Modules and inverters

Detail pages and characterisations used in design and simulation.

Reviewed 28 Sep 2026

What this is for

The spec sheet behind a catalogue row. A module and an inverter each carry an article (the nameplate) and one or more characterisations (the model numbers a simulation actually runs). Those two routinely disagree by a few percent. A condition set names which characterisation was used, which is what lets somebody reproduce a figure a year later.

A battery is different. Dispatch reads the nameplate, the depth of discharge and the efficiency directly. There is no curve to point at, so this page has no characterisations tab.

Steps

A module

Open a row from the library. Manufacturer, model, watts, efficiency, technology and cell count head the page.
Specification is "as the article, not as characterised". Length, width and area have to be there or the module cannot be laid out. Thickness and weight fall back to a dash: a certification list often publishes neither, and 0.000 m would look like a measurement.
Characterisations. One nameplate, several sets of model numbers. Default is the one a new design picks. Model this is the one the curves below are drawn from. If your team did not add this module, the default stays as it is - pointing a published row at a private upload would leave every other team looking at "No model".
Modelled behaviour is computed, not transcribed. Pick irradiance and cell temperature. The I-V and P-V charts are the single-diode solve at those conditions, two plots rather than two scales on one. A page that only reprinted the datasheet would agree with it even when the fitted parameters were wrong.
Modelled points are the model's own answer at each irradiance. Temperature sensitivities are differentiated from the model, not copied from the datasheet, so they change with irradiance the way the real module does.
Favourite for team floats it in the library. Delete is offered only on a row this team contributed and has not published. A shipped row does not show a disabled button.

An inverter

Open a row. Nominal AC power, topology, MPPT count (or "no PV input"), hybrid if it is.
Specification is the article again. Max system voltage is checked against a string's open-circuit voltage at the site's record low temperature, not at STC. Cold mornings are when a string exceeds it. A battery inverter/charger with no PV input says so: the voltage is a battery-bus ceiling, and no array can be wired to it.
Conversion efficiency is a curve against load fraction, because an inverter at 8% load behaves nothing like one at 80%, and a residential array spends a great deal of the year at low load. A single weighted figure would quietly overstate every morning and evening.
European weighted (EN 50530) and CEC weighted sit beside the curve. MPPT window: outside it is voltage clipping. Night consumption is subtracted from production. A dash on a weighted figure means that characterisation did not carry one.

A {208V} (or similar) on the model name is a register suffix that tells two grid voltages of one product apart. The manufacturer does not print it.

A battery

Open a row. The strip leads with usable energy when the depth of discharge was published, and with nameplate when it was not - so the first number you see is not an assumption dressed as a measurement.
Energy. Usable energy is nameplate times depth of discharge. The sum is printed because it is not stored. Unstated depth of discharge is a dash, not 0.0%, and the page says which fraction is assumed. Dispatch names that assumption wherever its result is shown. Quote the document, not the assumption.
Power. Charge and discharge limits. Round-trip efficiency is what a datasheet states; one way is its square root, applied twice. Treating the round-trip figure as a per-direction loss understates a year's throughput by roughly half the loss. Unstated round-trip is a dash plus an assumed fraction, named on the dispatch.
Run flat out, usable energy lasts a stated number of hours from full. That is the outage question: not how much the bank holds, but how long it lasts at its own discharge limit.
No characterisations. There is no curve.

Tips and common mistakes

Pick the characterisation you will quote from before you simulate. The article on the spec grid is not automatically the curve.
Unvalidated means treat the figures as indicative. A certification register is not an independent test report. Upload the manufacturer's PAN or OND for a bankable yield.
Two 270 W modules of different area are different products. Open the row.
A battery list that prints 0.00 kWh usable is the unstated-depth case. The detail dashes the depth and says what is assumed. Do not quote the zero.