Release notes 2.57

📢 What's new

New features

BETA: Integration with QuickYield

QuickYield (QY), now integrated within PVcase Ground Mount, is a new simulation capability that accelerates the preliminary design and decision-making process by instantly delivering an energy performance metric: its purpose is to drastically reduce the need for slow external simulations, enabling you to quickly iterate and de-risk among multiple design variants.  

By providing a directionally accurate yield number in seconds — as opposed to bankable reports — it’s designed to aid in selecting the most optimized layout before committing to a final, time-intensive simulation.

Compared with PVcase Yield — the current state of the art for solar yield simulation — QuickYield delivers results that are roughly within ~10% accuracy, and does so in seconds.

How does it work?

QuickYield utilizes a proprietary calculation that leverages the power of a well-established open-source library (PVLib) in conjunction with our own internal performance models and know-how. All mount systems are supported.

QuickYield is designed to calculate yield based on the core design inputs already present in the PVcase environment, including:

• Design Geometry: The layout, including module spacing, row pitch, and tilt angles.
• Module and Inverter Data: Considered in the form of high-level parameters specifying dimensions, rated power, technology, and efficiency, in order to simplify and accelerate the process.
• Irradiance: We use hourly TMY weather data automatically accessed through the PVGIS service.

The settings for running QY simulations can be accessed under Layout generation settings. These are global and will apply to any QY run.

How can I access it?

You can use QuickYield within two Ground Mount capabilities: Capacity Iteration and Layout information.

In Capacity Iteration

After generating the design scenarios, you can simply click Run QuickYield to obtain a yearly yield preview as well as other performance indicators.

After running QuickYield:

In Layout information

For the selected PV areas, it would be sufficient to to click Run QuickYield. It’s really that easy.  

On the first run, remember to enable the columns that will report on the QY simulation results. We’ll make this automatic in a future update.

Important

• QuickYield is only available when using AutoCAD 2025 or later versions. Being a cloud-based service, you’ll be asked to log in with your PVcase account when using it for the first time, and then periodically after that.

• DC/AC ratio and inverter efficiency alone determine the overall influence of the electrical subsystem on the plant performance: this allows us to estimate yield even in the absence of electrical details.
• The use case for QuickYield is fast yield evaluations and directional comparisons. If you need absolute accuracy, PVcase Yield is recommended, given its state-of-the-art capabilities.

Improvements

Consistent numbering for PV areas

PVarea numbering labels are temporary; they are regenerated whenever a new selection is done in the Layout Information tool or an area regenerated. This may cause inconsistency and lead to issues, especially when working on large designs, so we addressed it.

From this version, PV area labels can also be directly edited in the model space, and the new label will be preserved throughout PVcase Ground Mount functionalities — including BOM export. It is possible to change the label via the context menu in Layout Information.

Finally, from Layout Information, you can now right-click on any PV area and select Restore area label to reprint the text label to model space.

Minor updates 

Capacity iterations: inputs override park settings

When using Iterations, it’s possible to select a pitch range that goes beyond the maximum allowed by the currently active Park settings — which results in the real pitch used for the scenario being limited. 
With this change, the inputs specified for the iterations can override the pitch park settings.
 

Deprecation notice for Capacity iteration V1

The old iterations engine — available via the command CalculatingkWpForm — has been deprecated, as all functionality has since been ported to the new Capacity Iteration and the near totality of users have since migrated to it.