ASSET Software
Program Output
The ASSET can be used on several levels. For a basic analysis, one can immediately visualize the midday hours where the site has unobstructed sun. The ASSET program also calculates shading percentage by month, the amount of sunlight which can be expected at the site from historical data, and the available sunlight after taking into account shading at the site. The shading factor shows the overall amount of sunlight captured after taking into account shading.
Figure 11:
For a more detailed study, the program also provides a spreadsheet, "spreadsheet.xls", showing computed shading for each one hour segment of the day, averaged over each month. Weighting factors are also listed which show how much sunlight is received at each portion of the day and for how many kiloWatt-hours may be captured at each portion of the day. Note that sunlight and energy captured are not linearly related since the calculations use a model for inverter efficiency which varies with load.
Figure 12:
To view "spreadsheet.xls", click on the shading data grid in the ASSET program. The spreadsheet data can be edited to account for additional project-specific information, such as more accurate inverter and wiring efficiencies, deciduous tree annual variability, and as an alternate way to examine the effect of removing a tree or correcting dark portions which were misinterpreted as shading, or light portions which were misinterpreted as unshaded (besides editing panorama.jpg). The spreadsheet is also a handy way to create custom reports for your clients. You may notice that a second spreadsheet, "tmy2data.csv", also opens. This file is overwritten when the "Update" button is pressed in the ASSET program, therefore, changes are best made to "spreadsheet.xls". (Note: The spreadsheet must be closed when the "Update" feature is activated in order to properly update.)
To customize the spreadsheet for all future projects, you can modify the template to which each new project refers. The template is located in your ASSET directory, "spreadsheet5.xls" or for version 1.31 "spreadsheet4.xls". Your modified spreadsheet must keep the same filename and location to be used by the ASSET software. We recommend saving a copy of spreadsheet5.xls before modifying so you can easily return to the default report.