Sindbad PV is a complex CAD (computer-aided design) application for designing photovoltaic installations for houses taking into account the surrounding obstacles and providing the power balance and cost estimation.
Preface
The sun has produced and is still producing the energy for billions of years. Solar energy, namely the suns rays are solar radiation that reaches the earth. Solar energy can be converted into many other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity. In the 1830s, the British astronomer John Herschel used a solar thermal collector box (a device that absorbs sunlight to collect heat) to cook food during an expedition to Africa.
The global interest for photovoltaics is constantly growing due to lack of side effects such as air pollution, noises and many other destructing factors during the phenomenon of converting solar energy into electricity. The need for alternative sources of energy is reflected by growing amount of PV panels applied on the roofs of buildings. However, one needs to know a lot about the sun movements, geographic and architectural restrictions related to the application of PV systems, if that person wants to apply such construction. Fortunately, the current development of computerization and science enabled to design a system do simulate the whole process and choose the best PV panel configuration adjusted to the requirements.
What is Sindbad?
Sindbad PV CAD is an application designed to help people to find the most optimal place to set the photovoltaic system. It enables to chose the components suiting their needs, according to the amount of energy being used and the costs. The user is estimating, where could be the highest insolation, and how to place the system, to avoid the effect of the obstacles such as other buildings, trees, hills, etc. which may cast the shade on the PV panel. The application provides the 2D view and the 3D view. In 2 dimensional view, the user has the standard tools as instance of new project, opening dialog, cutting, pasting, deleting, selecting and moving tools. There is also a possibility to rotate the object manually, however the user may define the azimuth in an Object Inspector. As it concerns 3D view, there are the same basic options and zooming tools. The user may also preview or stop the simulation. There is a possibility to change the date by means of the green arrows, to set the particular period of the year, instead of going through the all year long simulation. There is a possibility to rotate the view by means of a mouse scroll.
Authors
Application was created as a part of Project Based Learning course at Technical University of Lodz, by the following authors:
Platform info
Sindbad is a managed .NET 3.5 application.
Operating System: Windows
Platform: Microsoft .NET 3.5
Programmed in: C#
Screenshots
