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Bill of Materials

Jonas Žemaitaitis

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Bill of Materials

Using PVcase you can easily export the bill of materials containing all necessary information pertaining to the project. To perform this action, we will navigate to the Layout information tab. Having done so, we will now select the PV areas that we intend to export - this can be done by clicking on the select PV areas button and selecting all PV area boundary lines that we want to export. To finalize, we press Space or Enter on the keyboard. Example below:

To generate the pole coordinates for the bill of materials, we click on the Piling information button to generate this information. Having done so, we are prompted to select the PV area boundary lines and finalize by pressing Space or Enter on the keyboard. Example below:

Now the pole IDs and lengths of all the poles are displayed on the drawing and will be incorporated into the bill of materials files.

For the Spot levels to be reflected in the bill of materials, make sure the Spot levels in the Ground grading window are activated before exporting the BOM.

Finally, to create the bill of materials files, navigate to the Bill of Materials section and click on Export to XLSX. We are now able to see a pop-up window where we will need to specify the directory where we want to save the file and have the option to rename it. To finalize the export process, click on Save. Now we are presented with another pop-up window asking if we want to open the BOM file; In this case, we will click Yes. Example below:

As we can see, we are presented with the exported Bill of materials spreadsheet file, where we will find:

  • Project overview - this menu contains all the basic project information.

  • Piling information - this menu contains the table number, name of the preset, amount of poles, their coordinate and pole reveal lengths, table slope (or section slope for terrain following trackers), table direction, and table fault which indicates if the frame was affected by collision or slope limits

  • Electrical connections - this menu contains cable lengths from device to device. The naming will vary depending on the electrical system type in a given design.

  • Spot levels - this menu contains coordinates with two different elevations before and after the grading, as well as how much earth was moved in that specific point.

  • Iterations - in this tab, you can see the results from your Capacity iteration.

Excel Tips and tricks

Cable sorting

In the Excel cabling tabs, we can identify cable sections that may be longer than a previously established value by using Conditional Formatting:

In the example above, we found several strings that had a cable length greater than 80 meters. Based on that, it's possible to go back to the design to identify the route done by those cables and optimize them if needed.

The cables that bridge motor gaps or several tables (in case modules of different tables are connected in the same string), will appear as Extension cables.

Frame Reveal versus Pile Reveal

If Show Piling Information is selected before exporting to XLSX, the piles will show in the "Piling Information" tab. Column H reads "Pole aerial length", but this is meant to be the "Frame reveal", that is, the distance from the back of the module to the ground at the pile location (=Z frame attach - Z terrain enter).

If the user needs the actual Pile reveal, this can be easily calculated in the Excel sheet. The only information needed from the mounting system supplier, is the distance between the top of pile and the back of module (hereby referred to as mounting system width or "Width"). Just add a column on the right side of column H ("Pole aerial length"), name it "Pile reveal", select the first cell below the title, input the equation = H3-Width and then extend that formula to the whole column by double-clicking in the bottom right corner of the cell. This is shown in the following video for a tracker system using a typical "Width" value of 0.3 meters:

Pile depth (or embedment)

If the user also has the information regarding total pile length, it would be equally simple to add another column and subtract the previously calculated "Pile reveal" from the "Total pile length" to calculate the "Pile embedment". This is shown in the following video for a tracker system using a total pile length of 5 meters:

If different pile lengths are used for different positions within a frame, it is easy to use Excel filters to calculate the pile depths accordingly. This is shown in the following video for a tracker system using a total pile length of 5 meters for pile numbers 1,2,3,4,5,9,10,11,12,13 and a total pile length of 4 meters for pile numbers 7,8,9:

Filtering for different "Preset types", the user can also use different length of piling for each type of frame.

Front and back piling alignment for Fixed tilt systems

When exporting piling for Fixed tilt systems with PVcase GM, the X, Y positions for each pile will be shown. Because of the frames being adapted to the terrain, the X positions for the front and back piles might not align. If the user needs to share the export file with other stakeholders (e.g. the piling contractor) showing alignment, this can be easily done in Excel as is shown in this video:

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