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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.