Using SAM's new ground-mount slope feature with fixed-tilt PV

Hi all,
Very excited about the new features rolling out! I am currently designing a ground-mounted system that is on a hill, and want to use the 'Terrain Slope (deg)' in combination with the GCR to get the shading losses for my system. However, if I select 'fixed tilt', then the Terrain Slope field is still grayed out.

Does anyone know how to use SAM to properly calculate shading (& therefore the ideal row spacing) with panels tilted on a slope?

Thanks,
- Colin Schimmelfing

Hi Colin,

The new terrain slope model is only available for one-axis tracking.

As you probably noticed, we did not get a chance to revise Help to add a description of the new terrain slope inputs in time for the December 2, 2021 release date. We will make that and other Help revisions for the first software update, which we expect to release sometime in February.

In the meantime, you can learn about the feature from this description and linked article on the SAM GitHub repository: github.com/NREL/SAM/pull/742

Best regards,
Paul.