Solmetric Corporation, based in

Sebastopol Sevastopol (; uk, Севасто́поль, Sevastópolʹ, ; gkm, Σεβαστούπολις, Sevastoúpolis, ; crh, Акъя́р, Aqyár, ), sometimes written Sebastopol, is the largest city in Crimea, and a major port on the Black Sea ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

, is a manufacturer of solar test and measurement equipment and developer of solar design software. It was founded in 2005 and is best known for its shade measurement tool, the SunEye, and its I-V curve tracer, the PV Analyzer. The award-winning SunEye shade tool is used primarily by residential solar installers. It tells the user when and where shadows will fall so that solar modules can be placed to maximize energy harvest. The PV Analyzer is an I-V curve tracer. It is used for commissioning and troubleshooting commercial and utility scale PV systems.

History

Solmetric was founded by Willard MacDonald, Robert MacDonald, and Mark Galli in 2005. The company was to produce a device to predict and analyze the shade at a potential solar installation site. Solmetric became a certified

B Corporation In the United States, a benefit corporation (or in several jurisdictions including Delaware, a public-benefit corporation or PBC) is a type of for-profit corporate entity, authorized by 35 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, that includ ...

in 2009. In 2013., The firm was one of the 63 B Corporations listed as ''Best for The World'' Environmental Impact Honorees. In January 2014 the firm was acquired by residential installer and solar financier,

Vivint Solar Vivint Solar was an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems, primarily for residential customers. The company was established in 2011 as an offshoot of home automation and security company Vivint and was headquartered in ...

for $12 million. In August 2021 after

was acquired by

SunRun Sunrun is an American provider of photovoltaic systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company was established in 2007 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Since its inception, the c ...

, two of the original founders purchased Solmetric back from

, and it is now run independently again.

Products

The SunEye-100 was introduced at SolFest in Hopland, California in 2006, to replace the Solar Pathfinder as a device previously used to measure shade . Shade measurements became a particularly important when the

California Solar Initiative Solar power in California includes utility-scale solar power plants as well as local distributed generation, mostly from rooftop photovoltaics. It has been growing rapidly because of high insolation, community support, declining solar costs, ...

program began requiring shade measurements in 2006 and solar companies began providing third party financing of solar systems. The product received the 2007 Top 10 Green Building Products of the Year award from US based Building Green, the 2nd place Innovation Award at the 2008 European PV Solar Energy Tradeshow in Staffelstein Germany, and the 2009 Trophy of Innovation from Salon des énergies renouvelables at

Eurexpo Eurexpo is a convention center and exhibition hall in the commune of Chassieu, south-east of Lyon. It is the site of the annual Foire de Lyon. Description Built in 1984, the site includes 13,000 parking spaces, a total exhibition space of ...

in Lyon, France. By 2010 it was the primary tool used by residential solar companies for surveying shade. A subsequent version, the SunEye-210 added a

fisheye camera A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image. Fisheye lenses achieve extremely wide angles of view, well beyond any rectilinear lens. Instead of p ...

, digital compass, digital

inclinometer An inclinometer or clinometer is an instrument used for measuring angles of slope, elevation, or depression of an object with respect to gravity's direction. It is also known as a ''tilt indicator'', ''tilt sensor'', ''tilt meter'', ''slope ...

, and

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

. It captures an image of the sky including the horizon, superimposes the sunpaths on top of the image, and calculates the solar access for that location. The PV Designer layout and simulation software product was first introduced in 2009 at

Solar Power International For show-casing new technology, Solar Power International is a solar power conference created in 2004, when the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) merged to organize an annual event bringi ...

. The software enables the user to layout PV modules on a roof virtually and simulate the energy production. The PV Analyzer I-V curve tracer (“PVA-600”) was introduced in 2010 and could measure strings up to 600 volts and 20 amps. The PVA-1000, introduced in 2013, added 1000 volt, 30 amp capability as well as the SolSensor wireless PV reference which measures the

irradiance In radiometry, irradiance is the radiant flux ''received'' by a ''surface'' per unit area. The SI unit of irradiance is the watt per square metre (W⋅m−2). The CGS unit erg per square centimetre per second (erg⋅cm−2⋅s−1) is often used ...

and module temperature. And, in 2019 the PVA-1500 family was introduced with a 1500 volt rating and WiFi based connectivity. The PVA simultaneously measures the

and module temperature with the SolSensor ''Wireless PV Reference Sensor''. It is used primarily for commissioning and troubleshooting PV systems .

References

External links

{{Official website, http://www.solmetric.com/ Manufacturing companies based in California American companies established in 2005 Companies based in Sonoma County, California