User-Defined Tilt Angles for Photovoltaic Subarrays

Hello,

Is it currently possible to change the tilt angle in SAM on an hourly basis? I am currently working on a new design for PV systems racking and my system's tilt angle varies with wind speed. I want to estimate energy production using SAM.

If not, is there a way to integrate a user-defined formula in the SAM algorithm for the calculation of tilt angles? I have looked in PySam but I don't believe PySam gives me access to modify the tilt angles through my own equations.

Regards,
Koami.

Hi Koami,

It is not possible to assign time series tilt values as input for SAM's Detailed PV model. You can use the Seasonal Tilt option to specify tilt angles by month.

We do have plans to add a time series option to a future version of SAM:

github.com/NREL/SAM/issues/850

Best regards,
Paul.

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your answer. I will do this manually. I have been using SAM consistently in my research and if this new study yields promising results, we would like to have it available for other SAM users. Is there a way to adapt our calculation to SAM once we implement it?

Regards,
Koami.

Hi Koami,

If you mean that you would like to modify SAM's code based on your work, you can make a code contribution for us to review. See our code contribution policy on the SAM GitHub repository: github.com/NREL/SAM/wiki/Contribution-Policy .

Otherwise, if you mean that you would like to share the results of your research, you can use this forum, or depending on the nature of the results, we may be able to post a link to them from the SAM website.

Best regards,
Paul.