SolarFarmer

Core Features

At its simplest, SolarFarmer creates a digital model of a proposed solar farm and simulates how it would perform under real-world conditions. This allows users to test alternatives before making costly physical decisions. Its main capabilities include:

• Site Selection and Mapping: Users can examine terrain, solar resources and environmental restrictions, import or draw site boundaries and exclusion zones, and automatically account for areas that are too steep for development.

• Solar Farm Layout Design: Solar arrays can be laid out across large sites, including rapid replication of inverter blocks. Users can move from an early conceptual design to a detailed project configuration suitable for energy assessment.

• Terrain and Shading Modelling: SolarFarmer models regular and irregular terrain and uses 2D and 3D calculations to estimate how surrounding terrain, rows of panels and other objects affect the sunlight reaching the modules.

• Energy-Yield Prediction: The software combines solar-resource and climate data with the proposed plant design to estimate future electricity generation, accounting for electrical and other losses that reduce actual output from theoretical potential.

• Technology and Design Comparison: Users can model different module technologies, including monofacial and bifacial panels, as well as tracking systems. More than 100 design alternatives can be explored through automated iterations, helping teams understand how equipment and layout choices change expected output.

• Workflow Automation and APIs: Repetitive calculations, data imports and exports can be automated through an in-app script editor. Computationally intensive yield calculations can run in the cloud, while 2D and 3D calculation APIs allow SolarFarmer modelling to be incorporated into organizations’ own workflows.

Closing Insights

The challenge SolarFarmer addresses becomes particularly important as solar development expands onto larger and more complicated sites. A seemingly minor error in estimating shading, terrain effects or electrical losses can change projected electricity production and therefore the financial case for a project. SolarFarmer draws on DNV’s solar engineering and energy assessment methodology, with the company continually comparing modelled output against operating solar plants.

That validation has increasingly supported SolarFarmer’s use in project finance. In 2024, DNV reported completing six U.S. solar financing due-diligence projects totalling 1,195 MW using SolarFarmer and said it would use the software for future solar financing due-diligence engagements. DNV has continued testing the model against operating assets. Its 2026 validation study covers 24 PV plants across 11 countries, representing 3.6 GWp of capacity and 996 months of measured operation. SolarFarmer also sits within a wider DNV solar technology portfolio that includes Solcast for solar-resource and forecasting data, Solar Resource Compass, and GreenPowerMonitor.