If you are shortlisting the best solar design software in France for 2026, you are working in a market with an unusually procedural compliance path and a tariff structure that rewards getting the size bracket right. NF C 15-100 governs the low voltage installation, the UTE C15-712-1 guide covers photovoltaic installations specifically, a Consuel attestation has to be issued before Enedis will energise anything, and the obligation d’achat pays a tarif d’achat that steps by system size and is revised every quarter. The platform that tops our 2026 bench is SurgePV, a cloud-native all-in-one suite at US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, about €1,180 at €0.91 to the US dollar. It is not the cheapest option here and we will not pretend it is: five PVsyst Professional licences cost CHF 3,500, five PV*SOL premium seats cost EUR 4,225 plus VAT, and OpenSolar’s core platform is free. But France has a credible domestic tool in Trace Software’s archelios, and PVsyst next door in Switzerland is what French banks ask for by name, so the sections below handle both honestly rather than dismissing them. Below are the ten platforms French installateurs actually shortlist, priced in euros, with real limitations on each including ours. You can compare SurgePV pricing first.
Direct answer. The best all-in-one solar design software for France in 2026 is SurgePV, at US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan (US$6,495 for five seats, about €1,180 and €5,900 at €0.91 to the US dollar). It generates single-line diagrams to NF C 15-100 and UTE C15-712-1 conventions with the DC and AC protection and disconnection devices a Consuel inspector looks for, models the tarif d’achat and the prime a l’autoconsommation by size bracket, captures the data the Enedis raccordement request needs, runs 8,760-hour module-level shading, builds a 3D roof from a satellite address and produces a white-label French-language devis on every plan. If your deliverable is a bankable yield report, PVsyst stays in your stack.
This guide is written for installateurs RGE QualiPV, EPCs, bureaux d’etudes and in-house design teams shipping five or more projects a month. We rank ten platforms on four criteria: French regulatory depth, engineering rigour, workflow coverage from address to signed devis, and total cost of ownership in euros for a five-person team.
What Makes French Solar Design Different
Six things, and a tool built for the American or British market fails at most of them.
NF C 15-100 plus the UTE C15-712-1 guide define the installation. NF C 15-100 is the French low voltage installation standard and it applies to the whole building rather than the PV alone. On top of it sits UTE C15-712-1, the practical guide for photovoltaic installations connected to the public network, which is where the PV-specific detail lives: DC string protection and the conditions under which it is required, DC and AC disconnection arrangements, earthing and equipotential bonding practice, surge protection selection by exposure, cable sizing and voltage drop targets on the DC side, and the labelling that has to appear on enclosures. A single-line diagram drawn to NEC or VDE conventions will not read as a French document, and the DC side is where the differences are sharpest.
Consuel is a gate, not a formality. Before Enedis will energise a new installation, the Comite National pour la Securite des Usagers de l’Electricite has to issue an attestation de conformite for the work. For a PV installation this is a specific attestation, it is submitted by the installer, and it can be followed by an inspection. If the attestation is refused or the visit finds a defect, the connection date moves and the customer’s cash flow moves with it. This is the step that most international software has no concept of, and it has a direct design consequence: the drawings and the equipment schedule you produce at design time are the evidence the attestation rests on. A tool that generates a compliant French SLD and a labelled equipment list is saving you a real, dated delay rather than producing a nice PDF.
Enedis owns the raccordement, and the process has stages. Enedis operates the great majority of the French distribution network, with a set of local entreprises locales de distribution covering specific territories. A connection request goes in, you receive a proposition de raccordement, you accept it, works are scheduled, and the mise en service follows the Consuel attestation. Under the S21 arrangement, small self-consumption systems with surplus sale follow a standardised route with published tariff conditions rather than an individually negotiated contract, which is what makes residential volume work viable. Your design pack should carry the connection data at design time so nobody retypes a module count into a portal.
Obligation d’achat pays by size bracket and moves quarterly. The obligation d’achat obliges the buyer of last resort to purchase your production or your surplus at a published tarif d’achat. The rate depends on the bracket the system falls into by kilowatt-peak, on whether the system sells all its output or only its surplus, and on the quarter in which the connection request was queued. On self-consumption with surplus sale there is also a prime a l’autoconsommation, paid as a per kilowatt-peak amount, itself bracketed by size and revised on the same cadence. Two consequences: a system sized just over a bracket boundary can be worth less in total than a smaller one, and a hard-coded rate in a proposal template silently misprices a twenty year cash flow. This is the single most valuable thing French-aware software does for you.
Integration au bati shaped a decade of French roofs and is now in decline. For years the French tariff paid a substantial premium for modules integrated into the roof plane, replacing the covering rather than sitting on top of it. That produced a national habit of building-integrated residential systems, a domestic industry of integration kits, and a long tail of leak and overheating problems, because a module integrated into a roof runs hotter and loses yield, and the waterproofing detail is unforgiving. The premium is gone. Surimposition, mounting on rails above the existing covering, is now the default for new work and it performs better thermally. Two implications for software: your tool should model the temperature penalty on any remaining integrated design rather than using a generic mounting coefficient, and any inherited devis template still promising an integration premium needs rewriting.
RGE QualiPV decides whether the money is available. Public support routes and many financing products require the work to be done by an installer holding the relevant Reconnu Garant de l’Environnement qualification, with QualiPV the relevant mark for photovoltaics. It is an installer credential rather than a software feature, but it matters to your process because audits sample completed jobs and look at the technical file. Consistent, standards-referenced documentation coming out of your design tool is what makes that audit uneventful.
📘 Regulation note
Per Enedis and the Commission de Regulation de l'Energie, a French PV installation is built to NF C 15-100 with the UTE C15-712-1 photovoltaic guide, must obtain a Consuel attestation de conformite before mise en service, is connected through the Enedis raccordement process, and sells output or surplus under the obligation d'achat at a tarif that steps by size bracket and is revised quarterly. Confirm the current bracket rates and the prime a l'autoconsommation before any number reaches a customer.
Bring one of your own sites to a free SurgePV demo. We will build the 3D roof from a satellite address, run the 8,760-hour shading simulation, and hand you the SLD, BOQ and branded proposal on the call.
Book a free SurgePV demo → Compare pricingWhy French Firms Stay on archelios and PVsyst
Most sponsored roundups skip this part. In France the two tools with genuine standing are the archelios suite from Trace Software, a French company, and PVsyst from just across the border in Switzerland. Neither holds its position by accident.
archelios was built for the French file. Trace Software’s PV line grew up alongside UTE C15-712-1, and the split across archelios Pro for simulation, archelios Calc for the electrical calculation and archelios O&M for operations maps onto how a French bureau d’etudes actually divides its work. The Calc module verifies cable sizing, voltage drop, protection coordination and earthing against the French guide, and produces output in the form a French reviewer expects. When your problem is producing a defensible technical file for a Consuel attestation on a commercial job, that is the shortest path.
PVsyst is what the money asks for. On financed commercial and ground-mount work in France, the technical adviser to a bank or fund names PVsyst. Its near-shading model, horizon handling, documented loss tree and parametric studies are the reference, and a P50 and P90 out of PVsyst needs no explanatory call. On lender-specified bankability it beats SurgePV, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Licence economics suit small bureaux. Both are now annual subscriptions rather than perpetual licences, PVsyst at CHF 700 per user per year and PV*SOL premium at EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, but on a stable three person bureau those numbers still land below a comparable cloud stack. Five PVsyst licences come to CHF 3,500 before the group discount, which is less than five SurgePV seats at US$6,495.
Where they genuinely lose. Both are desktop-first. Neither produces a customer-ready white-label devis a sales person can send without rework. Neither offers live collaboration between an office designer and someone on a roof in Toulouse. PVsyst does no design workflow in the installateur sense and no tarif d’achat modelling at all. And neither ships satellite-derived 3D roof capture or an AI assistant, so the first twenty minutes of every job stays manual.
The honest conclusion: if your deliverable is a bankable yield report, keep PVsyst whatever else you buy. If your deliverable is a heavy electrical technical file on commercial jobs, archelios Calc earns its licence. If your deliverable is a designed, priced and closed rooftop job at volume, a cloud platform that bundles the devis is where the hours come back.
Get your sizing sanity-checked. For a fast independent second opinion on system size and payback before you commit to a design, run the numbers through our free solar calculator or talk to our engineering team.
The 4-Point France Bench Test
This is the framework we use internally before deploying any design platform on our own solar EPC work. Each tool scores 1 to 10 on four axes, out of 40. We do not deploy anything below 32.
- French regulatory depth. NF C 15-100 and UTE C15-712-1 conventions on the generated SLD including DC protection and disconnection, documentation that supports the Consuel attestation, Enedis raccordement data capture, tarif d’achat and prime a l’autoconsommation by size bracket, and correct handling of integration au bati versus surimposition.
- Engineering rigour. 8,760-hour module-level simulation, P50, P75 and P90 outputs in the format French lenders typically ask for, Eurocode snow and wind inputs to the mounting design, and low-temperature Voc string sizing for the Massif Central and the Alps.
- Workflow coverage. Address to French-convention SLD to bill of quantities to branded French-language devis in one licence, with DXF or DWG export for the bureau de controle.
- Total cost of ownership in euros. Licence plus update service plus add-ons plus onboarding time, per finished project, across a five-person team.
Scores across the ten platforms: SurgePV 36, archelios Suite 33, PVsyst 31, Caneco BT 27, PVSOL premium 31, HelioScope 28, OpenSolar 28, Autocalsol 18, Aurora Solar 26, PVcase 25. PVsyst, PVSOL and OpenSolar all score above SurgePV on the cost axis, because CHF 700 a year, EUR 845 a year and a free core platform are each cheaper than a US$1,299 seat. The scoring is ours and it is opinionated. A three point gap between SurgePV and archelios is not a gap that justifies retraining a bureau d’etudes whose whole electrical process is archelios-shaped.
Top 10 Solar Design Software in France Compared
Pricing below is 2026 and quoted in each vendor’s own billing currency, with euro conversions at approximately €0.91 per US dollar where they help. Treat converted figures as indicative and confirm with the vendor.
| # | Platform | Price (vendor currency) | Key capability | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SurgePV | US$1,299/user/yr, 5-User Team (about €1,180) | All-in-one design, 8,760-hr simulation, French-convention SLD, French devis | Installateurs and EPCs doing 5+ projects a month |
| 2 | Trace Software archelios Suite | archelios PRO Silver €990/yr, PRO Gold €1,490/yr, archelios CALC €1,350/yr, all excl. tax, annual subscription | UTE C15-712-1 electrical verification plus simulation | Bureaux d’etudes producing the technical file |
| 3 | PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr Professional | Reference-grade simulation physics | Bankable reports, due diligence, ground mount |
| 4 | PV*SOL premium | EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT | Best 3D shading walkthrough for client meetings | Design-led firms selling on visuals |
| 5 | Caneco BT (ALPI) | Not publicly listed, quote only | NF C 15-100 electrical calculation and schemas | Electrical designers on commercial jobs |
| 6 | HelioScope | US$159/mo Basic (US$1,620/yr), US$259 Pro | Bankable C&I yield simulation | Consultancies on commercial rooftops |
| 7 | OpenSolar | Core platform free; API Access and Connectors chargeable from 16 Apr 2026, rates not published | Free design tier | Solo installers under 3 designs a month |
| 8 | Autocalsol (INES) | Free to use; optional pro licence €250 excl. tax per year | Quick French pre-sizing and yield estimate | Fast feasibility checks and training |
| 9 | Aurora Solar | US$135/user/mo Basic, US$220 Premium, billed annually | Deepest residential design and sales workflow | Multinationals with an existing Aurora process |
| 10 | PVcase | Not publicly listed, quote only | Terrain-aware ground-mount layout in CAD | Ground-mount and agrivoltaic developers |
The honest read: positions 1 through 5 are what a French firm actually chooses between. Positions 6 through 10 are specialists, free utilities or imports. Aurora at nine is a strong product ranked low for one reason only, which is that its French regulatory layer is close to absent.
1. SurgePV
What it does best. SurgePV runs the whole motion in one licence: satellite address to AI-generated 3D roof, 8,760-hour module-level shading, string sizing, a single-line diagram drawn to NF C 15-100 and UTE C15-712-1 conventions with the DC and AC protection and disconnection devices shown and labelled, bill of quantities, financial model and white-label devis in French. For France specifically, the financial engine holds the tarif d’achat and the prime a l’autoconsommation as bracketed tables rather than single numbers, so it will show you that pushing a design from just under a bracket boundary to just over it can reduce total revenue. It separates vente totale from vente du surplus, and it prices the self-consumed kilowatt-hour against the customer’s actual tariff rather than a national average. Clara AI takes instructions in French, for example “dimensionne une installation de 9 kWc en surimposition, orientation sud-ouest, vente du surplus”.
Pricing. US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so US$6,495 for five seats, about €1,180 per seat and €5,900 for five. Individual seats are US$1,899 a year, about €1,730. Enterprise is quoted. Free trial, no credit card. Stated plainly: this is more than five PVsyst licences at CHF 3,500 and more than five PV*SOL premium seats at EUR 4,225 plus VAT. What you are paying the difference for is the bundled devis, the bracketed tarif modelling and the cloud workflow, not a lower price.
Who it suits. Installateurs RGE QualiPV and EPCs doing five or more designs a month, teams bidding residential alongside commercial rooftops, and firms whose current stack is archelios plus PVsyst plus a separate tool for the devis.
Honest limitations. Four real ones. It does not generate the Consuel attestation dossier as a finished submission: it produces the drawings and the equipment schedule that support it, and your team still assembles and files the attestation, which is exactly the step a French installer most wants automated. Its DC-side electrical verification is competent but not as exhaustive as archelios Calc or Caneco BT on protection coordination and selectivity, so a bureau d’etudes on complex commercial work will keep one of those. Brand recognition is thin, because SurgePV launched in 2025 and a French bank’s technical adviser has never seen its report format where a PVsyst output needs no introduction. And the mounting database is thinner on French rail and integration kit suppliers than on modules and inverters, so procurement still checks that line manually.
Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real French job near a tariff bracket boundary, because that is where the bracketed modelling either earns its keep or does not.
2. Trace Software archelios Suite
What it does best. archelios is French, and it shows in the parts of the job that are specifically French. archelios Pro handles the PV simulation with 3D shading, while archelios Calc does the electrical verification against UTE C15-712-1: cable sizing, voltage drop, protection selection, earthing arrangements and the checks a reviewer will run. The output is written in the vocabulary a French technical file uses, which shortens every conversation with a bureau de controle. There is also an O&M module, so a firm that operates what it builds can stay inside one vendor.
Pricing. Trace Software publishes its rates on its own shop and bills annually rather than selling a perpetual licence. archelios PRO Silver is €990 a year excluding tax, PRO Gold is €1,490 a year excluding tax, and archelios CALC, the electrical sizing module, is €1,350 a year excluding tax with Silver services included. Module-by-module purchase makes a small bureau’s entry price lower than the headline, because you can start on PRO Silver alone.
Who it suits. Bureaux d’etudes and electrical designers whose deliverable is a technical file, especially on commercial and ground-mount work where the electrical verification is the hard part.
Honest limitations. Desktop-first with limited real-time collaboration, no satellite-derived 3D roof capture and no AI assistant, so geometry entry is manual. The customer-facing output is a technical document rather than a sales artefact, and residential sales teams rebuild it. The suite structure means the price you actually pay depends on stacking modules, and a firm that wants simulation plus electrical plus O&M lands well above the entry figure.
3. PVsyst
What it does best. The reference simulation engine, and on financed French work it is what the technical adviser names. Near-shading, horizon handling, the documented loss tree and parametric studies remain the benchmark everything else is measured against, ours included.
Pricing. CHF 700 per user per year for the Professional annual subscription, so CHF 3,500 for five licences before the 5 to 20 percent group discount. Education is CHF 420, Training and Research CHF 560, Student and Classroom CHF 25, and PVsystCLI CHF 3,000. It is a subscription, not a perpetual licence.
Who it suits. Technical due diligence teams, independent engineers and ground-mount developers whose deliverable is a yield report rather than a customer devis.
Honest limitations. Windows desktop, a steep learning curve, no design workflow in the installateur sense, no proposals, no CRM, no French documentation output and no tarif d’achat modelling. It is a physics tool, not a business tool. Our PVsyst alternative guide sets out where the tradeoff sits.
4. PV*SOL premium
What it does best. Valentin Software’s 3D shading walkthrough is the best customer-facing shading explanation in any tool on this list, and it handles the awkward geometry of French housing stock, dormers, hips, mansard roofs and dense village settings, with less fighting than the cloud tools. The component database is deep and inverter matching is careful.
Pricing. PVSOL premium is EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, so EUR 4,225 for five seats. The standard PVSOL product is EUR 585. Valentin Software moved to user-based subscription on 19 November 2024; perpetual licences bought before that date remain usable indefinitely, but maintenance renewals for them ended on 1 October 2024.
Who it suits. Design-led French firms that win the job in the client meeting and need a visual shading story, especially in the east where German product familiarity is highest.
Honest limitations. The French regulatory layer is thin: no UTE C15-712-1 verification, no tarif d’achat brackets, no Consuel awareness. Windows desktop only, no collaboration, no AI, no satellite roof capture, and the proposal output needs rework before a customer sees it.
5. Caneco BT
What it does best. ALPI’s Caneco BT is the French low voltage electrical calculation standard-bearer, built around NF C 15-100, and many French electrical designers already own it for non-solar work. It sizes conductors and protective devices, verifies short circuit withstand and selectivity, and produces schemas in French drawing conventions. When your bottleneck is the AC-side electrical file on a commercial job rather than the yield estimate, it is the practical answer.
Pricing. Not publicly listed. ALPI publishes no price for Caneco BT and sells through quotes, with an annual maintenance and subscription layer on top of the licence. Any per-seat figure you see quoted in a directory is a third-party estimate, so get it in writing from ALPI before you budget it.
Who it suits. Electrical designers and bureaux d’etudes producing the installation file on commercial and industrial jobs.
Honest limitations. It is an electrical calculation tool, not a PV design platform. No 8,760-hour yield simulation of the quality a lender expects, no shading model, no financial modelling, no proposal, and PV-specific DC-side handling is weaker than archelios Calc. You will run it alongside something else.
6. HelioScope
What it does best. Module-level 8,760-hour simulation for commercial and industrial roofs with a clean loss tree and an output French independent engineers and international funds accept without argument. For a 600 kW logistics roof near Lyon it is defensible.
Pricing. US$159 a month on Basic (US$1,620 a year) and US$259 on Pro (US$2,640 a year), each covering one user and 10 projects a month, with DC design caps of 1.25 MW and 5 MW. Five Basic seats come to US$8,100 a year, roughly €7,400. HelioScope is Aurora-owned.
Who it suits. Consultancies and commercial-only teams whose deliverable is a yield report.
Honest limitations. No French regulatory layer at all, no UTE C15-712-1 verification, no tarif d’achat modelling, no Consuel support, no AI 3D roof, and weak proposal tooling that forces a second licence. Read our HelioScope alternative guide before committing five seats.
7. OpenSolar
What it does best. A free design tier with polished residential templates and a short learning curve. For a one-person installateur doing two or three jobs a month, price is a hard argument to beat.
Pricing. The core platform is free. From 16 April 2026 OpenSolar charges for API Access, billed per project on creation, and for Connectors, billed as a flat monthly fee, but it has not published the rates and they vary by region.
Who it suits. Solo installers and new entrants who need working proposals without a licence commitment.
Honest limitations. French regulatory support is shallow, the financial defaults assume markets with flat export rates rather than bracketed tarifs, and there is no bankable output for financed commercial work. On price it beats every paid tool on this list including ours, and until the 2026 API and Connector rates are published nobody can say what a French team will pay beyond zero for the core platform. See our OpenSolar alternative analysis.
8. Autocalsol
What it does best. Autocalsol is the free pre-sizing and yield estimation tool from INES, the French national solar institute. It is fast, it is French, it uses French irradiance data, and it is a genuinely useful sanity check on a residential system size before anyone spends design time. It is also widely used in French PV training, so most younger designers have seen it.
Pricing. The public AutoCalSol tool is free, because INES funds it publicly. There is also a paid pro licence for bureaux and installers wanting the fuller feature set, listed by INES at €250 excluding tax for one year, with a free 48-hour trial licence available first.
Who it suits. Quick feasibility checks, sales qualification calls, training, and anyone wanting a second opinion on a number.
Honest limitations. It is a calculator, not a design platform. No detailed 3D shading, no single-line diagram, no bill of quantities, no proposal, no project management. Treat it as a cross-check on the first ten minutes of a job, which is exactly what it is good at.
9. Aurora Solar
What it does best. The deepest residential design and sales workflow in the English-speaking market, with mature roof plane detection and excellent customer-facing presentation. If your group already runs Aurora elsewhere, standardising has real value.
Pricing. Basic is US$135 per user per month billed annually (US$1,620 a year, or US$159 month to month) and Premium is US$220 billed annually (US$2,640 a year, or US$259 month to month), each covering one user and 50 projects a month. Enterprise is custom. Five seats therefore run US$8,100 a year on Basic and US$13,200 on Premium, roughly €7,400 to €12,000. LIDAR modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling are Premium only, and plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, with site models from US$9.99.
Who it suits. Multinational installers extending an existing Aurora process into France.
Honest limitations. Close to no French regulatory layer: no UTE C15-712-1 conventions, no tarif d’achat brackets, no prime a l’autoconsommation, no Consuel concept. Per-seat monthly pricing scales painfully on a growing team. See our Aurora Solar alternative comparison.
10. PVcase
What it does best. Terrain-aware ground-mount layout inside AutoCAD, which matters on French ground-mount and agrivoltaic sites where slope, irregular parcel boundaries and the clearances agricultural use demands all drive row spacing and pile schedules.
Pricing. Not publicly listed. PVcase is quote only and requires an AutoCAD licence on top; any per-seat figure circulating in software directories is an unverified third-party estimate.
Who it suits. Ground-mount and agrivoltaic developers, particularly in the south and south-west.
Honest limitations. No rooftop or residential relevance, no proposal workflow, no French code library, and it assumes an AutoCAD-competent operator. Most readers of this article are outside its target market.
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Pricing in Euros for a Five-Person Team
Prices are shown in the vendor’s own billing currency. Euro figures marked approximate use €0.91 to the US dollar and a roughly one-to-one Swiss franc to euro rate.
| Platform | Entry | Mid | Five seats per year | What is bundled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SurgePV | US$1,899/user/yr Individual | US$1,299/user/yr (5-User Team) | US$6,495 (about €5,900) | French-convention SLD, bracketed tarif modelling, AI 3D, 8,760-hr, BOQ, DXF/DWG, French devis |
| Autocalsol | Free | Pro licence €250/yr excl. tax | €0 on the free tier; €1,250 excl. tax if five people take the pro licence | Pre-sizing and yield estimate only |
| OpenSolar | Free | Free core platform | €0 for the core platform; 2026 API and Connector rates not published | Free residential design, chargeable API and Connectors from 16 Apr 2026 |
| PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr | n/a | CHF 3,500 before group discount | Simulation only |
| archelios Suite | PRO Silver €990/yr excl. tax | PRO Gold €1,490/yr, CALC €1,350/yr, both excl. tax | €4,950 excl. tax on five PRO Silver seats, €7,450 on five PRO Gold | Simulation plus UTE C15-712-1 electrical verification plus O&M |
| PV*SOL premium | EUR 585 standard PV*SOL | EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT | EUR 4,225 + VAT | Desktop simulation, 3D shading, weak proposals |
| Caneco BT | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | NF C 15-100 electrical calculation only |
| HelioScope | US$159/mo Basic (US$1,620/yr) | US$259/mo Pro (US$2,640/yr) | US$8,100 on Basic (about €7,400) | Engineering depth, weak proposals |
| Aurora Solar | US$135/user/mo Basic annually (US$1,620/yr) | US$220 Premium annually (US$2,640/yr) | US$8,100 Basic, US$13,200 Premium | Residential workflow, no French layer |
| PVcase | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Ground mount CAD only |
Read that table honestly and SurgePV is mid-priced, not cheap. Five PVsyst licences at CHF 3,500 and five PV*SOL premium seats at EUR 4,225 both come in under SurgePV’s US$6,495, five Aurora Basic seats match at US$8,100 only once you add a proposal tool, and OpenSolar’s core platform costs nothing. The comparison a French firm should actually run is SurgePV against the classic stack of archelios for the technical file, plus PVsyst for the yield report, plus a separate tool for the devis. On a five person team that legacy stack lands around €10,500 to €12,000 a year on published rates, five archelios CALC seats at €6,750 excluding tax or five PRO Gold seats at €7,450, plus five PVsyst licences at CHF 3,500, which is about €3,750, before you add anything for the devis. Three sets of logins and no shared project state come with it. A stable three person bureau d’etudes whose work is mostly electrical verification will find the legacy route cheaper outright. Team size and how much of your work is sales-facing are what flip the arithmetic.
The Tariff Bracket Problem French Software Has to Solve
This deserves its own section, because it is the most common way a French proposal loses money.
The tarif d’achat and the prime a l’autoconsommation are both stepped by installed capacity, and the steps are not smooth. A system in a lower bracket can receive a higher per-kilowatt-hour rate and a higher per-kilowatt-peak premium than one in the bracket above. That produces a genuine local maximum: adding two more panels can move the whole system into the next bracket, drop the rate on every kilowatt-hour it will produce for twenty years, and leave the customer worse off than the smaller design.
Three practical rules.
Model the brackets, do not interpolate them. A financial engine that takes a single rate and multiplies is structurally unable to see the cliff. The tool has to hold the table.
Check the queue date, not the signature date. The applicable tariff is tied to when the connection request enters the queue, and rates are revised quarterly. A project quoted in one quarter and connected two quarters later may be on a different number, and which number applies is a matter of process dates rather than optimism.
Compare vente totale against vente du surplus explicitly. They pay different rates, they imply different optimal sizes, and on a site with strong daytime load the surplus route plus a high self-consumption rate usually wins. A tool that only models one of them is answering half the question.
French Design Details Most Software Gets Wrong
Three specifics decide whether a French design survives contact with reality.
Integrated modules run hotter, and generic coefficients hide it. Any remaining integration au bati design restricts airflow behind the module, which raises cell temperature and cuts yield relative to the same array in surimposition. Software that applies one mounting coefficient for all rooftop installations overstates an integrated system’s output. Since the tariff no longer pays for integration, the right answer on almost every new job is surimposition, and your tool should make the difference visible rather than assume it away.
Snow and wind loads are Eurocode inputs, not a national default. French snow zones run hard in the Alps, the Jura, the Massif Central and the Pyrenees, while wind exposure is severe along the Atlantic coast and in the Rhone valley. The same rail spacing and ballast plan is not valid in Brittany and in Provence, and the bureau de controle will redo the work if one default was used.
Low-temperature Voc still catches mountain jobs. String open-circuit voltage rises as temperature falls, and a design low of minus 15 Celsius or colder in the Alps pushes a string sized at 25 Celsius past the inverter’s maximum DC input. It passes in September and over-volts in January. Our sister engineering team covers the arithmetic in their solar inverter sizing guide.
⚠️ Watch out
Check every tariff and premium line in an inherited devis template before it goes out. Tarif d'achat brackets and the prime a l'autoconsommation are revised quarterly, and templates written even a year ago frequently carry a stale rate or, worse, an integration au bati premium that no longer exists. Verify current values against the published tariff arrangements before a number reaches a customer.
Mistakes French Installers Make Choosing Design Software
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1
Quoting a single tarif d'achat instead of the bracket table. The rate steps by installed capacity and is revised quarterly. A design pushed just over a bracket boundary can earn less in total than a smaller one, and only a tool holding the table will show it.
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2
Treating Consuel as post-installation paperwork. The attestation gates the mise en service, so a defect found at that stage moves the connection date and the customer's payback. The design pack is the evidence it rests on, so build it correctly the first time.
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3
Buying a tool with no DC-side verification. UTE C15-712-1 is where the French PV-specific detail lives, particularly on DC string protection, disconnection and earthing. A platform that only draws a pretty AC schematic leaves the reviewable half of the file undone.
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4
Carrying integration au bati assumptions into new proposals. The premium that justified it is gone and integrated modules lose yield to heat. Surimposition is the default now, and templates that still price the old way misstate both cost and production.
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5
Buying a cloud platform to replace archelios and keeping archelios anyway. If your electrical designers will not give up their verification tool, you have doubled the cost and saved nothing. Decide the migration properly, or buy the cloud tool for the sales and design side only.
These patterns are not France-specific in kind, only in detail. Our writeup on common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar covers the wider set.
Should a French Installer Standardise on SurgePV?
- ✓ You design 5+ French projects a month
- ✓ Tariff brackets and self-consumption decide your deals
- ✓ Designers and sales need the same live project file
- ✓ Your current three-tool stack exceeds €9,000 a year
- ✗ Your deliverable is a deep UTE C15-712-1 file (archelios)
- ✗ Your deliverable is a bankable yield report (PVsyst)
- ✗ Your bottleneck is AC selectivity on big jobs (Caneco BT)
- ✗ You develop agrivoltaic sites on sloped land (PVcase)
Verdict. For a five-person French installateur covering residential and commercial rooftops, SurgePV wins on bundled scope and total cost of ownership in euros. For a three-person bureau d’etudes whose deliverable is an electrical technical file, archelios plus PVsyst is still the right stack, and we would say so on a sales call.
How Heaven Green Energy and SurgePV Help French Teams
Heaven Green Energy has delivered more than 10,000 solar installations, and our engineering group builds the software we use ourselves. SurgePV came out of that: a design suite written by people who had to produce inspection-ready drawings on deadline. For French teams the entry points are:
- Shadow analysis for 8,760-hour module-level shading on dense village and urban roofscapes.
- Structural and civil engineering for Eurocode snow and wind verification on the mounting system.
- Electrical drawing packages when the DC and AC schematic set is the bottleneck rather than the design.
- A low-temperature Voc sanity check before any Alpine or Massif Central string design leaves the office, because that failure mode shows up in January rather than at commissioning.
If you also run projects outside France, our commercial solar and industrial solar pages set out how the same design stack carries across markets. Broader market context sits with the IEA renewables tracker and IRENA country profiles.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best solar design software in France in 2026?
SurgePV ranks first on our 4-point France bench with 36 of 40, at US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan (about €1,180), because it bundles NF C 15-100 and UTE C15-712-1 aware output, bracketed tarif d’achat and prime a l’autoconsommation modelling, 8,760-hour simulation and a French-language devis in one cloud licence. archelios Suite scores 33 and remains the right answer for a bureau d’etudes whose deliverable is a deep electrical file, and PVsyst stays in the stack of anyone producing bankable yield reports.
What is UTE C15-712-1 and how does it relate to NF C 15-100?
NF C 15-100 is the French low voltage electrical installation standard and applies to the whole building. UTE C15-712-1 is the practical guide for photovoltaic installations connected to the public distribution network, and it carries the PV-specific detail: DC string protection, DC and AC disconnection arrangements, earthing and equipotential bonding, surge protection selection, DC cable sizing and voltage drop, and enclosure labelling. You design to NF C 15-100 and you apply UTE C15-712-1 for the photovoltaic part.
Is a Consuel attestation mandatory for solar in France?
Yes. Before Enedis will energise a new installation, the Consuel has to issue an attestation de conformite covering the work, and the process can include an inspection. It is a gate on the mise en service rather than paperwork you file afterwards, and a defect found at that point moves the connection date. Because the attestation rests on the drawings and equipment schedule, the quality of your design documentation directly affects how smoothly it passes.
How does the tarif d’achat work for French solar?
Under the obligation d’achat, the buyer purchases either your total production or your surplus at a published tarif d’achat. The rate steps by installed capacity bracket, differs between vente totale and vente du surplus, and is revised quarterly, with the applicable rate tied to when the connection request entered the queue. Self-consumption with surplus sale also attracts a prime a l’autoconsommation paid per kilowatt-peak, itself bracketed. Sizing a system just over a bracket boundary can reduce total revenue.
Is integration au bati still worth doing in France?
Rarely. The tariff premium that made building-integrated mounting the French default is gone, and integrated modules run hotter because airflow behind them is restricted, which costs yield. Surimposition, mounting on rails above the existing roof covering, is now the standard choice for new work and performs better thermally with a simpler waterproofing detail. If you do quote an integrated design, make sure your software applies a proper temperature model rather than a generic rooftop coefficient.
Do I need RGE QualiPV to install solar in France?
The qualification is not what makes an installation legal, but it is what makes public support routes and many financing products available to your customer, so commercially it is close to essential for residential work. QualiPV is the photovoltaic mark within the Reconnu Garant de l’Environnement scheme. Audits sample completed jobs and examine the technical file, so consistent standards-referenced documentation from your design tool makes the process straightforward.
Which tools actually cover the French DC-side electrical verification?
Trace Software archelios Calc is the strongest on UTE C15-712-1 specifically, covering DC cable sizing, voltage drop, protection selection and earthing. Caneco BT is the reference for NF C 15-100 low voltage calculation more broadly and is strong on AC-side selectivity, though its PV-specific DC handling is thinner. SurgePV produces a compliant French-convention single-line diagram and equipment schedule but does not go as deep on protection coordination as either, which is why some firms run one of them alongside it.
What is SurgePV’s biggest weakness for French installers?
It does not assemble and file the Consuel attestation dossier for you. It produces the drawings and the equipment schedule the attestation depends on, but the submission is still your team’s job, and that is the step French installers most want automated. Its DC-side protection coordination is also less exhaustive than archelios Calc or Caneco BT, its brand is unknown to French bank technical advisers who read PVsyst output daily, and its database of French mounting and integration kit suppliers is thinner than its module and inverter coverage.
Stop paying for four tools. Design it all in one.
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Free trial, no credit card · $1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team planDisclaimer: SurgePV is our own product. It is built by the Heaven Group, the same company as Heaven Green Energy, so treat this as a recommendation from its maker.