☀ Solar Energy Planner · rooftop PV, solar farms and green roofs for Ghana

Planning mode Rooftop PVGround-mounted solar farm Find the site address or place, Ghana

Enter the site by coordinates or dimensions

Corner coordinates one per line: lat, lon (WGS84) Use coordinates as site

Width (m) along rows

Length (m)

Rotation (°)

Rectangle at map centre

Module Rows parallel to edge from the last layout — auto / as entered —

Rearrange manually

Select (shift = multi) Remove (click) Add (click)

Move selected to click Delete selected Undo

Nudge (cm)

 

↑↓←→

Rotate −5°+5°90°

0 selected

Row alignment Best fit per row — more modules around obstacles Aligned grid — tidier rows, fewer modules

Shift grid along rows (m)

Shift grid across rows (m)

Apply / recompute Reset edits

GeoJSON CSV DXF

Compare variants (orientation × tilt × arrangement)

Click modules on the map to remove or restore them; hand-placed modules are not checked against edges or obstacles.

Use kWp in the Solar PV tab Open feasibility report (print / PDF) Client proposal (print / PDF)

Start from the customer's bill

Monthly units (kWh) off the ECG bill

or monthly bill (GHS)

Cover (%)

 Size it

Location Customer type ResidentialCommercial / business Roof area (m²) — or set a target size below Target system size (kWp) optional; overrides area — filled by the layout Layout yield factor orientation × shading, from the layout; 1 = horizontal, unshaded

Live PVGIS for the site (any point in Ghana)

Latitude

Longitude

Tilt (°)

Azimuth (° from N)

MountingFree / rails (air gap)Building-integrated

Yield basis for the economics Engine — GHI × PR × yield factor (conservative)Mean of engine and PVGISPVGIS site estimate

PVGIS-SARAH3 with ERA5 temperatures and a DEM horizon, 14 % system loss, cached 30 days; falls back to the city table if the JRC service is down.

Self-consumption: 60% Calculate solar

Battery & outage backup sizing

Annual load (kWh) or 12 × monthly bill

Load profileResidential (evening peak)Commercial (08–18 h)Continuous (24 h)

Battery chemistry Lithium (LiFePO4) — 80 % usable, ~15 yrLead-acid (AGM / tubular) — 50 % usable, ~6 yr Sizing mode Outage backup (dumsor) — primary in GhanaSelf-consumption (bill savings)Target self-sufficiency

Critical load (kW)

Ride-through target (h)

Outages (h/month)

Typical outage (h)

Target self-sufficiency

Capacity override (kWh usable)

Battery cost (GHS/kWh)

Generator cost (GHS/kWh) to value backup

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Load profile replaces the typed shape above Twelve monthly figures off the bills A metered interval file (meter / logger / inverter export) Twenty-four hourly fractions

Enter the kWh from each month's bill. January first.

Paste the export, or choose a file. Two columns: a timestamp and a value. A cumulative meter register is detected and differenced; kW is multiplied by the interval.

Units blank = from the headerautokWhkWWhW

Date orderautoDay first (01/03 = 1 Mar)Month first (01/03 = 3 Jan)

Scale to annual (kWh) optional

Twenty-four fractions or kW values, midnight first, comma or space separated. They are normalised.

Annual consumption (kWh)

Import the load profile Use the typed shape instead

Size battery Apply capacity + self-consumption to the solar case

Open feasibility report (print / PDF) Client proposal (print / PDF)

Dust, the harmattan and when to wash the array

Dust lands every day and rain washes it off. How much it costs you depends on your rainfall, so it differs sharply between the coast and the north. Enter what a cleaner charges and the tool works out the interval that costs least — it will not guess that price.

Cleaning cost (GHS per visit)

Cleaning interval (days)

Assess soiling

Borrowing for it: debt service and DSCR

What a bank reads: the cash the system frees each year against the loan repayment. Rates default to today's Ghanaian average; tenor and debt share are assumptions — use the offer.

Interest rate (%)

Tenor (years)

Debt share (%)

Assess the loan

Measured against modelled: how an installed system is really doing

Paste what the inverter actually produced — twelve monthly kWh figures (Jan to Dec, comma-separated) or an export file — and the tool compares it with what the model predicts for the same system. Months with too little data are shown but not judged.

Measured generation …or choose an export file Compare

Quantities come from the layout (modules, rows, perimeter) and the battery sizing. Every unit price is sourced, an explicit assumption (a share of the one sourced Ghana benchmark), user-entered, or missing (quantity shown, no money). Overwrite any price with a supplier quote.

Pricing channel EPC / installed (shares of the sourced installed benchmark)Retail listings (published shop prices, consumer markup) Fill from layout + battery

Price book (GHS) — edit to override

Compute bill of quantities Open feasibility report (print / PDF) Client proposal (print / PDF)

Screening of the IFC EDGE certification levels (Certified 20/20/20 · Advanced 40 % energy · Zero Carbon = Advanced + 100 % renewable offset). PV generation, green-roof area and rainwater harvest are pulled from the other tabs; enter the building's other EDGE App measures where known.

Fill from Solar, Green roof and layout Screen EDGE credits Open feasibility report (print / PDF) Client proposal (print / PDF)

Each roof face gets its own view and is laid out in the plane of the roof, so the areas are the real surface you cover, not the foreshortened plan. Nothing here needs satellite imagery — enter what you measured with a tape and an inclinometer.

Start from a typical roof How was eave→ridge measured? Build faces Import faces from the map layout Add a face manually

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Use a module that is not in the list

Name

Wp

Length (m)

Width (m)

Weight (kg)

Fill Wp, length and width to override the catalogue. Clear the Wp field to go back.

Lay out every face Use kWp in the Solar PV tab Send modules to the bill of quantities

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Shading — trees, walls, neighbours

Click the sketch to place an obstruction; drag one to move it. Bearing and distance follow from where you drop it.

Bearing is a compass bearing from the middle of the eave: 0° north, 90° east, 180° south. Heights are above the same ground datum as the eave. In Ghana the noon sun is north of overhead for about five months, so a tree to the north matters.

Needs the shading above and the stringing below. Modules in series carry one current, so a string either bypasses its shaded modules or throttles its clear ones — which modules share a string changes the yield at no cost.

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Stringing & inverter

Enter the module datasheet (recommended before ordering)

Voc (V)

Vmp (V)

Isc (A)

Imp (A)

β Voc (%/°C)

β Vmp (%/°C)

NOCT (°C)

All four of Voc, Vmp, Isc and Imp must be filled to override the class-typical defaults.

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DC cable & voltage drop Strings are paralleled in a combiner box

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AC cable & protection Transformerless inverter (no galvanic separation) Manufacturer states the inverter provides at least simple separation Inverter is to IEC 62109-1 and its instructions do not require a Type B RCD

An integrated RCMU is not one of the three exceptions in IEC 60364-7-712 cl. 712.530.3.101 — only simple separation, or the manufacturer's own instructions, relieve the Type B requirement.

Open feasibility report (print / PDF) Client proposal (print / PDF) Single-line diagram Commissioning test sheet (print / PDF)