Many of the articles in Canal Solar use the help of software simulations to study some phenomenon. It is undeniable that today, for any type of system, the simulation of generation in specific programs is not only a differential compared to the competition, but an obligation for those who seek to be sincere and precise in their commercial proposals.
When we build a commercial proposal or system documentation, we will rely on the simulation data, the situation design and the financial simulations. The simulation results can be integrated into other documents (commercial proposals, documentation, financial analyses, bills of materials, etc.) manually, by copying and pasting the relevant values, or they can be integrated directly into the program used for the simulation (this is the case of SOLergo).
In this article, we will explore how to generate project documentation automatically and, more importantly, how to customize this documentation to your company's own format, thus gaining agility in preparing them.
SOLergo
SOLergo is photovoltaic system design software with a more intuitive and user-friendly interface than PVSyst. It is capable of simulating from simple residential systems to complex systems, with multiple consumer units, multiple generators and shading, leaving nothing to be desired on any front compared to its main competitors.
In this article we will cover the use of the report generation tool. The program has a series of predefined reports, which automatically pulls data from the fields entered in other sections by the user and calculated generation data and compiles them in document form, with some standard texts found in this type of documentation.
The program also has ready-made templates for the registration form requested by ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency).
The pre-defined reports already have good language and organization to be sent to clients, but customizing these reports with your company's formatting, logo, figures and information gives an important air of professionalism to the document.
It is possible, for example, to create a report model to be used when sending commercial proposals, greatly speeding up the preparation of the report, as the software will fill in the data in the commercial proposal with the results of the system simulation. Next we will show the creation of a commercial proposal model in SOLergo.
Tutorial for creating a commercial proposal
SOLergo report templates can be accessed in the “Documentation” section by clicking on “Edit templates”.
To better understand how the report data structure works, we will start by creating a copy of the pre-defined general report (Select the report, click on “Duplicate” and then select the copy and click on “Edit”).
We will then see the window below.
Below is an example of a generated report.
The SOLergo document editor is very similar to common text editors on the market, such as Microsoft Word or Wordpad, for example. This way, writing text, editing colors, fonts, sizes and inserting tables can be done using the icons on the first two lines or through the “Edit”, “Format” and “Insert” menus.
Labels are the values between the symbols “<” and “>”. The field described in the labels will be referenced to the values that the program found for that field. So, for example, the tag “ ” will be filled in by the system power when exporting the document.
Tags can be easily added by right-clicking on the body of the text and clicking “Insert Tags”. The program will then list all possible tags for each of the program sections. So, for example, if I wanted to insert the customer's role in the report, I would simply navigate to: Insert label → Customer → “Customer – Role”.
In addition to the labels that were inserted, page codes must be assigned. These codes serve to separate the sections of information contained in the document, for example, the personal data of the customer and responsible technician are included in the “BK00_START and END” section, while the technical data of the photovoltaic generator are included in the “BK02_START and END” section. .
The main codes of the documents are “BK”. Each block contains a code, described in the program's “Help File”. These blocks are defined by the codes below.
Below is an illustration of the representation of the label positioning relating to customer data, in the “BK00_START and END” section.
Likewise, the user can repeat a label already inserted within a section, in another part of the document. When carrying out this procedure, it is no longer necessary to repeat the page code. To insert a new main code “BK” into the document, the previous one must have been finalized.
For example, if the user filled in the customer information in the BK00_START section and wants to proceed with filling in the sizing data in the BK01_START section, the code BK00_END must be entered before BK01_START.
To insert tables, you need to create a table (in the “Table” menu or in the “Insert table” icon) and position the label in the first cell, in addition to ensuring that it is described in the corresponding block. Graphics can also be inserted using labels. See below as an example.
The following report will be produced.
SOLergo also generates single-line, multi-line diagram, situation view and generator details. All these figures can also be inserted into the customized report. Below, an example.
The generator layout, an aerial view of the situation and a single-line diagram will be included in the report.
The software also allows you to include a header and footer, accessing the File – Header and footer field. A window will open that allows you to insert images, texts and page numbering labels that will be added to the header and footer of each page of the report, as shown below.
To prevent the header or footer from being inserted on the first page, simply access the Tools – Options – Documents field in SOLergo, and uncheck the options “Header on first page” and “Footer on first page”, as shown below.
Another function that can be included in the software's personalized documents is the summary. To insert it, simply select a field and right-click and select the “Summary” label, as shown below.
For the titles and subtitles of the document to be recognized in the summary, it is necessary to select the title or subtitle and associate the “Title” formatting, as shown below.
Each “Title” represents a level, that is, Title 1 is the first level and Title 2 represents the second level or subtitle. To be able to format the “Titles” access the Format – Styles field. In this window you can change the fonts, sizes, and levels, among other options, and keep them predefined for the next documents, as shown below.
It is also worth remembering that SOLergo reports are always exported in Rich Text format (.rtf) and can be later edited in other programs for other customizations or layout changes. A good starting point for creating your own report templates is to study the structure of the program's standard reports.
Conclusion
Having an automated report with figures, texts and personalized information according to your company's standards integrated with the simulation software brings time savings and professionalism to the documents sent to clients, whether they are commercial proposals, detailed descriptions or financial simulations.
An answer
Thanks for sharing useful data.