Recently, Victron introduced a very promising and user-friendly tool, Click & Design for Pro, which allows for quick project calculations of ESS efficiency. I would like to invite developers working on this product, as well as professional installers, to join this thread and exchange constructive suggestions for the further development of this tool.
I’ve tested it on my current engineering project, which is underway and in the process of equipment procurement. During the testing, I immediately identified both convenient and less convenient aspects of using Click & Design.
Let’s start with the positive features:
I was particularly impressed with the forecasting capabilities, which use historical statistical data (a year’s sample) for PV generation, factoring in geo/weather data and azimuth alignment. This is truly impressive! Well done!
The user-friendly infographic in the form of a client presentation, including the complete list of installation components, is fantastic. It significantly reduces the time needed to prepare a commercial proposal for potential clients and looks highly informative and professional. Excellent work, and thank you once again!
However, there are a couple of areas that I feel could be improved:
The ability to design large parallel systems, both single-phase and three-phase (over 3 units), with the option to select the specific inverter models required.
The absence of third-party photovoltaic module models. It would be great if these could be added, at least in the premium segment.
If any of you have already used this product, I would appreciate it if you could share your impressions and suggestions for the developers.
Very timely for me as I’m in the process of designing a small ESS installation and components can still be changed. I will definitely try out the tool.
I have now played around with the tool and must say I’m impressed. Perhaps some of my comments are just because I’m a novice who simply doesn’t know how to do things:
It would be nice to have other charger/inverter models to choose from, beyond the Multiplus II. Personally I have the Quattro.
Is there a way to tell the devices selected? I only have a touchscreen but touching on the graphic yields nothing.
Related to the above, how can we remove a component we don’t need? For example, my drawing automatically added a meter, which I don’t need but could see no way to delete it.
Also related to the above: use universal/common colors. What I assumed was earth/ground because it was green turned out to be communication.
Find a way to differentiate devices. What I initially assumed to be Lynx turned out to be GX.
The tool seems to be for any system which is a good thing. But can we also have an ESS setting?
On your second point on potential areas of improvement, I easily found my third-party PVs using the search function. I agree this could be improved further by making that possibility more obvious or even entering custom parameters.
You can very easily adapt panels from the list to custom parameters: tick the box called “Advanced panel settings”. There you can adjust the settings to follow the datasheet. Once you change, the Solar panel type up top will change to “custom”
