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General
Yes, PVSketch is free to sign up at any time and we offer 14-day free trials for PVCAD, PVSketch Mega, and PVCAD Mega. Please contact us here to start a free trial today.
Yes, central to our mission is providing easy-to-use, intuitive tools to welcome more people to the solar industry. Our web-based layout tool, PVSketch is free to sign up and provides users the ability to create new solar designs each month. We have had over 25,000 free accounts created all around the world helping solar enthusiast design projects from universities to their own rooftops.
Our name is PVComplete because our goal is to be the “Complete” solution to your technical solar development needs. Our software is built for all design and engineering use cases across the web and CAD environments and for residential, commercial, and utility scale solar. At our core, we are solar developers building tools for other solar developers. Our product development is centered around creating efficiencies and automation to help make solar development easier. Our founding and our leadership teams come from deep backgrounds in solar, and we are committed to creating the tools that will help us realize a sustainable future.
PVComplete is a full service software platform to help you develop, design, and engineer your solar project. We have offices in Berkeley, CA and in Porto, Portugal and remote employees all across the United States. We have 4 software products – PVSketch and PVCAD built for distributed generation solar development, and PVSketch Mega and PVCAD Mega for “megawatt” or larger ground mounted solar projects. We offer software products as well as solar design and engineering consulting services as well as plan set creation and professional engineer stamping.
Please the below FAQs and the Product Documentation pages in our Help Center.
License
We release new versions of our products about once a quarter. We may make more frequent updates to our “Sketch” products, and when you log in you will are automatically given our latest version. Our “CAD” products require users to de-install and re-install PVCAD or PVCAD Mega. You will receive notification by email when a new version is available.
You are able to reset a password and email address within our “Sketch” products if you have access to the employees email address. For our “CAD” products please see documentation here to release the license key to register a new user. If you are having trouble with either of these options, please email us at support@pvcomplete.com and we can help you.
Sorry to see you go! We would love the opportunity to keep your business. Please contact support and we will process your cancellation request and terminate your license at the end of your current billing period.
Our CAD products are linked and registered to one computer, thus you will get one license per computer. For Sketch, you can create a license for yourself or if you are interested in shared use enterprise accounts – please reach out to our team at sales@pvcomplete.com.
You can purchase licenses online here, for our Sketch products you will purchase your licenses within the software itself and get immediate access. For our CAD products, after you purchase you will receive an email from pvcad@pvcomplete.com with an installer link for the software and a license key.
Our licenses vary by each of our products. You can find details about our licenses here, we find it important to be transparent about our prices so that our customers can feel confident they are getting the best value for our tools. We offer monthly licenses that can be canceled at any time or auto-renew each month, and discounted annual licenses that give you access for a year.
Payment
You will get a receipt from our billing partner Stripe each month. If you click “Manage Your Subscription” within this receipt, you will be taken to a login portal where you will be able to update your payment method. If you are having trouble accessing, please email us at support@pvcomplete.com and we will send you a secure link to update your payment method.
We accept all major credit and debit cards for monthly and annual license purchases, and accept bank transfers and ACH for annual purchases.
Products
What kind of solar are you interested in and what is your technical experience level? Please see the intended user personas:
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- Distributed Generation
- PVSketch – Built for business development, project management, and early stage engineering. A simple and easy to use tool to calculate the size, energy production estimate, and generate proposals and early stage reports.
- Distributed Generation
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- PVCAD – Built for engineers to do designs quickly and more accurately to help make key development decisions and create permit and construction ready plan sets
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- Ground mounted Community Solar and Utility Scale
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- PVSketch Mega- Built for business development, project management, and early stage engineering to conduct early stage site feasibility and selection across large areas. Performs optimizations, layouts, energy estimates, and early stage reports.
- PVCAD Mega– Built for engineers to do designs quickly and more accurately to help make key development decisions and create permit and construction ready plan sets
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Please see the product documentation pages for the full feature lists of each of our products. We are constantly adding new features and developing each of the products, please email us at support@pvcomplete.com if you have any specific features added.
Try using our online tools – PVSketch and PVSketch Mega. You can create project designs and order project permits, single-line diagrams, engineering stamps and other services from licensed, professional engineers. Whether you want to perform all the design work yourself or outsource some of it, PVComplete delivers a full-service solution. We can also teach you the basic of CAD if you are interested in PVCAD or PVCAD Mega, please reach out to support@pvcomplete.com to learn about our next training session. Also
PVComplete’s “Sketch” products work with an internet connection and X, Y, Z web browser. “CAD” products work within AutoDesk’s AutoCAD product environment. If you have an existing, full AutoCAD license you can simply purchase PVCAD or PVCAD Mega “plug-in” versions. If you have AutoCAD LT or don’t have AutoCAD you can buy our “bundled” version which includes PVCAD or PVCAD Mega and a discounted AutoCAD license. For additional technical requirements, please click here.
Mega is short for MegaWatt and refers to our PVSketch Mega and PVCAD Mega products. These products are built for ground mounted larger solar projects at least a Megawatt in size. These products are primarily used by companies developing utility scale and ground mounted community solar projects.
Our “Sketch” tools are easy-to-use web-based solar design tools. They were built so people just learning solar can begin to understand and visualize what different projects, specifications, and solar even looks like. Our “CAD” tools are add-ons to AutoCAD that provides automation, efficiency and standardization for technical engineering and more experienced solar users.
Services
You can provide us with project details when you use our “request a design” feature in PVSketch (here) PVSketch or you can send us an email at design@pvcomplete.com. We will respond in 24 hours with with any additional information request, scope clarifications, or pricing.
You don’t have to be an engineer or AutoCad user to be our customer, we are here to help whether you use our software or not.
Yes, we are a full service platform – providing software and human services. We provide fully compiled layouts, plan-set, and professional engineering stamps for residential, commercial, and utility scale solar projects as well as battery storage and electrical vehicle charging projects.
Support
Please refer to our full feature lists within our product documentation pages. If you want to request a new feature, please email support@pvcomplete.com, we want your feedback on what you want to see next from PVComplete!
We are constantly adding the latest equipment to our extensive equipment database. This database includes all major module and inverter supplies, as well as prominent racking supplies. If you are a paid user of our products we allow the ability to manually add equipment locally within our “CAD” products, and within PVSketch you can select our “request to add equipment”. For “CAD” users, we recommend that you email us at support@pvcomplete.com rather than our manual add feature so that this equipment can be added to our cloud database for other users or your teammates.
Please refer to our Product Documentation, email us at support@pvcomplete.com, if you want to schedule an appointment with one of our customer success representatives, please click here. This feature is not available for free PVSketch users.
Refer to product documentation pages for PVSketch and PVSketch Mega or email support@pvcomplete.com if you need further assistance.
Refer to product documentation here.
Please email us at support@pvcomplete.com, we will respond within 24 hours of your message.
