Solar Designer Expertise Available for Less

Team Overview:

TMG has a large team dedicated to solar PV design and produces several hundred designs a month. Almost all these designs are turned around overnight.

Team Composition

TMG’s solar designer team comprises managers, project leaders and drafters. The project leaders and drafters work only on solar design projects full-time. Our managers have each supervised thousands of solar designs during their tenure at TMG.

                        Above:  Solar Designer Team Structure

Team Skills

TMG’s solar designer team is well-versed in the nuances of solar design, such as

• The optimal roof faces for panel placement (depending on the geographic location of the target site)
• Norms for the spacing between arrays
• Conventions for clearance between arrays and roof edges
• Rules for combining array outputs before connecting them to inverters
• The particular characteristics and data of the leading inverters and solar modules
• The connection methods for combiner boxes, ac disconnects and the utility meter

Consequently your technical personnel will not have to spend time training us and can look forward to comprehensive designs from the inception of the contractual arrangement with us.

Like any conscientious company practicing solar design, TMG constantly tries to achieve a zero defect rate in its output. Over the course of more than a thousand projects, we have evolved an effective quality assurance system that has reduced defects to near-zero levels. The system comprises the following methods:

• The work of each drafter is checked 100% by his project leader
• The same files are then checked 25% by the manager who oversees the project leader
• Project leaders and drafters are counseled with directions to avoid any errors that were found
• Executive management discusses quality improvement for each project during its weekly review meeting
• We schedule a weekly videoconference with you to ask if there were any errors in our solar designs that we were not aware of.

TMG’s solar designer team has over the long-term evolved an efficient and streamlined procedure for developing solar PV designs.

Step One: Obtain Inputs

In this step, TMG requests the following from you:

• A photograph or sketch of the target to roof (plan view) with protuberances such as pipes and vents visible
• The scale factor of the above image or dimension information
• Your preferred make and model number of solar modules and inverters
• The power you expect the system to generate
• Data on rafter width and spacing
• Your preferred locations for electrical hardware such as the sunrun meter, the load center and the inverters.

TMG's solar designer team positions the solar PV arrays using the following methods:

• Identify the optimal roof slopes (if rooftop installation) and tilt angles for solar energy capture based on the geographic location of your site
• Define the size of each array based on standard industry guidelines
• Locate the arrays on the target surfaces by avoiding protuberances, following clearance guidelines and avoiding shadows from adjacent objects
• Plot the positions of the attachment points and define the mounts that have to be used based on the characteristics of the roof or mounting surface.

TMG's solar designer team designs all interconnections and specifies electrical hardware using the following methods:

• Define stringing cables based on anticipated current flow
• Interconnect arrays with the appropriate type of cable and junction boxes
• Define the electrical connections to the electrical support components, including the inverter, solar power meter and disconnect switch.

TMG processes the design information thus created as follows:

• We create a cover sheet using your template and layout preferences. The cover sheet typically includes a satellite view of the target site, a street map to the site, information on the power generated by the solar installation as well as the model, make and quantity of the proposed modules.
• We create a layout sheet  to scale showing the module layout with attachment points
• We create a single-line electrical diagram detailing electrical connections and specifying associated switchgear
• We save each of the above drawings in PDF format, put them in the folder and create a zip file of the folder
• We email you the folder.