Photonik design tool - What new features do you want? (Roadmap)

Photonik
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Photonik Solar Design Tool is currently in BETA. We’re on a mission to build the most user friendly solar design tool on the market, so you can get a slick and accurate proposal to a customer in a couple of minutes.

Please give feedback on the proposed features and how you might like them to be implemented in comments below.

Design tool poll - Vote for the features you want

We want your help to prioritise the next set of features to take us to Version 1.0 (choose a max of 5).

  • Design | Multiple qty of inverters (same model) - Have multiple inverters for the same job
  • Design | Multiple make/models of inverters - Different inverters models for each job
  • Energy Usage | Electricity price increase in model - Add field to forecast how much electricity prices will increase to more accurately model payback period of a system
  • Proposal Document Improvements See details and vote in separate poll below
  • Energy Usage | Add consumption profiles - Currently there is only one ‘double peak’ consumption profile, have multiple to better simulate different consumption profiles.
  • Data | CRM (Zoho) integration - Send data to and from a third party CRM.
  • Products | Ensure up to date panel and product lists - Find a way to get products added faster.
  • Design | Multiple proposals per job / Duplicate designs - Give customers multiple options to choose from.
  • Pricing | Save template - Save pricing and tariff details to reuse on future jobs.
  • Design | Favourite products - Save recent or favourite products at top of the list to easily find for next time.
  • Design | Panel layout instructions improvement - Make it easier to understand how to use the panel layout design tool.
  • Design | Allow for off grid jobs - Add a load table, and change grid to generator.
  • Design | Improve imagery - Better images of roofs for accurate designs, switch between imagery providers.
  • Calculations | Show/edit system losses - Shading, wiring, soiling, inverter, panel and battery annual degradation.
  • Design | Allow Google search with lat long, or place a pin on map - Sometimes hard to find roof via address alone.
  • Design | Upload building plan / custom image - For properties that haven’t been built yet.
  • Panel layout tool | Allow larger screen for editing
  • Other - Give details by adding a comment below.
0 voters

Proposal improvement vote

What specifically do you most want to see improved on the Proposal doc (choose a max of 3).

  • Proposal | PDF download - Download a PDF version of the proposal to print or email the customer
  • Proposal | Add docs - Add docs to the proposal to show the customer details of products or our company
  • Proposal | Edit text - Edit the existing text throughout the proposal to better work for your business needs.
  • Proposal | Itemised products - In the cost breakdown show details of products, inc racking, plus any discounts etc
  • Proposal | Language customisation - Allow for language translation on the proposals.
  • Proposal | Customise design, layout - Ability to remove sections, and change layout etc.
  • Other - Give details by adding a comment below.
0 voters
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Energy Usage | Add consumption profiles

These are the profiles we are looking at adding, as well as:
4. Constant Day & Night - For tropical locations with A/C on all 24 hours.

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1 Like
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Hey Marty, something I just noticed with consumption profiles is that the current version I assume is set to the US as a default.

So the lowest consumption (summer) is June/July whereas for us here in South Africa that is the middle of winter so highest consumption

Is there a way to change that or is this something that will be added in an update?

1 Like
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Hi @Andre_Hallaby

Actually we don’t have any seasonal consumption profiles yet, we just have a single average daily usage based on a double morning and evening peak.

We have a lot we would like to do with consumption profiles.

The low/high is not consumption, it’s generation. The consumption assumed to be the same. It should also be based on hemisphere. If anything our defaults are Australia, not US.

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Hope that helps, and thanks for voting.

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The first thing I noticed is that the tool insists on using an ‘estimated’ energy usage profile, even though I normally have access to the client’s ‘actual’ monthly energy usage and costs over at least the prior 12 months. The tool should allow use of actual consumption data when available to instill trust in the results, as the cost of electrical energy here in Canada has been all over the map recently and a generic estimated profile based on a single data point just doesn’t capture that adequately. A place to specify one or more projected future average costs/kWh for illustrative scenario and payback calculation purposes would also be useful.

Thx.

1 Like
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Thank you for Photonik Solar Design Tool 3 BETA! Excited to contribute feedback and shape the future of this user-friendly solar design tool. Let’s illuminate the path to efficient solar proposals! :sunny::bulb: #SolarInnovation

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Thanks @Dave_Barron, appreciate you taking time to give feedback here.

Definitely agree with your suggestions here. We have some other features we are working on, but will be getting to these in due course.

Marty