The Piles Panel

In the Piles Panel you can define information about your project's piles, sort those piles into bins, and define your wind position configuration. In this article we'll go through the separate tabs and cover these inputs.

Piles Position 

This is where you will define the information about your pile positions and types.

• Tracker Model- Piles can be adjusted for individual tracker by selecting the tracker types as shown below.  You will only be able to select the trackers that were used in the project layout.

Tracker Frame- Geometry for the tracker can be adjust here.

• Motor at Pile - Specifies which pile the motor will be placed on
• Specify Gaps- Toggle on or off depending on if you have different gap sizes for different types of piles,. If yes toggle on, if all gaps are the same toggle off.
• Modules Schedule- the "code" for how your SAT will be arranged, the numbers represent the count of modules, the dash represents a pile, and the M is the motor. To learn more see this article on how to create your equipment.
• Exact Pile Placement- specifies the exact locations of piles on the tracker, toggle on to edit the coordinates.
  
  

Wind Load Variants- each tab represents a different wind load variant, toggle between them to see the different options.

• The settings widget allows you to turn on or off the wind load variants, also you can toggle on or off the option to have unique coordinates for each wind position.

• Frame- Gives you the coordinate information for each pile, and gives you the offsets between each pile.
• Pile Types- Allows you to define the type that is being used for each pile in the tracker, click on the type to see a drop down menu of types that are available. 
  • Off to the side you will see two symbols, indicates that the pile allows for undulating, indicates that the pile must be rigid.

Pile Reveal Bins

This tab allows PVFARM to separate all piles on the project into bins according to their reveal and also allows for setting the total length of the piles as long as they fall within the pile reveal bins identified by the user.  Once the add bin is selected a max reveal can be set.  This max reveal applied from either the min reveal of the previous bins max reveal.  Once the bin is created changing the length will apply the same length to all of the piles in the bin.

• Add Pile Bins- Where you can add additional pile reveal bins.
• Free Length Piles- if any piles in the project don't fall into one of the bins that you've defined, they will be placed in this bin. Continue to add bins until none are in this section if you want all piles binned out.
• Pile Profile- Click on this section to see a drop down menu of all available pile profiles.

Wind Positions

• This tab allows you to customize wind positioning for interior and exterior trackers 
• You can select trackers in the entire project, or customize based off the equipment list
• When making adjustments to the wind exposures it is required to use the button to "Update Wind Positions Now" to ensure PVFARM recalculates the wind positions for the project prior to colorizing based on the wind positions.

• You can also colorize trackers by wind position to easily see where tracker types are placed:
  
  
  
  
• It is also possible to view the wind exposures using the property analysis panel (note that colorization may be different between the property analysis and pile panel)