Plant layout & SLD

Plant layout and SLD

The plant designer's two tabs, its shared input form, and the auto-placement engine behind Generate Layout and Generate SLD.

Run ▸ BESS Plant Layout & SLD… — or the banner 🏗 Plant Layout & SLD button — opens a separate window for laying out a BESS plant's equipment and drawing its single-line diagram. Two tabs, Plant Layout and Single Line Diagram, share one input form and the same auto-placement engine, so whatever you set on one tab is what the other builds from.

The plant designer window, showing the Plant Layout tab's input form on the left, alongside its drawing canvas.
The Plant Layout & SLD designer

The two tabs

Plant Layout shows the input form on the left, alongside a drawing canvas. Single Line Diagram reuses the same inputs — it shows only the note Uses the same inputs as the Plant Layout tab. in place of a form — and has its own drawing canvas. Each canvas has its own toolbar, so the tool in use, the undo history, snap/ortho and layer visibility are independent between the two. See The drawing editor.

The shared input form

The form is split into three groups.

The first group sets the plant's equipment counts and ratings:

FieldDefaultRangeWhat it does
BESS Plant Capacity10 MWhTotal battery energy capacity for the plant; sets the number of containers
BESS Container Capacity5 MWhEnergy capacity of one battery container
Container Size20 ftContainer length; looked up in a standard container-size table (20/40/45 ft), or scaled from the 20 ft ratio for any other length, to size the container's footprint
C-rate0.25Power ÷ energy sizing ratio for the BESS; unitless — C-rate is also set independently on Battery parameters
PCS Capacity1.25 MVAPower rating of one PCS (power-conversion system) unit
PCS per LV Panel2 nosPCS units combined onto each LV panel
LV Panels per Transformer1 nosLV panels feeding each transformer; also auto-syncs Transformer Type below
MV Panels1 nosNumber of MV panels, fed by all transformers

The second group, Equipment size (Length x Width, m), sets each equipment type's footprint as a paired length and width:

FieldDefault (L × W, m)RangeWhat it does
PCS L x W2.5 × 1Footprint of one PCS unit
LV Panel L x W2 × 1Footprint of one LV panel
Transformer L x W4 × 3Footprint of one transformer
MV Panel L x W3 × 2Footprint of one MV panel

The third group, Spacing & geo-reference, sets the gaps between equipment and the site's coordinates:

FieldDefaultRangeWhat it does
Container Side Gap1.0 mGap left beside each container
Row Gap (N-S)3.0 mNorth–south gap between rows
Latitude26.9124 degSite latitude — the georeferencing anchor for importing or exporting a KMZ/KML background
Longitude75.7873 degSite longitude — the georeferencing anchor for importing or exporting a KMZ/KML background

An east–west gap between transformer groups is set automatically as Container Side Gap plus 4.0 m; it has no field of its own.

A separate Transformer Type control sets the transformer's winding configuration:

FieldDefaultRangeWhat it does
Transformer Type (2 winding / 3 winding / 5 winding)2 winding2 winding, 3 winding, 5 windingRead-only; auto-syncs from LV Panels per Transformer — 1 → 2 winding, 2 → 3 winding, 4 → 5 winding. Any other count leaves the previously chosen type unchanged

Generating and drawing

⚙ Generate Layout and ⚙ Generate SLD both auto-place the plant's equipment from the form above — the first as a scaled layout, the second as schematic symbols on the same topology. From there, each tab's drawing tools let you move, add to or correct what was placed, and each canvas exports to PDF, DXF or KMZ on its own. See the pages below.

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