Welcome to SolarFarmer's e-learning!
Your journey from a zero to hero SolarFarmer user
There are multiple step-by-step tutorials to help you learn the software's features and capabilities. These tutorials are conceived to guide you through the multiple features of SolarFarmer, each tutorial has specific objectives to help you learn some of those features with examples targetting several user profiles and purposes within the PV industry. Learn how to use SolarFarmer for site prospecting, more detailed engineering design, and as a reference baseline for the operational monitoring of PV plants.
Discover the design process in the user interface, progressively level up with SolarFarmer's automation capabilities to unravel its hidden power, and find out how to automate your energy yield assessments with the Web API.
Note
Sample data are provided for each tutorial.
Visit SolarFarmer's portal page (https://myworkspace.dnv.com/knowledge-centre/solarfarmer/) and go to the 'Downloads > Demo Data' page to download the files to use for each tutorial.
The tables below summarize the characteristics of the tutorials:
| Tutorial name | Project phase | Mounting type | Difficulty | Completion time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Meadowbrook Tutorial | Prospecting | Single-axis trackers | beginner | 20-25 mins |
| The Nevada Prospecting Tutorial | Prospecting | Single-axis trackers | beginner/medium | 20-25 mins |
| The Occitaine Tutorial | Detailed design | Single-axis trackers | beginner/medium | 20 mins |
| Bern A - 2D API | Prospecting | Fixed-tilt | beginner | 10-15 mins |
| Bern B - 2D API | Prospecting | Single-axis trackers | beginner | 10-15 mins |
| Matera - 3D API | Prospecting | Fixed-tilt | beginner | 10-15 mins |
| Bern C - 3D API | Prospecting | Single-axis trackers | beginner | 10-15 mins |
Each tutorial covers several SolarFarmer features, which are identified below:
| Tutorial name | SolarFarmer features covered in the tutorial |
|---|---|
| The Meadowbrook Tutorial | User Interface, trackers, downloading solar resource, tree-line shading, local calculation, 2-D model |
| The Nevada Prospecting Tutorial | User Interface, trackers, downloading solar resource, KMZ (*.kmz) layout import, Google Earth files, complex terrain, topographic exclusion areas, local calculation, 3-D model |
| The Occitaine Tutorial | User Interface, trackers, importing solar resource, KMZ (*.kmz) layout import, KMZ tracker import ( *.kmz), Google Earth files, Shapefile ( *.shp) inverter assignment, cloud calculation, 2-D model, 3-D model |
| Bern A - 2D API | 2-D model, API, fixed-tilt ground, cloud calculation, Python |
| Bern B - 2D API | 2-D model, API, trackers, cloud calculation, Python |
| Matera - 3D API | 3-D model, API, fixed-tilt ground, cloud calculation, Python |
| Bern C - 3D API | 3-D model, API, trackers. cloud calculation, Python |
Happy PV modelling!