RatedPower has focused its growth on the solar industry by developing and innovative technology that helps companies discover smarter ways to maximize the potential of a solar photovoltaic plant. The company transforms traditional engineering using digital technologies and heuristic calculations, to optimize and automate the design & engineering process.

During the second quarter of this year, the company's software pvDesign introduced new functionalities to the market. With many new updates, RatedPower has confirmed its competitiveness in the market. The first milestone is the import of geospatial data for faster site prospection. According to the company, PV developers can now speed up land surveying through two tools: importing cadastral parcel geometries during the design process and importing the data of each parcel from the Enverus catalog, the widest and deepest available on the market.

"The connection between Enverus Power & Renewables solutions and RatedPower allows developers, IPPs and funds to confidently and accurately present their investment thesis, understand their risks and opportunities," said Angeliki Zeaki, Product Manager at RatedPower. More details on this functionality can be found during the live session "Power duo: Power & renewables parcels and RatedPower[AGM1] ".

The second update concerns roadless layouts. The company explains that it is now possible to generate layouts without roads. “By eliminating roads, a higher area fill factor is achieved. The location of the transformer station (TS) also changes. When the roadless option is selected, the TS will be placed as close as possible to the access point of the available area. This option is only available if the PV plant has only one TS, or if each area is less than 5 ha”, says RatedPower.

A third update falls on the equipment database. With this new solution the library of structures, modules and inverters now includes 5,000 updated references, allowing a quick comparison of the energy production performance and LCOE of the chosen equipment.

Finally, the company has focused on the grouping of low voltage zones. With this fourth update, customers and RatedPower users can now tell the software that certain available areas can share the low voltage system. Previously, an inverter could only be contained in one area. This meant that if a zone was too small, there could be unused structures due to DC/AC ratio restrictions. With this new functionality, an inverter can have structures in more than one zone, resulting in much higher peak power under certain conditions.

"As the availability of land for green field PV projects shrinks, developers, IPPs and utilities must minimize the unused peak power on their available PV project areas to mitigate their risks and maximize the use of the land", said Julian Scheer, PV Technical Advisor during his talk “Unlock the Full Potential of Your PV Plant: Expert Tips for Reducing Unused Peak Power”.

RatedPower has also updated their solar software buying guide with the latest news and updates available in the market.

A global solution presented at Intersolar Europe

RatedPower was present at Intersolar Europe, the world's leading exhibition for the solar industry. During the event, the company received hundreds of experts who were greeted with these new updates.

A new key update was in fact released during the exhibition: inputs per area. It is usual that due to area characteristics such as shape and size, users would like to apply different input strategies to get the most out of the terrain. They are now able to define the civil and power inputs per area. Important design parameters such as the number of inverters, the DC/AC ratio, the pitch distance, the type of road and the rotation angle or offset of the layout, can be defined per area. RatedPower believes that this feature will increase the ability to customize the PV plant and achieve more installed capacity.

Julian Scheer, who participated in the exhibition, said to Review Energy that with pvDesign userscan “generate a lot of designs and can get a lot of data and results in a more streamlined way, compared to other players in the market”.

While Ángela Gutiérrez, Marketing Specialist at RatedPower added that "the main competitive advantage would be that pvDesign being a cloud-based software allows for easier work. You don't need to download anything, and the users can work in the cloud. . It also allows unlimited users, so anyone in the company can use it, which makes it easier when you have a big project or a lot of projects. It's a very intuitive software so anyone who is not technically savvy can work with it".

Watch the full interview with the company here: