
Audience at Héctor Lucas Forastés’ keynote on PVcase innovative solutions delivered in Bilbao, Spain.
Takeaway
Utility-scale solar is held back less by technology than by fragmented workflows. Disconnected tools, missing standards and constant data handovers cost developers time and quality.
By connecting site selection, design and yield analysis, an iterative design–yield–design workflow lets teams test more scenarios, move faster and build a bigger project pipeline.
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