Summary:
When designing solar systems, your client may have an existing solar system installed. OpenSolar gives you the capability to quickly and easily accommodate this if they would like to upgrade their system with more hardware.
The first step in adding to an existing system is creating the system the customer already has on their home. To do this, you will need to know the information of the items already installed on the home. You can review this Article to know more about adding a new panel from our database.
Creating the existing system
- From the module tab, use our drop-down to select the module type.
- Paint the Modules over the existing system by clicking
and clicking and dragging over the existing system (see this Article for more information on creating 2D panel groups)
Use the menu on the left-hand side to select the inverter and anything else that might be right now installed on the home.
Adding to the existing system:
Once you've created your existing system, it is time to duplicate it and create what you are adding to the home.
- Duplicate the current system by clicking Add New System then Duplicate System on the left sidebar.
- From there do not change anything that is already there but rather add the components you will be adding to the home.
- Once that is complete, select once again the original system by clicking on it from the left sidebar.
- Go to the Summary tab and scroll down to reveal the Advanced Settings. Tick the box for System Hidden From Customer as well as Existing System to Upgrade.
- Once this is done, the new system will only calculate the information being added to the home.
The online proposal
Once all the hardware information has been added. You can go into your online proposal. Both the online proposal and the PDF proposal will now display only the items you will be adding to the home. On the PDF proposal, the corresponding specifications will also show for exhibited manufacturers.
Comments
5 comments
I think a step has been missed.
Once the existing system has been duplicated, to see pricing of the new additional system, I needed to return to the Summary tab, and untick the box " existing system to upgrade". Pricing then displayed for the new system I applied. Prior to doing this step, pricing displayed as zero.
Also, needed to ensure that the Payments box was ticked for the newly generated option, for it to appear on the online proposal page.
Hope this helps.
Is the old system meant to disappear? I've followed this twice and somehow missed the end result
I cant figure out how to make this work. Any advise on how to create a proposal with an existing system. I tried this many times following the directions.
Hi Info. What happens when you click the "Duplicate System" option or do you not even get to that stage?
Hi Nicole Lunnon,
Your option is only needed if this was checked before the system got duplicated. What we suggest is making the two system options and then going to the original and checking the existing system to upgrade and hide from customer. If in fact, this is selected before duplicating then yes it does have to be unchecked.
best,
OpenSolar Team
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