Release notes 2.56

📢 What's new

New features

DC-Coupled BESS support

Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are a popular component in many modern solar power projects, enabling the storage and release of energy as well as fine-grained control of power flow. After previously releasing support for AC-coupled BESS designs, PVcase now also supports DC-coupled BESS projects.

Add DC BESS elements

Adding DC BESS elements to your design is easy:

1. Go to the Electrical devices tab.
2. Find the BESS subsection.
3. Click the new DC BESS button.
4. Begin adding BESS elements to your design.

After clicking this button, a new dialog box will open, where you can enter the rated power and capacity for your BESS elements.

Once you have configured the electrical parameters, you can start adding BESS elements. You can either select existing elements to edit or draw new ones. The first element you draw will be the template; every subsequent element will be placed as a copy of the first one.

You can add as many elements as you need with one click. When done, press ESC to exit drawing mode.

Assign central inverter

The next step will be to assign a central inverter to your DC BESS elements. In this case, we are creating a new central inverter block, but you can also select an existing block object, which will be converted to a central inverter for BESS assignment.

After the transformer is selected, the DC BESS elements will be automatically assigned to it, and properly labeled. Labeling can be edited at any moment in our editor interface, which now also includes DC BESS elements.

DC main cabling

The next step will be the generation of DC (main) cabling between the BESS elements and the central inverter. First, make sure that you have appropriately placed trench lines in the design, in case you are using them for cable pathing. Then, the procedure is completed by clicking the Generate DC Main cabling button.

This will apply DC cabling to the design, connecting the added DC BESS elements to the parent central inverter.

Device overview

The device overview is also updated with DC BESS elements, under the parent central inverter. DC power for BESS is also included in the overview. From this interface, you can also rename your BESS elements at your convenience.

SLD and BOM

DC BESS elements are displayed in the SLDs in the same order as in the device overview. They are represented by a square icon with parallel bars of different sizes.

Finally, the BOM will now also include BESS data. In the main page you can have an overview of the amount of devices added, total power and capacity, and length of DC cabling from BESS to central inverters. Voltage drops and cable cross-sections, if enabled, will also be displayed in both BOM and SLDs.
 

There will also be a new tab showing the detailed cable length from each DC BESS to the central inverter connection.

Remember that, if you reuse the same electrical configuration for your DC BESS to transformer layouts, you can also use our electrical copy-paste functionality to quickly replicate this design wherever you need in your project!

Improvements

Standalone BESS without PV area

With this latest update, you can now design and cable BESS clusters without the need to create PV areas and PV components.

To create a standalone BESS system, you should:

1. Draw the BESS components anywhere in the design
2. Add power stations (transformers, central inverters) where suitable
3. Draw trench lines to guide AC or DC main cabling
4. Use the Generate cabling feature to connect BESS elements to their power stations

TFTs: additional mechanical constraints

We improved the realism of our layout generation algorithm for terrain-following trackers. You can now input additional mechanical constraints, enabling a more realistic and representative placement that accounts for the mechanical limitations of most makes and models on the market.

What changed?

When specifying constraints, you’ll now have more settings:

Apart from the base setting for the angle between each bay, all the other constraints are opt-in: they will be enforced only if explicitly selected.
 

You can hover over each setting to view a reference diagram that visually explains its function.

Minor updates & bug fixes

Harmonization of DC cabling and DC string cabling nomenclature in electrical design dropdowns

Previously, menus in electrical design related to selection of DC cable types could present different options, depending on the system type of the project:

• DC cabling, if only DC string cables were present
• DC string cabling and DC main cabling, if both DC string cables and DCB to Central Inverter were present

Additionally, if multiple PV areas with different types of DC cabling were selected, all three options above would be presented, which could lead to some confusion.

With the new update, the DC cabling option has been renamed to DC string cabling. If multiple areas are selected, you will only see DC string cabling and DC main cabling, as the system will now group all DC string cables across selected areas.
 

Fix: harness connectors positions no longer overlap in the design

There was an issue when designing harness systems: multiple harness connectors in the trunk would overlap, making individual selection difficult. This has been resolved by adding a slight offset to superimposed items.