New interface language, many usability and design improvements, IEEE symbols in substation SLDs
pvDesign - backend v5.3.35, frontend v1.5.0
January saw the release of many features aimed at improving the usability of the pvDesign interface. The performance of the Layout tab in the Design Process received a huge boost, and we also overhauled the design comparison feature. These changes will help our users get the most out of pvDesign.
Another huge change is that it is now possible to use the interface in the German language. With this addition, the pvDesign interface can now be used in 7 languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, French, and German).
New Features
The following new features were released in January:
- German language in the interface: It is now possible to use pvDesign in German. To change the language of the interface, head over to User Preferences and select the language using the drop down list.
- Comparison page improvements: The design comparison page has been improved significantly. It is now possible to add new values to the table (structure configuration, available area, etc), and to highlight the highest and lowest value of each variable. You can now drag and drop to reorder the rows. The filters can now be saved from session to session. We also increased the usability of the add designs modal, which now includes a search box, filters, and more. Finally, the charts can now be sorted by name, date or price.
- IEEE symbols in the substation documents: Addressing a very frequent request from our users in the US, the SLD documents of the substation now show the electrical symbols according to the IEEE standard.
- Layout tab performance improvements: We greatly enhanced the speed and responsiveness of the Layout tab in the Design Process page. Now it should feel much snappier, and the whole page should be faster when going back and forth between the other tabs and the layout. We also made changes to the topography algorithm in the calculation model which should result in faster layouts, specially in the bigger PV plants.
- Electrical shading loss in Energy: The model behind the electrical shading loss in the energy calculation has been remade. All the details are available in the Energy Methodology Report, section 7.2.2. The new model takes into account the string positioning in the structure, and takes into account the losses already incurred in the linear shading algorithm.
- Copy-paste feature in the CAPEX page: When pasting a column of values from Microsoft Excel, now the entire column will be pasted across categories in the CAPEX page. The copy paste feature has also been ported to the costs tab in the Design process. This change makes it much easier to copy entire templates from Microsoft Excel.
Bug fixes and improvements
These bug fixes and improvements were released in January:
- When using border adaptation, the structures will now be better able to fit the perimeter of the PV plant, slightly increasing capacity in some situations.
- Fixed a bug which caused the MV-LV SLD document to show duplicate inverters.
- Fixed a bug in the energy simulation which could cause simulations to fail when the plant was rotated more than 270 degrees.
- Improved handling of license expiration in the interface and in the backend.
- Fixed an issue which occurred when a restricted area had a very slender corner.
- Fixed an issue which caused the access road to be connected to the wrong road, and left the other roads unconnected, resulting in a simulation failure.
- Fixed an issue which caused the simulation to fail due to an error in the Substation report.
- Fixed an issue which caused the access road to remain unconnected in some geometries with conflicting restricted areas.
- Added a paragraph detailing the delivery point limit loss in the energy report.
- Added east-west feature translations for PT, FR, IT.
- Added infinite scroll and a search box in the capex template selector drop-down in the costs page.
- Added error messages when introducing special characters in the multiple designs modal.
- The table for selecting equipment in the Equipment tab now remains open after closing the equipment details modal.
- Fixed the units of Specific Price and LCOE.
- Added a password strength meter in the change password page.
- Fixed an issue which caused the interface not to show errors when logging in failed.
- Fixed a bug which caused the layout tab to reload several times after it had been used more than once.
- Fixed bugs which caused the layout tab not to reload after going back and forth between the design process tabs.
- Improved the performance of the layout tab when using big PV plants, which could sometimes crash.