The Complete 2025 PV Solar Energy | PVsyst, Excel & AutoCAD

Learn how to design a photovoltaic system by mastering the declination, elevation, and tilt angles, calculating them with the given formulas to maximize solar radiation and output.

Identify the types of solar radiation—direct horizontal, diffuse horizontal, and global horizontal—and learn how sun angle, time of day, and clouds affect solar panel output for design.

Explore how global tilted radiation is calculated for tilted solar panels, using global horizontal radiation, tilt angle, peak sun hours, and the relationships alpha, beta, and alpha+beta=90.

Develop an off-grid design in New York by calculating monthly peak sun hours with Excel, using elevation angles, tilted angle, and declination, then apply min, max, and average rules.

Explore photovoltaic, concentrated photovoltaic, and concentrated solar power technologies, including PV panels, charge controllers, inverters, and energy storage, plus CSP configurations like trough, linear Fresnel, tower, and dish.

Explain how solar cells use a p-n junction in semiconductors to convert light into electricity, generating electron-hole pairs that drive current through a depletion region, with modules, panels, and arrays.

Learn to analyze solar panels by interpreting the I-V and P-V curves, identifying Isc, Voc, Vmpp, and Impp, and understanding how irradiation, shadow effects, and temperature affect performance.

Compare fixed tilt and tracking solar systems, noting higher output but cost and maintenance for trackers. Review single- and dual-axis trackers and open- and closed-loop controllers with seasonal tilt strategies.

Explore batteries in off-grid solar systems, from primary to secondary types, and how chemical energy stores electricity for use. Compare lead-acid and lithium options, including deep-cycle varieties.

Explore the key battery specifications for solar systems—capacity, depth of discharge, state of charge, and lifecycle—and how charge rate, temperature, aging, and cycles affect usable capacity.

Learn how depth of discharge and state of charge affect battery capacity and cycle life, and why a practical depth of discharge around 50–75% balances life and performance.

Design an off-grid solar system by calculating total loads, power, and energy, then set panel parameters using location coordinates, declination, elevation, tilt, and monthly irradiation for reliable off-grid performance.

Design and sizing of battery banks for off-grid solar systems, calculating ampere-hour capacity, autonomy days, depth of discharge, efficiency, and configuring series and parallel connections for inverter voltage.

Calculate the off-grid solar area by panel spacing to avoid shading using worst-case shadow geometry. Compute the area as panel width times spacing, multiplied by the number of panels.

Design and size cables and protection devices for off-grid solar systems by calculating branch currents, selecting fuse and circuit-breaker ratings, and choosing suitable cross-sectional areas.

Use excel to design an off-grid solar system, extracting panel and battery data (250 W mono-crystalline; 37.4 V; 8.63 A; 12 V, 200 Ah, 90% efficiency) and calculating losses.

Compute total system losses for an off-grid solar design in Excel, size the panel array, inverter, and charger, and determine panel area and layout.

Learn essential AutoCAD commands for solar design layouts, including line, arc, circle, rectangle, hatch, trim, copy, mirror, move, and explode.

Learn essential AutoCAD commands for measuring area and distance, editing colors and line widths, creating arrays, exploding and grouping objects, plucking blocks, scaling, fillets, fills, and rotating.

Design the off-grid solar layout step 2 by modeling the charger controller, protection port, and battery system, wiring six terminals and establishing a 48-volt pathway.

Complete the off-grid solar system layout by connecting the inverter, wiring, and distribution panel across dedicated layers, with color-coded lines and labeled loads for a functional design.

Understand how grid-tie solar systems feed the grid, contrast solar farms with rooftop setups, and identify key components such as panels and inverters, plus net metering and synchronization concepts.

Design steps for a grid-tied solar system: set tilt to latitude, compute declination and elevation angles, determine panel spacing and count, estimate total power, and size inverters with string sharing.

Apply grid-tie solar system design using a Rome, Italy example to perform manual calculations of tilt angle, panel layout, inverter sizing, and project economics.

learn to adapt an excel-based solar design tool to an on-grid system by adjusting location, panel specs, tilt, spacing, and calculating station power and panel counts.

Enter inverter power and string counts in Excel to compute monthly energy, tariff-based income, capital cost, and payback years for a solar station in a PVsyst, Excel & AutoCAD workflow.

Explore grid-tie solar design using PVsyst, modeling on-grid and net metering, optimizing tilt and azimuth angles, input area, panel type, and cost estimates for a London project.

Optimize a grid-tied solar array by adjusting panel spacing and tilt to balance shading and ground coverage; analyze shading graphs and elevation angles in PVsyst to maximize output power.

Learn to design a standalone off-grid solar system with PVsyst, from site selection in Milano to tilt optimization, battery and panel sizing, load profiling, and performance simulations.