Solar Irradiance Extension with/without shading

[yariv.edery]

Greetings, Sketchupppers where ever you are! Does anyone know of a plugin or extension that provide solar irradiance on geolocated 3D models?

I’m a proficient user of SketchUp for several years now and use it primarily for power generation systems design, solar power and building thermal envelope modeling.
An important part of my work is to identify the solar irradiance on a geo-located building/surface/face.
The shadows tool provides a great level of data to identify shading from obstacles, but it does not provide irradiation intensity at certain locations/positions within the geo-located model.
This is an important feature for solar power systems design and at the moment I have to use other software (mainly solar manufacturer’s proprietary software) which requires me to rebuild the 3D model and geographically locate it on the other software, and then export a PNG image with the irradiance map so it can be included in my layout documents… so a bit of a drag in time management…

Any suggestions?

[MikeWayzovski]

Have you tried Sefaira?

[yariv.edery]

Thanks! Is there a plugin or extension from Sefaira to Skup? I’ve found an extension called Groundhog after typing Sefaira in the extension warehouse but I cannot activate it (its enabled in the manager but I cannot bring a toolbar to operate it)
I’m also playing around with EnergyPlus but it continuously prompts me to save my models in a different format and when I geolocate my models, energyplus seems to not like it very much and continuously sending error messages preventing me from working on my model.
Thanks!

[gsharp]

Lightup has a good solar irradiance capability

[colin]

LightUp is great. I think that the difference between LightUp and Sefaira is that LightUp shows you what it will look like, and Sefaira will show how much it will cost you each year.

[yariv.edery]

Thanks for that, but I think that Lightup is more suited for daylight modeling/rendering. I’m more after an irradiation mapping of mainly roof tops so I can determine area setbacks from obstacles, other roofs or buildings etc. I tried to paste an image to show but not sure if it worked.

[eric-s]

Are you looking for something like this?

[yariv.edery]

Yes, this image seem to present a scale of the number of hours that a face is exposed to direct or diffused sunlight in a day.
What is the name of this extension?

[eric-s]

https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/shadedat

[yariv.edery]

Awesome thanks. Will give it a try now

[Vetrivel]

this plugin is not working now. Do you know any similar plugins?

[eric-s]

I just tested it and it works for me. Can you describe the problem or reason for not working on your end?

[Vetrivel]

You can see the below screenshot

It is not working for me. Do you know the reason?

[Vetrivel]

@eric-s Have you seen the screenshot?

[Anssi]

@Vetrivel

Do you know the reason?

Check the essentials:

• is the extension compatible with your version of SketchUp?
• go to the website of the manufacturer of your graphics card and download and install the newest driver version.
• after installing the driver and extension, restart your computer or at least SketchUp.

[ateliernab]

click on the camera.

I just downloaded it and tried, same result. then I went back to the extension page, and there is a “step 1 - step 2” image.

click on the camera, let it work, and you’ll get a snapshot

[Elmtec-Adam]

I’ve done this in V-Ray using the light analysis render element.

Is this the kind of thing that is useful?

[Vetrivel]

What is the plugin name?

[Vetrivel]

Just now, I got to know that ShadeDat will support only SketchUp 2017 & 2018 but I’m using SketchUp 2022.
Let me know any other option for the Solar Irradiance

[Elmtec-Adam]

That’s V-Ray,
Sorry, I forgot to type the caption