Main control room, substations and street lights
Placing the main control room and other structures on a generated layout, and the perimeter street lights you enable before generating.
Some site equipment is not placed with the layout. The MCR — main control room — and any generic objects are placed by clicking a position on the plot after a layout exists. Unit substations appear on their own when a multi-plot site gets its main control room. Street lights are a setting you turn on before you generate.
The inverter control rooms — ICRs — are different: they are counted from the plant capacity and sited automatically. See Inverter control rooms.
| Equipment | How it arrives | When | Footprint set in |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCR — main control room | You click Place MCR, then click the plot | After a layout exists | Structures & Shadow, the MCR row |
| Object — anything else on the site | You click Place Object, then click the plot | After a layout exists | Structures & Shadow, the Object row |
| USS — unit substation | Placed for you, one per plot, when the main control room is placed | Multi-plot sites only | Structures & Shadow, the USS row |
| Street lights | Placed with the layout | Enabled before generating | Structures & Shadow, the street light rows |
Placing the main control room
The placement buttons sit below the plot and become useful once a layout has been generated.
Click Place MCR
The button changes to Cancel Placement while it is armed, so you can always tell whether the next click on the plot will drop a building. Click Cancel Placement to disarm it without placing anything.
Click the position on the plot
The main control room is placed at the point you click. One click places it and the button returns to Place MCR.
Keep it inside the boundary
A click outside the plant boundary is refused with the message "Please place inside the boundary." Nothing is placed, and the button stays armed so you can click again in the right place.
- What it shows
- The plot with the main control room visible, plus the hint line below the placement buttons reporting the total medium-voltage cable length.
- How to get there
- Generate a layout with cable calculation on, click Place MCR, then click a position inside the boundary.
- Callouts to add
- Outline the main control room and the hint line.
Remove MCR takes it away again. Place it once more wherever you want it — there is no need to regenerate the layout to move it.
On a run with cable calculation on, a hint line below the placement buttons reports the total medium-voltage cable length as soon as the room is placed, so you can try two positions and compare them without regenerating.
The footprint
The main control room's size comes from your own fields in the Structures & Shadow group, not from a fixed value:
| Field | Default | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| MCR length (east–west) | 15.0 | m |
| MCR width (north–south) | 8.0 | m |
| MCR height | 5.0 | m |
Length is always the east–west dimension and width the north–south one, so a building entered as 15 by 8 is wide across the rows, not along them. The height drives the shadow footprint rather than the plan area. Set these before you place the building; see Structures and shadow for the whole group, including the Clear tables inside shadows option, which is on by default and removes tables that fall inside the building's year-round shadow.
Why the main control room comes first
Medium-voltage routing runs from every inverter control room to the main control room. Until the main control room exists there is no destination, so no medium-voltage cable is routed at all — the medium-voltage length and trench columns in the summary report a dash even on a run with cable calculation switched on.
The order that works is therefore:
- Generate the layout, with Calculate Cables for PV Power Plant ticked.
- Place the main control room.
- Read the medium-voltage figures.
Place it where the plant's export actually leaves the site — usually near the point of interconnection — because the trunk network is built to reach it and its position sets the whole medium-voltage cable length. Moving it changes that length. See Cable routing and trenches for how the trunk is formed and what the reported lengths mean.
Placing generic objects
An object is anything on the site that keeps modules off the ground around it and that your boundary file does not carry: a tree, a pole, a tank, an existing shed, a structure the survey missed.
- Place Object arms placement in the same way as Place MCR — the button reads Cancel Placement while armed, and a click outside the boundary is refused with the same message.
- Remove Objects clears the objects you have placed.
Their size and height come from the Object row of the Structures & Shadow group:
| Field | Default | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Object length (east–west) | 0.0 | m |
| Object width (north–south) | 0.0 | m |
| Object height | 0.0 | m |
All three object fields ship at 0.0, which means not configured. Fill in a length, a width and a height before you place an object, or you are placing something with no extent and no shadow.
The point of an object is the shadow, not the footprint. With Clear tables inside shadows on, the year-round shadow of each object across the shadow window clears the tables it falls on — which is exactly what you want for a tree that no boundary file will ever describe. The height is what makes that shadow long, so it is the field to get right.
Unit substations on a multi-plot site
A USS — unit substation — is placed for you, and only on a site whose boundary file contains more than one plant boundary.
When you click Place MCR on a multi-plot site, the application drops a unit substation in every plot except the one that receives the main control room. Each plot's inverter control rooms then route their medium-voltage cables to their own unit substation instead of running across country to the main control room.
| Field | Default | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| USS length (east–west) | 5.0 | m |
| USS width (north–south) | 4.0 | m |
| USS height | 5.0 | m |
The link from a unit substation onward to the main control room is an overhead line or a buried cable, and it is not part of the automatic medium-voltage routing — plan and cost it outside the application. See Multi-plot sites for the full behaviour, including how each plot gets its own summary row.
Street lights
Street lights are perimeter lighting: a line of poles set close inside the fence, right around the plant.
They are off by default and, unlike the main control room, they are not placed by clicking. Switch them on in the input panel before you click Generate Layout; a layout already on screen does not gain them.
What placement does
- Poles are spaced along the plant perimeter at the pole-to-pole span.
- Each pole sits inside the fence, inset by the street light setback.
- Any module table the pole's shadow touches is cleared, so lighting costs a little capacity around the edge of the plant.
The number of poles is approximately the perimeter divided by the span, so a long, irregular boundary carries more lights than a compact one of the same area.
- What it shows
- The plot with street lights placed, zoomed enough along one edge that the even pole spacing inside the fence is visible.
- How to get there
- Switch street lights on, then generate. Zoom to one boundary edge.
- Callouts to add
- Mark the pole-to-pole span with a dimension line.
The street light settings
All of them are in the Structures & Shadow group:
| Field | Default | Range | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Street light pile Ø | 0.3 | 0.0–5.0 | m |
| Street light height | 6.0 | 0.0–50.0 | m |
| Street light span (pole to pole) | 40.0 | 1.0–500.0 | m |
| Street light setback (inset inside perimeter) | 0.2 | 0.0–50.0 | m |
| Street lights | off | — | — |
What each one changes:
- Span sets the pole count. Widen it for fewer poles and less cleared ground; narrow it for more of both.
- Setback decides how far inside the fence the poles stand. It is small by default, which keeps the poles in the perimeter road band rather than out among the tables.
- Height sets how far the pole's shadow reaches, and therefore how many tables it clears.
- Pile Ø describes the foundation.
Reading the result
The summary reports the pole count in the St.Lt column, one row per plant, aggregated in the TOTAL row. The module and capacity columns on the same row already account for the tables the lights cleared.
If a placement does not do what you expect
Where the structures end up in the outputs
- On the plot. The main control room, the unit substations, objects and street light poles are drawn with the rest of the layout.
- In the CAD drawing. The main control room is written to its own
MCRlayer. See CAD drawing export. - In the bill of materials. The automated list is computed from the layout, so use ⚙ Rebuild from Layout after placing or removing equipment. See Bill of materials.
Where to go next
Cable routing and trenches
What medium-voltage routing does once the main control room exists
Multi-plot sites
Several boundaries in one file, one control room, a substation per plot
Structures and shadow
Every footprint, height and the shadow window that clears tables
Lightning arresters
The coverage grid, the footprint, and what it costs in capacity
Lightning arresters
How arresters are placed on a coverage grid, what each one clears from the layout, and the settings that control the radius and the footprint.
Obstructions
Every kind of ground kept clear of modules — water, buildings, line corridors, terrain, shadows — and how to draw an exclusion by hand.