Why Installers Should Use ARKA 360 Software?

As we’ve mentioned in earlier articles, utilizing solar software for your projects as an installer will have benefits in leaps and bounds! It will give accuracy in system design, orientation, and placement of panels, and add to the efficiency of your panel’s outputs.

Decided to use the software? We’ll take care of your needs!

However, the software presently available such as Helioscope and PVSyst, are complex,  expensive, and unsuitable for the Indian market. This could make them a poor choice for techno-commercial applications and the generation of sales quotations. Moreover, not using software altogether, is going to make you as an installer rely on intuition more than intelligence in placing the panels.

An improperly designed system can cause you losses not only in terms of finance and output but also in your customer’s confidence in solar energy.

How we can help you out

At ARKA 360, our objective is to help you, as an installer, deliver to your clients as much power as promised, giving them the desirable return on their investment. Most importantly, our product strives to help you save time and money.   Crafted to overcome the above shortfalls, our software delivers you, data-rich quotations with the following stellar features:

1. You save time and cut losses:

We’ll save you crucial time on the design, surveying, and preparation of quotations and installations, which can be used on expanding sales instead:

• Quicker surveys: An accurate site survey is a must for the installation to give great returns. However, a manually done site survey is often time taking and requires skilled manual labor. Our product enables you to remotely survey the site and create quotations, from satellite imagery and the consumer’s electricity usage data, all within a few minutes!

One of the features contained in our product is 3D Modeling of the site, which will give the user a thorough option to edit it on the desktop, with functions like specifying the actual dimensions. During this process, we will be shipping the roof layout drawing in PDF, AutoCAD, and other 3D formats.

Using our software, you save time and money spent on manually intensive tasks, and generate customized quotes within minutes!  

• More iterations: Another objective of our product, is to have real-time estimated generations, which helps the installers consider more designs and do more iterations quickly. This cuts down the need for many iterations in which the user can use the same design flow to test multiple ideas without the need to go end to end. Doing a new iteration is easy and requires one to copy designs (which opens in the next tab) change the parameter there and see the difference from the benchmark (which can either be the best design or the parent design. Our ability to iterate more will make you a better-performing system.
• Simplicity: Our software is simple, user-friendly, and cutting the complexities of the design process to increase accuracy. Our cloud-based software can help installers do an efficient system design using Indian electricity codes.
• Optimizing for IRR/Generation: Deciding where to place the inverters and which string should go where is the next decision to take after panel placement and stringing. This at times results in larger than required wire because changing inverter position will have the opposite effect on DC wire length, and AC wire length and also losses associated with them. Optimizing for cost leads to loss of generation.

That is why designers place panels intuitively to balance trade-offs but in our case, we place panels, do the stringing, and place the inverter i.e. all together. Hence, we optimize for IRR/Generation.  Our smart algorithm for optimizing wire, conduit length and cost, and DC wiring loss, will also keep aesthetics in mind.

2. You win consumers:

Our primary aim is to help you convince your consumers to select your installation. We will assist you in designing better and producing more blueprints and analyses. Right from placement and orientation of panels, to shading by surroundings, and even roofing and weather conditions, we’ve covered it all:

• Rooftops: For rooftops, especially for industrial and commercial clients, the true benefit of going solar is not reflected by producing quotes taking a fixed tariff rate. Instead, we offer to do slabbed-based analysis.

Over to design details, for clients with a ‘time of day tariff’ system, a more financially sound system (on-grid or hybrid) will come by hourly analysis. For example, recommending dome some East-West facing installation to produce more during the times when the tariff is higher. Considering the settlement period, according to the net metering policy, we can also recommend how to minimize the units given to the grid that are not rebated.

• Comparison: Additionally, our platform enables comparison. Each design can be duplicated to another design, wherein at any step(editable), he/she can make changes, perform all the steps following the changes, create a new design, and compare it with previous designs.
• Adaptive Design: Another concern that often comes to consumers is whether the system can adapt to changes in the surroundings. Model changing requirements such as cutting trees, neighbors setting a higher floor, onsite assessment, or during installation time – new civil or electrical, can easily be accommodated.
• Finances: Payback, ROI, and savings figures are included for your customers to view their financial returns. Plus, you can add monthly and yearly savings graphs to convince your customers further. After all, data convinces the best!
• Inverter Selection and Placement: In this step, the user will select the type and size of inverters, plus he has the option to maintain a DC-AC ratio. Most of the time it won’t be possible to have the same number of strings as required. In these cases, few inverters will be taking fewer strings.

Having a bigger DC: AC ratio will have inverter clipping loss, but net generation increases (due to panels generation more in morning and evening time – when there is less irradiance). So, designers have thumb rules for DC: AC, because of the irradiance that the location receives, like panel inverter selection done based on DC: AC thumb rules like Rajasthan should have and Delhi should have. But in the case of rooftops, the effective irradiance the panels receive can be a lot different on a roof-by-roof basis. Even a different DC: AC ratio can be followed for a single site for different field segments receiving different irradiance. This will increase the net generation.

We assist you in selecting one or multiple inverters that should fit best with the current panels (based on the string sizing). A few panels might not be possible to be covered in stringing and will be shown as excluded panels that should be removed. The installer can manually mention the inverters to be used as well.

Our software assures you of inverter placement and wiring which is both aesthetically appealing and efficient.

• For every unique installation: Our software gives the best possible design for a particular roof using machine learning and AI. It’s simplicity and easy use system design tools give us an edge over the other tools in the market. Moreover, our shade analysis tools help you estimate generation and prepare accurate quotations faster. Automatic shading reports, layouts, BOM, generation, and financial estimates that our software prepares will give you an edge over competitors.

With the following features, we promise to present to you customer-winning figures, that translate your installation to quality results.   We understand that outstanding designs and data-rich quotations and analytics will best communicate your vision to your clients. And that’s where we make you win.

3. You grow faster:

Faster quotes, superior designs, and a better-installed system for your consumers help you close more deals.

• The ultimate goal of our design tool is to produce superior designs, by considering more permutations of design, while cutting the time taken per iteration. We’re aiming at simplifying the platform and bringing everything together, to provide the usable seed of a good design.
• Since solar buyers receive many different quotations from different companies, we’re devoted to making you stand out, by translating your product’s results into beautifully designed and data-rich quotations.
• Thanks to our software, your time saved on surveys and designs can be used in sales. Plus, we ensure you a superbly crafted end product, helping you to convert with a higher efficiency. With the saved time, best designs and more consumers won, we help you close more deals. In other words, ARKA 360 spells “growth” for your business.  

The present time and trends are perfect for a solar installer. And this a domain which is only going to grow!! From preparing the preliminary sales quotation to the final engineering design, our software has everything covered for you. With us, you can ride this rising wave of solar, striking the best deals and winning the confidence of more clients!!