How to adjust your simulation settings

Summary:

OpenSolar allows you to customize simulation settings at the organization level to fine-tune how energy production and financial metrics are calculated. These settings affect aspects like utility inflation, performance adjustments, simulation duration, system losses, and more. This article guides you through locating and updating these settings within your OpenSolar account.

Where to Access Simulation Settings:

To access your organization’s simulation settings:

Control > Design & Hardware > Setback & Design Settings

From this page, you can either:

• Edit an existing settings preset, or

• Create a new one tailored to specific project types or locations.

Simulation Settings Overview:

Expand the Simulation Settings section within your chosen preset to access various financial and energy calculation options.

Below is a breakdown of each configurable field:

Automatically Set Years to Simulate:

• Toggle ON to automatically simulate based on the maximum module product warranty among all system options in a project.

• This ensures each system is evaluated for a realistic performance lifespan.

Years to Simulate:

• Only visible if Auto-Simulation is OFF.

• Specifies the default simulation length (typically 20 years).

• You can adjust this per system later within Studio to explore different timeframes.

Performance Adjustment (%):

• Adjusts the assumed performance of the PV system.

  • 100% = No adjustment (as designed).

  • 90% = 10% reduction to account for additional losses.

  • 110% = 10% enhancement to reflect better-than-expected performance.

Utility Inflation / Price Inflation Annual (%):

• Represents the annual increase in utility rates used in financial savings calculations.

• Default value: 3% per annum.

Feed-in Tariff Inflation (%):

• Annual increase applied to feed-in tariffs, affecting how excess energy is compensated over time.

Usage Adjustment After Sale (%):

• Simulates changes in the customer’s energy usage after the solar system is installed.

• Adjusted on a yearly percentage basis.

 Discount Rate (%):

• Default: 6.75%

• Used in financial models like NPV and ROI.

• A higher discount rate implies future cash flows are valued less in today’s terms.

• Helps calculate the present value of future savings or returns.

• This setting influences how monthly and annual energy yields are computed by choosing which Production Calculator to use.
• OpenSolar recommends choosing "Auto" as your simulation. This will ensure you are always using the latest Production Calculator on OpenSolar. 
• If you want to pick a specific simulation engine, select the simulation engine from the dropdown. This will be used across your projects.

Weather Dataset:

• Selects the weather data used for calculating system performance across seasons.

• OpenSolar uses regional weather files to accurately project monthly output.

System Losses:

• Some losses are hard-coded within the chosen calculator.

• Others are manually configurable:

  • Use the fields under System Advisor Model (SAM) Losses for custom loss parameters like shading, wiring, soiling, etc.

Saving Your Changes:

After updating your simulation settings:

• Scroll to the bottom of the page.

• Click the Save button to apply your changes.

This ensures the new preset will be used when modeling future projects under this configuration.