ICR blocks

An ICR block is one inverter control room (ICR) and the tables wired to it. A table belongs to the block of the control room that its string inverter — or its string monitoring box (SMB), in a central-inverter design — feeds. The block is therefore an electrical grouping, and it is the unit a block transformer, a cable schedule sheet and a construction package are usually organised around.

Every output that talks about blocks uses that definition: the ICR blocks layer, the block summary window, and the two block exports. The blocks are known once the inverters are placed, which happens on every Generate Layout; before that a block has no tables.

Blocks and the placement groups

The control rooms are placed first, each at the centre of a group of tables of near-equal capacity. See Inverter control rooms. The inverters or SMBs are then assigned to the rooms, each starting on the room nearest to it along the plant and moving to a neighbouring room only when that room is full. So a block — the tables wired to a room — is close to the group the room was placed for, but not identical to it: along the edge between two groups a few tables can end up wired to the neighbouring room. How devices are assigned is on Cable routing.

Seeing the blocks

Open Layers ▾ in the Layout view's tools and switch ICR blocks on. Each block is filled in its own colour and outlined, and labelled with its name. The row is off by default and greyed out until the inverters are placed; it stays available while the layout is out of date.

• Names. Blocks are named ICR-1, ICR-2 and so on, after the number of their control room in the plant.
• Outlines. A block's outline hugs its tables, closes the gaps inside the block, keeps off the other blocks and is clipped to the plant boundary. A block split by an obstruction or a water body can therefore have several pieces.
• Colours. The colours cycle through a fixed set of sixteen.

The layer is the quickest way to see how the plant is wired: which tables feed which building, and whether a block reaches across a corridor or a pond to pick up tables the neighbouring room would serve more directly.

Opening a block's summary

With the ICR blocks layer on, every block opens a summary window of its own. There are two ways in.

By clicking. Click a block — press and release the left mouse button on the same block without moving it. A double-click, a drag, or a press on the control room building itself does not open anything: a press on the building starts dragging the room. Hovering over a block names it in the status bar, "ICR-3 — click to open its summary"; nothing is drawn on the plot.

From the keyboard. Switching the layer on gives the plot the keyboard.

Nothing opens while Sketch Mode, the SLD view or the BOM view is on, while Pan or Zoom is active, or while you are placing a main control room, an object or an AC start point, or drawing an obstruction. Finish or cancel that first.

Each click or Enter opens another window, so you can open several blocks side by side and compare them. The windows do not block the main window; they open at its top right, each one offset from the last.

The summary window

The window's title names the block and the plant, for example "ICR-3 — Demo". A strip across the top repeats the name beside a swatch of the block's colour, with two chips for the design: Fixed tilt or Single-axis tracker, and String inverter or Central inverter.

Four tiles give the block's size at a glance:

Under the tiles a card lists the rest, in this order. A — means the figure is not available for this design or this run.

The two cable rows need Calculate cables on for the run; the inverter and AC capacity rows and the ratio need an inverter (OND) file. A note under the card says which of those is missing — "Cable lengths need Cable Calc.", "Inverter capacity needs an OND file." — and always ends "Energy is calculated for the whole plant (Energy view)."

Energy is not split per block

The block window carries no energy figures, deliberately. Yield is calculated for the whole plant, in the Energy view. If you need a block's share, the DC capacity tile's percentage of the plant is the figure to scale by.

PDF…, Copy and Close

PDF… needs active access, like the exports on the Export ▾ menu.

While the results are out of date

When an input changes after a run, the layout is out of date until you regenerate or change the value back — see Out-of-date results. The block windows follow it. A banner across the window reads Out of date. These figures are from the last run, and 1 input has changed since. Regenerate the layout to update them., and PDF… and Copy are disabled, with the tooltip "Inputs changed since the last run. Regenerate first." A window opened while the layout is out of date starts with the banner.

The windows close themselves when the blocks they describe change under them:

• when the inverters are placed again — after dragging a control room, drawing an obstruction or any other edit on the plot that moves them;
• when the plant is regrouped — after loading an inverter file, or changing the ACCB & Transformer card (Transformer in a central-inverter design) on the Electrical tab;
• when you open a project.

The block exports

Two items on the Export ▾ menu, in the view header, produce the whole set of blocks at once:

Both are available once the inverters are placed and the layout is current, and both need active access. On a site where more than one plot has control rooms, the block names in both exports carry the plot's number, P1-ICR-1, P2-ICR-1 and so on, so that blocks from different plots stay apart. See Multi-plot sites.

Export ICR-Block PDF

The save dialog is titled "Save ICR-Block PDF". Every sheet is A3 landscape, in the same engineering frame and title block as the project report, and the status bar reports "ICR-block PDF exported (n pages): …". There is one sheet for the plant and one for each block; a layout with no control rooms gets the plant sheet alone.

Sheet 1, the plant. The whole plant, with each block's tables in a lighter shade of its colour, its outline and its labelled control room, plus a scale bar and a north arrow. Beside it, a table headed ICR BLOCKS gives one row per block — BLOCK · AREA (AC) · TABLES/TRACKERS · MODULES · DC (MWP) · INVERTERS/SMBS · AC (MWAC) · DC/AC — with a TOTAL row when there are several blocks. The notes explain the colouring: "Each colour is one ICR block: the tables wired, through their inverter / SMB, to that ICR." The drawing is titled ICR BLOCK LAYOUT - PLANT.

Sheets 2 onwards, one per block. The drawing zooms to the block: its tables in its colour, the other blocks in grey, and its inverters or SMBs drawn dark. A KEY PLAN shows the whole plant with this block in red. A BLOCK DETAILS table lists every row of the summary window, and the notes name the block's sheet in the cable schedule and state that area and perimeter are measured on the block outline. Each sheet is titled ICR BLOCK LAYOUT - ICR-n.

The Piles row is filled whenever a pile pattern exists, whether or not the pile overlay is on.

Export ICR-Block DXF

The save dialog is titled "Save ICR-Block DXF", and the status bar reports "ICR-block DXF exported (n block sheets + plant): …" — or "DXF exported (no ICR blocks — whole plant only): …" when there are no blocks.

The model space is the complete Export DXF drawing, every layer included; see CAD export. The sheets are A3 landscape layouts in paper space:

The drawing adds its own layers:

Each block sheet freezes the other blocks' layers, so its viewport shows its own block. The sheet text uses plain characters a CAD font can show: a transformer prints as 1 x 16,000 kVA, 4-winding.

Two things follow what is on screen when you export:

• Piles — the Piles row, and the PILES layer, appear only when a pile pattern exists and the pile overlay is on (Piles: ON). Switch the overlay on before exporting if the set is to carry piles.
• Arresters — the arrester layer follows the Lightning arresters row in Layers ▾.

For the cable lengths behind each block, export the cable schedule, which has one sheet per block. See CAD export.

Where to go next