October 14, 20223 yr I came across simulation software from the US NREL, and just want to share for anyone else looking for something like this. This is useful to estimate how much power could be generated throughout the year, and what the effect is from different placement of the panels - for example comparing a roof facing NE vs N, or using different tilt angles. 1. A simple online calculator: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php This supports basic calculations of monthly generated energy, based on historical weather data for the location, position of solar panels, solar array size. Hourly data can be exported. 2. For more advanced simulations, they provide desktop software: https://sam.nrel.gov/download It's a bit of a pain to figure out initially (weather data has to be downloaded separately), but it has full support for simulating based on historical weather data for the location, position of solar panels, solar array size, inverter and MPTT parameters, shade based on 3D models, and a lot more that I haven't explored. There are lots of options for simulations - I picked "Photovoltaic => Detailed PV Model -> No Financial Model". (Times are in UTC in these graphs)
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