Combining SAM with user-defined scripts

Hi Sophie,
That decision is governed by NREL and Department of Energy policies. You can read more about NREL's approach to technology transfer here:
www.nrel.gov/about/technology-transfer.html 
Best regards,

Paul.

Hi Paul,

I'm writing to see if you could provide an update on the topics we discussed here. In particular:
-In a PV modeling workshop last Fall, it was mentioned that the SAM source code would be made available some time in the coming summer, roughly. I wanted to check: is that still the plan?

-If/when this is done, will it be easy to "switch out" or add different models than the ones currently used in SAM?

-Are there any plans to make the "module losses" category more granular? (Our clients have come to expect the level of detail provided in PVsyst)

By the way: I was happy to see that (linear) self-shading is now included for single-axis trackers, that's nice Would it be easy to add it for 2-axis trackers?

Dear Sophie,

We are working toward making SAM's source code available now. It should be available sometime this year (2017). We will make an announcement when the code is available.

When the source code is available, it will be possible to build your own version of SAM from C++ with any modifications you like. It will not necessarily be easy to exchange one piece of code with another, but it will be possible.

We do not currently have plans to add self-shading for two-axis trackers, but I will add it to our list of user requests.

Best regards,
Paul.

Dear Paul,

Thanks for the quick reply! Regarding the module losses, are there any plans to add granularity to that? If not: do you think this would be "doable" given the current code structure?

Best regards,
Sophie

Dear Sophie,

Regarding detail in the module loss output, we are considering ways to do that. Because the photovoltaic models do not model the physical processes that contribute to those losses separately, doing so requires making some educated guesses about the contribution of each to the total loss as a post-processing step after the model generates results.

Best regards,
Paul.

Thanks for your response Paul. I'll think about best ways to do that on my end as well!
Sophie