GCR and Row Spacing

Hi,

I have a question about how module width changes self shading/GCR. I understand that the model calculates the length of side and row spacing from the module area. Will this have a large effect on my shading if length of side and row spacing is not correct? My length of side should be 4m and row spacing should be 6.71m but it is showing 3.4m/6.126m. I am using a GCR of 0.555 and module area of 1.9404.

SAM uses ModuleArea/1.7, which is not accurate for 72 cell modules.

Thanks!

-PD

Dear Patrick,

This is a limitation in the current version of SAM, which assumes that the module aspect ration is 1.7:1 regardless of the actual dimensions of the module.

The main reason we chose to implement the self-shading model in this way is that the module databases we have been using (CEC and Sandia) have provided module area data, but not length and width. That has changed recently, so we are investigating the possibility of changing that. We also should be able make the length and width available as inputs for the "CEC Performance Model with User Entered Specifications" module model in SAM.

Stay tuned for those changes in the January 2017 of SAM. As always, thank you very much for your feedback.

Best regards,
Paul.