Site set-up in minutes
Import the boundary from Google Earth, check LiDAR coverage, convert the Geological Survey Ireland tiles offline, and move an old local-grid drawing onto ITM with its levels.
PVSTARTPVKMLPVLIDARPVTOITM
Solar and wind farm design inside AutoCAD
From site boundary to bankable report in one drawing.
Tiltwise lays out ground-mount and rooftop PV, optimises tilt and row pitch against real shading and the export cap, drapes every table on LiDAR ground, sets out the piles, sizes the cables and transformers, and writes the project report. Every number comes from the drawing you are already working in. Onshore wind farms too: turbines placed on the European wind atlas, energy after wakes, MV cables along the access roads, noise and flicker, and solar round the turbines on a shared transformer.
Section A–A · tables on level-headed anchorsVertical ×3
ProjectSample 18 MW farm
GridITM · EPSG 2157
GroundGSI LiDAR DTM 2 m
Tilt / pitch25° / 5.0 m
AutoCAD 2026Runs in the CAD you already use. Civil 3D support in progress.
One drawingLayout, terrain, piles, cables and report share the same data.
Irish-readyITM coordinates, GSI LiDAR tiles, RESS price check.
Your dataRuns on your PC. Project files stay in your office.
Workflow
The order a real project goes in
Each step is a toolbar button. Each one reads what the step before it produced, so you enter a figure once.
- 01 · PVSTART
Site
Checklist for a new job. Boundary from Google Earth KML, drawing moved to ITM, LiDAR tiles turned into a ground grid.
- 02 · PVLAYOUT
Layout
Tables built from the real module size. Setbacks, exclusion zones for ground and roof, row pitch as set out on site.
- 03 · PVOPT
Optimise
Every tilt and pitch tested against PVGIS yield, hedge and tree shading, and the grid export cap.
- 04 · PVDRAPE
Terrain
Tables draped on the ground. Clearance and height breaches marked, cut and fill measured, sections along any line.
- 05 · PVPILES
Piles
Four anchors per table with level heads. Every anchor numbered, with its drilled depth and a GPS drill-rig file.
- 06 · PVELEC
Electrical
Strings, inverters, LV and MV cables, transformer count and ring or radial MV, grid connection cable.
- 07 · PVREPORT
Report
One document: energy, P50/P90/P95, equipment, losses, carbon, costs, LCOE and a RESS check.
What it does
Engineering work, not just drawing
Layout from real modules
Pick the panel and inverter from the equipment database. Tables are sized from panel length, width, gaps and orientation. Separate clearances for ground and roof, and a setback you set.
PVSETUPPVLAYOUTPVCLEARPVROOF
Tilt and pitch that pay
Ranks every combination by yield per kWp, fewest modules or most export. Uses PVGIS hourly data, site shading from hedges, trees and buildings, and clipping at the export cap.
PVOPTPVSHADEPVSHADESET
Ground you can see
Shaded ground from LiDAR, plain or with the aerial photo laid on it. Tilted 3D panels and frames. Sections along any line you draw, with every table and post the line crosses.
PVGROUNDPV3DPVCUTPVCONT
Piles known before the rig arrives
Anchor heads set 150 mm above the highest ground under each table, so every frame is the same. Each anchor gets its coordinates, stick-up and drilled depth, plus one standard anchor length.
PVPILESPVDRAPE
Cables and transformers optimised
Balances LV cable, MV cable and transformer count. Radial, daisy-chained or ring main MV, with the 25-year cost of losses. Copper or aluminium, and the cable to the point of connection.
PVSTRINGSPVMVPVELECPVPOC
Block diagram
Panels to inverters to transformers to switchgear to the grid, labelled with the counts, ratings, cable sizes and lengths from the drawing.
PVBLOCKDIAG
The report funders read
Monthly energy for the design and the optimised layout, P-values from ten years of weather, losses stage by stage, net carbon, costs you enter, lifetime cost per MWh and a check against the RESS auction price. Your name and logo on every page; the standards and data it used listed at the end.
PVREPORTPVBRAND
Works with what you have
Exports ground data for PVsyst and schedules as CSV and Excel. The equipment database is plain CSV files, so adding a new module or inverter takes a line.
PVEXPORTCSVPVSCHEDULEPVBOM
Wind farms
Wind farms in the same drawing
The wind on your site
Hub-height wind from the New European Wind Atlas: a 50 m map with terrain and roughness, and up to 28 years of half-hourly wind for the direction and year-to-year swing. Ireland and the rest of Europe, no account needed.
WTRESOURCE
Turbines placed and optimised
Every position that keeps the dwelling, boundary, road and power-line setbacks, the slope limit and the noise limit, spaced by rotor diameters along the prevailing wind, then moved one by one to the most energy after wakes.
WTLAYOUTWTPLACEWTHOUSE
Energy after wakes
Every turbine's wind from the atlas, the maker's power curve corrected for air density, wakes over 72 directions, losses stage by stage, and P50 to P99 for one year and ten.
WTYIELDWTSETUP
Cables along the access roads
Turbines joined into 20, 33 or 38 kV circuits, each cable laid along the access roads and trench you draw by the shortest way, sized for its current, with volt drop and losses worked out, and the export cable to the grid at up to 110 kV.
WTMV
Noise and shadow flicker
Noise at every dwelling with contours on the drawing, and worst-case shadow flicker minute by minute over a year, checked against your limits before the planning drawings.
WTNOISEWTFLICKER
A wind farm report
Site plan with the cable routes, wind rose, energy from gross to net, P-values, every turbine, the electrical collection and export, noise and flicker at each dwelling, and the hybrid solar. Move a turbine and one command updates it all.
WTREPORTWTRUN
Solar round the turbines
A PV area drawn round each turbine, clear of the blades, crane pad and access roads, ready for the solar layout tools to fill with tables. Wind and solar on the same land and the same grid connection.
WTHYBRIDPVLAYOUT
Its own circuit, or a shared transformer
The PV on its own transformers and MV circuit back to the connection point, with its own protection and meter, or on a third winding of each turbine's transformer. Cable, transformer and interface costs counted either way.
WTHYBRIDWTMV
Battery and the money
A battery charged from the PV or the grid and run hour by hour against a year of day-ahead prices, with your import charges by time of day. Cost, income, NPV and payback for PV alone and PV + battery.
WTHYBRIDWTREPORT
Why it matters
Fewer surprises between design and site
One source of truth
The layout, levels, pile schedule, cable lengths and report all read the same drawing. Change the tilt and they all follow.
Numbers a funder recognises
P50, P90 and P95 from ten years of weather plus resource, model and other uncertainty. The LCOE uses the same method as the published industry comparisons.
The ground is in the design
Every table is checked against LiDAR levels before anyone orders steel. Anchor lengths and drilled depths are known in advance, not found on site.
Lower-cost electrical
Transformer count, MV routing and cable sizes are chosen on installed cost plus 25 years of losses, not on habit.
Built for Irish projects
ITM coordinates, GSI LiDAR, the Irish grid carbon factor and the RESS auction price are built in, not added as workarounds.
Your data stays yours
Everything runs in AutoCAD on your own machine. Only the site coordinates go out, to fetch public weather data; drawings and reports stay in your office.
Sample reports
What PVREPORT and the schedules produce
Pages from the output of a sample 18 MW ground-mount project in the west of Ireland. The figures are illustrative, to show the format.
Energy yield
Sample outputAs designed, 35°Optimised, 25°
Modules
28,900 × 765 W
DC capacity
22.11 MWp
Export limit
18.0 MW
As designed
–
Optimised
–
Specific yield
–
Energy to the grid after shading, temperature, cable, inverter, transformer and clipping losses. Same modules in both cases; the optimised layout gives more kWh per kWp.
Energy certainty
Sample outputP50, expected
21,450 MWh
P90
19,850 MWh
P95
19,400 MWh
P99
18,540 MWh
Combined uncertainty
±5.8 %
Year-to-year variation from ten years of NASA POWER weather (2.2 %), combined with resource (4 %), model (3 %) and other (2 %) uncertainty. P90 is the output exceeded in nine years out of ten, the figure lenders size debt on.
Grid and losses
Sample outputDC cables
1.1 %
Inverters
1.6 %
LV AC cables
0.6 %
Transformers
1.0 %
MV cables
0.4 %
Grid connection cable
0.2 %
Electrical total
4.9 %
Cable losses use each circuit's real length from the drawing and the site's own load profile, not a flat allowance.
Carbon
Sample outputAvoided, first year
5,360 t CO₂
Avoided, 25 years
125,400 t CO₂
Manufacture and build
−11,050 t CO₂
Net, 25 years
114,350 t CO₂
Carbon payback
2.1 years
Avoided carbon uses the grid emission factor you enter, with module degradation. Manufacturing carbon covers modules, inverters, steel, cable and transformers.
Lifetime cost and RESS check
Sample outputCapital cost
€15.9 m
Operation, 25 years
€6.1 m
Inverter replacement
€0.9 m
Discount rate
6.0 %
LCOE
€71.40 / MWh
RESS 5 average
€98.81 / MWh
Margin at P50
+€27.4 / MWh
Costs are entered on the report's own input page: design, planning, environmental studies, land, materials, installation, 25 years of maintenance and replacements. The RESS page tests the margin at P50 and at P90.
Pile schedule
Sample output| Pile ID | Pos | Easting m | Northing m | Ground m | Head m | Stick-up mm | Drilled mm | Length mm | Check |
|---|
Every anchor on a table has its head at the same level, 150 mm above the highest ground under it. Anchor length is the longest stick-up plus the least drilled depth, so the site orders one length. A second file, point number, northing, easting, height and description, loads straight into a GPS drill rig.
Block diagram
Sample outputDrawn from the drawing's own inverter, transformer and cable data, so it changes when the layout changes.
Who it is for
Designers who already work in AutoCAD
- Developers testing a site before paying for full studies: yield, pile risk and a first LCOE from a boundary and LiDAR.
- EPC and design consultants producing layouts, set-out and schedules that the site team builds from.
- Rooftop installers laying out commercial roofs with edge zones, obstructions and 3D buildings.
- Needs: AutoCAD 2026 on Windows. Civil 3D support is in progress.
- Inputs: a site boundary, LiDAR or a survey, and module and inverter choices.
- Outputs: drawing layers, CSV and Excel schedules, the HTML project report and a drill-rig point file.
Questions
Common questions
Does it replace PVsyst?
No. Tiltwise does the layout, terrain, piles, electrical and a report funders can read at design stage. For the independent energy yield a lender asks for, it exports the ground and layout for PVsyst.
Where does the weather data come from?
Hourly and typical-year data from the EU's PVGIS service, and ten years of hourly data from NASA POWER for the year-to-year variation. Both are free public sources, credited in the report.
Can it use my own survey instead of LiDAR?
Yes. Any grid of levels can be loaded, from GSI LiDAR tiles, a drone survey or a topographic survey.
Does it work outside Ireland?
The layout, optimiser, terrain, piles and electrical work anywhere. ITM, the GSI LiDAR link and the RESS check are Irish; other grids and markets can be added.
Does it design wind farms?
Yes, at feasibility stage. It places and optimises the turbines, works out the energy after wakes with P-values, sizes the MV collection and export cables, and checks noise and shadow flicker at dwellings, using the New European Wind Atlas. A bankable energy yield still needs on-site wind measurement and an independent assessment.
Can it add solar to a wind farm?
Yes. It draws a PV area round each turbine, clear of the blades, crane pad and access roads, connects it on its own circuit or a shared transformer, and sets ten years of hourly solar against the site's wind. With a battery, it runs it hour by hour against a year of day-ahead prices and your import charges, and shows the cost, income, NPV and payback of PV alone and PV + battery. The PV areas are laid out with the normal solar tools.
Can I put my own name and logo on the reports?
Yes. Enter them once with PVBRAND and every report carries them in its header and footer. The last page always lists the standards and data sources the report used and credits Tiltwise.
How is it licensed?
Download it and you get 60 days free on that PC – no key and no card. After that, each licence is tied to one PC: type PVLICENCE in AutoCAD and email the machine code it shows to info@tiltwise.solar. The tools are compiled, so the source code is not shared.
What do I need to run it?
Windows 64-bit and AutoCAD 2021 or later – full AutoCAD or Civil 3D. AutoCAD LT is not supported.
What does the installer change on my PC?
Only one thing: it copies the tools into your own AutoCAD plug-ins folder (%APPDATA%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\PVTools.bundle), which AutoCAD loads by itself. Nothing else is changed and no administrator rights are needed. If Windows asks whether to run the install script, choose Run. To remove Tiltwise, run uninstall.cmd in that folder.
Free 60-day trial
Try it on one of your own sites
Use every feature free for 60 days. No key and no card – just tell us where to send the link.
Windows 64-bit, AutoCAD 2021 or later (full AutoCAD or Civil 3D – not LT).
Download and install
Close AutoCAD, unzip the download (right-click, Extract All) and double-click Install Tiltwise Tools. The link is emailed to you too.
Open AutoCAD
The Tiltwise toolbar and menu appear and your 60 days start. Type PVLICENCE any time to see the days left.
Tell us what you think
Questions, problems, a missing feature or a full licence – email info@tiltwise.solar.