Smarter way to design ground mount solar
Grade: C — Score: 60/100
PVcase Ground Mount leverages advanced technology to automate terrain adaptation, layout generation, and yield optimization, ensuring precision in solar design across complex landscapes.
The platform streamlines workflows by enabling instant layout creation and refinement, allowing users to quickly evaluate design alternatives while minimizing errors, thus accelerating project delivery.
By identifying risks early in the design process, PVcase Ground Mount helps mitigate potential issues related to permitting, environmental factors, and infrastructure, ensuring a smoother project development lifecycle.
Professional: Custom quote
Consider switching to Aurora Solar: Offers similar solar design automation features but may cater to different user needs.
PVcase Ground Mount is an AutoCAD plugin that requires a compatible Windows environment and Autodesk software. PVcase lists Windows 10 x64 as the minimum operating system and supports AutoCAD versions from 2018 through 2027, with 2019 through 2027 identified for optimal performance. The vendor states that Ground Mount will not run on virtual machines, so a Mac using virtualization is not a supported deployment.
PVcase does not publish a maximum project capacity or drawing size for Ground Mount. Its documentation acknowledges that large AutoCAD drawings can become slower and recommends external-reference topography, optimized frame display, frozen unused layers, smaller PV areas, and working on one area at a time. Teams should test representative projects on hardware that meets or exceeds the published CPU, memory, and graphics requirements.
PVcase Ground Mount creates a terrain mesh from survey or imported topography and uses it for slope, pile reveal, clearance, collision, and tracker analysis. Civil Analysis supports existing and proposed terrain plus cut-and-fill grading, while grading surfaces can be exported as CSV point data or LandXML. The output still depends on the quality, coordinate system, and cleanup of the source terrain data.
Yes. Ground Mount documents fixed-tilt, east-west, single-axis tracker, dual-row and multi-row tracker, and terrain-following tracker workflows. Engineers can apply terrain, slope, clearance, shading, frame, and capacity rules, then generate and compare layout variants inside AutoCAD.
Ground Mount supports stringing, inverter and combiner placement, cable routing, cable sizing, voltage-drop calculations, electrical overviews, Single Line Diagrams, and Bill of Materials outputs. Current releases implement IEC 60364 and NEC 2020 calculations and represent inverters and combiners as 3D devices, but PVcase still describes parts of the workflow as preliminary electrical design. Engineers should therefore review routes, equipment, cable assumptions, protection, and final drawings rather than treating every generated result as construction approval.
Yes. The Professional feature matrix documents AC-coupled and DC-coupled BESS design, including standalone storage configurations. Recent Ground Mount releases specifically document AC-BESS placement and grading pads for batteries, transformers, central inverters, and other equipment. Final battery sizing, controls, protection, and interconnection engineering still require project-specific validation outside an automated layout.
No. Ground Mount includes QuickYield for rapid layout comparison, but PVcase describes it as a first assessment rather than a bankable report and says results are roughly within 10 percent of PVcase Yield under its simplified assumptions. For detailed modeling, Ground Mount exports frames, shading objects, terrain, and electrical information to PVcase Yield or PVsyst.
Ground Mount can produce Bills of Materials, Single Line Diagrams, layout and electrical spreadsheets, piling and spot-level data, CSV terrain data, LandXML surfaces, KML files, PVsyst exports, and browser-based 3D views. Its Bill of Materials can include capacity, modules, strings, cable lengths, cable trays, inverters, and other electrical details. These outputs support engineering handoff, but the public documentation does not claim that every export is automatically permit-ready or construction-approved.
PVcase Ground Mount is an AutoCAD-native workflow for engineers who want direct control over terrain, civil, electrical, and drawing objects. RatedPower is browser-based and bundles utility-scale layout, energy yield, storage, interconnection, financial analysis, and engineering documents with unlimited users, projects, and designs in its current plans. Both use custom sales pricing, so the decision usually turns on AutoCAD editability and detailed CAD control versus cloud access, collaboration, and a broader all-in-one workflow.
Ground Mount is primarily built for utility-scale ground-mounted engineering rather than residential sales and proposal workflows. A small engineering team can still use it for utility-scale projects, but it must budget for the custom-quoted PVcase subscription, compatible Autodesk software, and suitable Windows hardware. Residential installers needing CRM, financing, customer proposals, and lightweight browser design will usually need a different product.
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