Release Notes - OS 2.28.0

🇩🇪 IT ES 🇫🇷 🇳🇱

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This release unlocks powerful updates across CashFlow, Shop, and Design Studio, including payments via Apple and Google Pay, simplified invoicing, enhanced performance modeling, and more. These changes offer greater flexibility and simplify project management with features such as Kanban and Custom views for your projects in early access. Let’s dive in!

Highlights

CashFlow

Currently available in 🇺🇲 with early access available in 🇬🇧 and 🇦🇺

Apple and Google Pay now available

• Customers can now pay using Apple Pay and Google Pay through CashFlow! These convenient payment methods will be automatically enabled for all milestones where credit cards are accepted, as long as surcharging is turned off.  Activate CashFlow today
• Note: Apple Pay and Google Pay are not compatible with surcharging.

Simplified payment recalculations

• A new "Recalculate" button has been added to the top of the page, eliminating the need to go back to the Design Studio and navigate to the advanced settings menu.

More flexibility in updating payment methods 

• You can now adjust payment methods and surcharging settings for a specific invoice or payment request, even after it's been sent. 

Faster CashFlow approvals with proactive doc uploads

• To speed up the CashFlow approval process, especially in AU and UK, you can now proactively upload required documents (owner/company rep ID and voided check) after submitting a registration. 

🇦🇺 Enhanced payment options for AU Pros including credit card cap increase

• Surcharges can now be applied to debit card transactions.

• Debit cards are now automatically accepted as a payment method for all new and existing AU organizations.

• The default credit card limit for both new and existing AU organizations has been raised to $10,000 AUD. 

Shop

• We’re expanding the Renusol Configurator availability beyond the United Kingdom to additional EU countries, including Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Poland.

Product improvements

Project Management 

🔑 Early access 

• Projects - Kanban View: The Projects list page now includes a Kanban view, providing an intuitive and visual way to manage projects. Learn more

• Projects - Custom view: You can now save custom views on the Projects list page, allowing you to quickly access your preferred project filters and settings. Learn more 

Interested? Sign up for early access and simplify your workflow.

CashFlow 

Enable CashFlow commercial invoicing

• To meet tax compliance requirements, we've added a field for the recipient's tax ID on commercial invoices. This information will be needed when sending proposals or invoices for commercial projects with CashFlow payments.

Bugs & minor enhancements

• Fixed issue where incorrect currency symbol was occasionally used in payout emails
• Fixed issue where Org Name placeholder was not working in CashFlow email templates
• Fixed a deposit configurations error: Allow Percentage Values of None or 0
• When an invoice was marked as paid offline, we were not capturing a paid date in the invoices table, that’s been fixed

Shop 

🇬🇧 Design Studio

• Inverter Design Assistant
  • Enhanced the auto-stringing logic to ensure strings are distributed evenly across the design. For example, previously, a system with 14 panels would assign strings as MPPT 1 - 10 and MPPT 2 - 4. With the improved logic, the system will now evenly distribute the panels, showing MPPT 1 - 7 and MPPT 2 - 7, resulting in a more balanced configuration.
• COGS Overrides 2.0
  • Fixed the issue where the refresh button was not updating the BOM pricing correctly.

🇬🇧 Segen 

• Fixed the issue where trade pricing was not displaying in the inverter component selector for organisations with a prior connection history with Segen.

Design Studio 

Enhanced inverter specifications for improved flexibility 

• Several inverters have been updated to support a maximum PV input power of up to 2 times the rated power, addressing limitations in product selection flexibility. Key Updates:
  • Users can now manually add or edit the max_dc_voltage value directly from the Control tab.
  • max_dc_voltage can also be imported via CSV for bulk updates.
  • The Inverter Detail popover now displays the Max DC Voltage for greater transparency.
  • DC/AC ratio warnings dynamically adjust based on the maximum DC watts, improving design accuracy.
  • Panel limits for inverters are now dynamically calculated based on max DC watts, instead of relying on rated output multiplied by a fixed factor.
• These updates ensure more accurate configurations and increased flexibility for system designs.

New energy storage metrics: Whole site backup hours & peak demand reduction 

• We've enhanced the Battery tab in Design Studio by adding Whole Site Backup Hours and Peak Demand Reduction as new energy storage metrics. These additions provide users with valuable insights into their battery’s backup duration and potential for reducing peak demand, aiding in more informed energy storage decisions. When a battery is added through either the manual list or the Battery Design Assistant, these metrics will automatically display in the Battery tab, integrating seamlessly into the Design Studio interface.

Shading calculations

• Fixed small “noneType” error on shading calculations when specific tariffs were used.
• Fixed small discrepancy between shade report on OpenSolar and downloaded documents

Other updates

🇦🇺 Automated modelling of the NSW Peak Demand Reduction Scheme incentive 

To enhance user experience, we've simplified the modelling process for Peak Reduction Certificates (PRCs) in OpenSolar.  

• What’s new
  • PRCs are now automated! When you select Incentive Type > Peak Hours Battery Incentive, the parameters are filled automatically.
  • For existing organizations, you can still manually add these incentives by navigating to Control > Others > Incentives > + Add Incentive.
• Key features
  • When modeling the BESS2, simply toggle on “Behind the Meter Contract (VPP)”, and calculations will utilize the BESS2 parameters.
  • PRCs are now location-specific, with system Network Loss Factor values varying based on your distributor.

View the support article to learn more.

🇺🇲 Implementation of Illinois Smart Solar Billing mechanism and incentive rebates 

• Starting January 1, 2025, Illinois will transition from full retail net metering to a new incentive and billing structure, termed Smart Solar Billing. This mechanism introduces Dynamic Supply Pricing based on time-of-use (TOU) rates for energy exports and restricts credits to the supply portion of the bill only. Additionally, Illinois is introducing two one-time rebates for solar and energy storage investments. Learn more

DocuSign integration

• Combined proposal and contract - When a DocuSign contract is completed, the project will now save a combined proposal and contract document rather than leaving them as separate documents.
• Preview not working - We have fixed an error received by users that prevented them from previewing the contract when managing the DocuSign contract in the project. 
• Spacing error in the name - When document templates using the DocuSign integration were sent to customers, in some instances, the countersign name appeared without a space. We have applied a fix for this error. 

Document management

• The success message will now time out - after generating a document, the success message would previously remain, and the user would have to close it. Now, the message will disappear after 7 seconds. 
• Checkboxes after merge action - after merging documents within a project, the checkboxes will be unchecked. 
• Updating labels to ‘document’ - refining labelling away from 'files' toward 'documents'. 

Tariff modelling

• Added the option of “Virtual Storage” as a new compensation mechanism. This allows users to simulate Virtual Power Plant tariffs on OpenSolar. 

Fixes

🇬🇧 Selina integration

• A fix was applied that caused the reversion rate and total loan amount fields to be displayed in a quotation table where Selina was not the payment option. 

Document generation

• A fix was applied where document generation crashed due to unknown placeholders in the template.