I am trying to better understand the differences between generating solar
production 8760s in SAM and producing them with the PVWatts API. Does SAM simply wrap PVWatts, or does it add nuance/accuracy to the solar generation estimates?
The
PVWatts V5 API
runs the same SSC compute module as SAM.
The main differences between the two are:
- The API includes parameters to access the "Solar Dataset Query API" that is not part of SAM.
- SAM includes additional parameters for shading and curtailment and availability losses that are not part of the API.
- In SAM, you can couple PVWatts with a financial model to calculate metrics like NPV, IRR, PPA price, payback period, etc. The API provides access to only the performance model.
Best regards,
Paul.
