Solar Panel Designing Tool @ UCI APEP

Advanced Energy Communities (AECs) in California assist in accelerating the deployment of renewable energy resources. AECs achieve net-zero energy with onsite renewables and storage which improve grid reliability and resilience. Best practices are developed to be replicable and scalable into other communities. 

To achieve the goal, onsite renewables, and storage are required in large quantities. This also requires tools that can assist in the designing process. Most of the web-based solar panel designers by the time were made for planning on a single building and therefore failed to perform well in designing for larger areas. 

The solar panel design tool we developed is capable of generating solar panels for groups of buildings. Users can create edges of the buildings simply by marking the vertices. Then the users can generate the mesh by choosing a roof type. After the roof is created, solar panels can be generated based on the geometry. The detailed workflow is provided below: