Unlimited projects for rooftop, ground-mount and carport designs.

A sited layout with a yield simulation behind it, and files that leave the tool. You get AI-generated layouts across roof, carport and ground-mount, GIS layers for the diligence you would otherwise do across half a dozen public sources, and export to PVsyst, CAD and 8760. The API is included.

What it does not produce is a plan set. That is the plan set add-on on the Engineering License, and the distinction matters more than it sounds: a layout tells a customer what fits, and a plan set is what an engineer signs.

• The Engineering License

Solesca simulations validate within 1% of PVsyst, corroborated by ECA Power's published case study. Solesca holds a cooperative research agreement with NREL, CRADA CRD-23-23746, and DNV SolarFarmer runs inside Solesca through DNV's API Partner Program.

Worth saying plainly: simulation accuracy is not where the serious tools in this category differ much. What this license changes is what the simulation runs against. Onyx Renewables used to rebuild each shade scene by hand inside PVsyst because their previous tool had no PVC export, which left stringing losses unmodelled and their early estimates indicative rather than definitive. The native PVC export removed that rebuild and took a full production estimate from two to four hours down to one to two.

• How Onyx Renewables cut PVsyst turnaround by 50%
• PVsyst validation

ARGUS AI is computer vision that reads a site and finds the obstructions on it, and it applies the setbacks you specify rather than setbacks it decided on. On a rooftop that is the difference between a layout that survives a site visit and one that has to be redrawn.

• ARGUS AI

Four layers, and they are the ones that decide whether a site earns a second look. Slope is custom-derived from USGS digital elevation models and shades the ground from green through yellow to red as it steepens, with a range slider so you can set the grade your racking tolerates. Wetlands come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and sharpen as you zoom in. Forest canopy height carries 2020 and 2000 coverage plus the change between them. Substations and transmission lines come from the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data, filtered by voltage and by distance from the site.

Slope, wetlands, canopy and distance to interconnection are the four questions asked in the first ten minutes of screening a ground-mount site, and they normally get answered across four separate public sources. Reading them on one map is what makes screening a long list of sites cheap enough to bother with. Coverage is United States only for slope, wetlands, substations and transmission; canopy height is global.

The slope layer is screening: it tells you where the ground is steep, so you can judge whether a site is worth opening. Acting on that ground is terrain tracking, a separate capability with its own page — trackers and fixed-tilt tables placed on bare-earth elevation, held inside your racking’s slope tolerances, with the pile reveals and per-frame 3D shading that follow. The USGS sourcing above describes the screening layer. Neither one grades a site, so a project whose engineering turns on cut and fill still needs a civil tool for that part.

• Terrain tracking

The people who size sites and talk to customers: sales engineers, business development, and the designer who does the first pass. Licensing is per seat, so a team can put its sales engineers on the Design License and its engineers on the Engineering License rather than buying one tier for everyone.

Both licenses carry unlimited projects and no system-size cap. If your team currently decides which sites are worth opening because each one costs money, that constraint disappears, and the sites that were never modeled are usually where the surprise is.

• Pricing

No. Plan sets and single-line diagrams are an add-on to the Engineering License, and the Design License cannot take it. Solesca does not stamp drawings; a licensed PE partner does, at market rate through SOL Credits.

• Plan sets and single-line diagrams

PVsyst as native PVC carrying the shade scene, CAD as the sited layout, 8760 as hourly production for the year, and the API, which is included with the license.

No. Both licenses carry unlimited projects with no cap on system size.

Roof, carport and ground-mount, which is where Solesca focuses. The sweet spot is 100 kW to 10 MW; Solesca does not position for residential.

Terrain yes, grading no, and the two halves are worth separating. The slope layer is screening — custom-derived from USGS digital elevation models, showing where the ground is steep. Terrain tracking is the capability that acts on it: trackers and fixed-tilt tables placed on bare-earth elevation, held inside your racking’s slope tolerances, with pile reveals and per-frame 3D shading. It is an add-on with its own page.

Grading is where it stops. Neither capability moves earth, models cut and fill or produces a grading design, so a project whose engineering turns on earthwork volumes still needs a civil tool for that part.

• Terrain tracking

Slope from USGS digital elevation models, wetlands from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, substations and transmission lines from the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data, and forest canopy height for 2020, 2000 and the change between them.