The ability to calculate and visualise incident solar radiation on the windows and surfaces of your building is key to all aspects of solar design.

This can be done for any surface or part of the model, showing differential incident solar radiation calculated over any period.

When displayed in this way, the designer can take advantage of site overshadowing to treat different parts of the facade more optimally.

This also makes it possible to compare incident gains during different seasons, clearly showing variations in solar resources available to your building at times when heating or cooling is required.

In turn, this means that you can absolutely quantify the effects of different solar shading approaches, as shown in the four options above, allowing you to make decisions objectively and fine-tune them to your specific requirements.

You can also calculate solar availability over the spaces around your buildings and in highly overshadowed urban sites. This allows for the optimum location of vegetation and garden layouts.

Solar Access

The amount of solar radiation falling on any object can be quickly calculated, along with shading and reflection percentages. Combined with total annual radiation, this is perfect for determining the best location and orientation for solar panels.

Hourly solar gains for single day.

Monthly average hourly gains over whole year.

Actual hourly gains over whole year.

Solar Stress

In addition to calculating shading masks for surfaces, ECOTECT can combine this data with hourly direct and diffuse solar radiation in the weather file to show the time and intensity of solar stresses on any surface. This can be viewed in the Sun-path diagram or overlaid on a skydome within the 3D model itself.

Solar gains falling on a roof surface, shown mapped over a sun-path diagram (left) and in 3D over the sky dome (right).

Photovoltaic Array Sizing and Load Matching

Using these same functions, you can also calculate the solar radiation incident on any solar collector. It is therefore possible to estimate its likely energy production throughout the year. As you can also define appliances and equipment within the model, assigning them complex operational schedules, you can directly compare electricity consumption with electrical production on the same graph. This makes demand matching and the sizing of solar collectors much simpler operation.

Using load matching it is possible to compare solar collection and energy demand across the whole year.