If you are choosing the best solar design software in Philippines for 2026, the constraint set is unusual. Grid electricity is among the most expensive in Southeast Asia, which makes commercial and industrial rooftop payback attractive, but net metering under Republic Act 9513 caps you at 100 kW and pays exports at the generation charge rather than the full retail tariff. Above that cap you are in self-consumption or a different commercial arrangement entirely. On top of that sit typhoon wind loads that reach 250 kph basic wind speed in the northern Luzon zone, year-round humidity, and soiling rates that most imported design templates simply do not model. The platform that wins our 2026 bench test is SurgePV, an all-in-one cloud suite at roughly PHP 75,000 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan. Ten platforms are ranked below in Philippine pesos with honest limitations on each, ours included. You can compare SurgePV pricing before you speak to anyone.
Direct answer. The best solar design software in the Philippines for 2026 is SurgePV, at about PHP 75,000 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan (roughly PHP 377,000 for five seats). It handles Philippine Electrical Code circuit sizing, RA 9513 net metering at the 100 kW cap with generation-charge export credit, Meralco interconnection documentation, typhoon wind-load inputs, tropical soiling and humidity losses, 8,760-hour shading and white-label proposals on every plan.
This guide is for Philippine installers, EPC contractors, engineering consultancies and in-house design teams, particularly those doing commercial and industrial rooftops in Metro Manila, Cebu, Davao and the Calabarzon industrial belt. Every platform is scored on four axes: Philippine regulatory depth, tropical and typhoon engineering, workflow coverage from address to signed proposal, and total cost of ownership in pesos for a five-person team.
The Philippine Regulatory Stack Your Software Must Encode
Four layers, and a tool that misses any of them pushes your team back into spreadsheets for the last stretch of every project.
Philippine Electrical Code (PEC). The PEC, currently the 2017 edition, governs conductor sizing, overcurrent protection, grounding and disconnecting means. It is derived from the NEC but is not identical, and the Professional Regulation Commission expects drawings signed by a licensed Professional Electrical Engineer or Registered Electrical Engineer. Practically this means your design tool needs to produce a single-line diagram an REE will sign without redrawing it. Software that emits US-format labels creates rework for the engineer of record, and the engineer of record bills for that rework.
RA 9513 net metering. The Renewable Energy Act of 2008 and the Energy Regulatory Commission rules that implement it allow qualified end-users to export to the distribution utility up to 100 kW. Two details break imported financial models. The cap is on the installed capacity, so a 150 kW warehouse array does not qualify and must be designed for self-consumption with export limiting. And exports are credited at the distribution utility’s blended generation charge, not the full retail rate, so the value of an exported kilowatt-hour is roughly half the value of one you consume on site. Any model that credits exports at retail overstates savings substantially.
DOE and ERC requirements. The Department of Energy handles registration and reporting for renewable energy facilities, while the Energy Regulatory Commission sets the net metering rules, the interconnection standards and the distribution utility tariff structure. Larger commercial projects trigger additional filings. A design tool does not file paperwork for you, but the ones that generate a compliant SLD, load schedule and equipment list cut the preparation time meaningfully.
Distribution utility interconnection, Meralco especially. Meralco serves Metro Manila and much of southern Luzon and runs its own net metering application flow, including a distribution impact study for larger connections, a specific SLD format, an inspection and a bidirectional meter swap. Visayan Electric, Davao Light and the electric cooperatives each have their own variants. Software that produces a generic SLD means someone on your team redraws it into the utility’s expected format.
📘 Regulation note
Per the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission, net metering under RA 9513 is limited to 100 kW per end-user and exported energy is credited at the distribution utility's generation charge. Systems above the cap are designed for self-consumption, usually with export limiting at the inverter or a dedicated controller.
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 pricingTyphoon Wind Loading Is the Binding Structural Constraint
In most solar markets the racking is a cost line. In the Philippines it is the design driver.
The National Structural Code of the Philippines (NSCP 2015) divides the country into three wind zones. Zone 1, covering northern and eastern Luzon and the Bicol region, carries a basic wind speed of 250 kph. Zone 2 sits at 200 kph and Zone 3, mainly western Mindanao, at 150 kph. Those are three-second gust speeds at 10 m in open terrain, and they scale with building height, exposure and topographic factors. A rooftop array on a six-storey Quezon City building sees higher pressures than the same array on a single-storey warehouse in Zamboanga.
Three practical consequences that design software either models or ignores:
- Clamp and rail spacing shrink. Module clamping intervals that pass in Thailand routinely fail a Zone 1 uplift check. The mid-clamp and end-clamp positions given in the module datasheet are the governing limits, and the racking span must be tightened to match.
- Roof attachment count rises sharply. Uplift at roof corners and edges can be two to three times the field pressure. A layout that respects a setback from the roof perimeter reduces both the attachment count and the risk, at the cost of usable area.
- Ballasted layouts are usually not viable. On a flat commercial roof in Zone 1, the ballast mass needed to resist a 250 kph gust often exceeds the roof’s live-load allowance. Mechanically attached is the default, which puts the waterproofing detail on the critical path.
Design tools with an integrated wind-load module, or at minimum an input for basic wind speed and exposure category that feeds the racking BOQ, save a full round trip with the structural engineer. Our sister engineering team covers this in their civil and structural engineering service, and the underlying method is the same one described in their solar wind load guide.
Want a second opinion on a Philippine rooftop? Send us the roof plan and target load profile and our engineers will sanity-check sizing and structure. Talk to our engineering team or run a first-pass estimate with our solar calculator.
Humidity, Soiling and Tropical Yield Losses
Philippine irradiance is good but not exceptional: most of the archipelago sits between 4.5 and 5.5 kWh per square metre per day. What separates a realistic yield estimate from an optimistic one is the loss stack.
Soiling. Metro Manila and the Calabarzon industrial corridor carry significant particulate loading. Annual soiling losses of 4 to 8 percent are common, and sites near cement plants, unpaved access roads or coastal salt spray run higher. The wet season from June to November provides natural cleaning, so the loss profile is seasonal rather than flat, peaking through the dry months from February to May. Software that applies a single 2 percent annual soiling default, which several US-built tools do, overstates production on a Manila rooftop by several percent.
Temperature. Ambient temperatures of 32 to 36 Celsius with high humidity mean module cell temperatures well above 60 Celsius on a still afternoon. With a typical temperature coefficient near minus 0.34 percent per degree, that is a real power loss and it also affects the low-irradiance shoulder hours less than people assume. Close-mounted arrays on metal roofs with poor rear ventilation run hotter still.
Humidity and corrosion. Year-round humidity above 75 percent plus coastal salt exposure argues for higher IP-rated enclosures, marine-grade fixings and careful attention to potential-induced degradation. This is a specification decision rather than a simulation input, but the component database you design from should let you filter for it.
Grid outages. Brownouts remain routine outside Metro Manila. A design that assumes uninterrupted grid availability overstates a grid-tied system’s delivered energy, and for many commercial clients the real question is hybrid with storage rather than pure grid-tie. Tools without battery modelling force a separate exercise.
The 4-Point Philippines Bench Test
This is the framework we use before deploying any platform on our own solar EPC work. Each tool scores 1 to 10 across four axes, out of 40, and we do not deploy below 32.
- Philippine regulatory depth. PEC-consistent SLD output, RA 9513 net metering at the 100 kW cap with generation-charge export credit, Meralco and cooperative interconnection formats, DOE and ERC documentation support.
- Tropical and typhoon engineering. NSCP wind zone inputs feeding the racking BOQ, seasonal soiling profiles, high-ambient temperature derating, export limiting and hybrid storage modelling.
- Workflow coverage. Address to SLD to BOQ to peso-denominated proposal in one licence, with DXF or DWG export for the REE and the structural engineer.
- Total cost of ownership in PHP. Seat licence plus add-ons plus onboarding, per finished project, across a five-person team.
Scores: SurgePV 36, Aurora 31, HelioScope 31, PVsyst 31, OpenSolar 29, PVSOL 29, PVcase 26, RatedPower 24, Solargraf 21, SolarEdge Designer 20. PVsyst, OpenSolar and PVSOL each gain a point on the cost axis against our earlier scoring and Solargraf loses one, because the verified prices differ from the figures this page previously carried. Note that no platform on this list scores full marks on axis one, because none of them ships a native Meralco application pack. That gap is real and it is where your team still does manual work.
Top 10 Solar Design Software in Philippines Compared
Pricing is 2026, taken from each vendor’s own live pricing page on 2 August 2026 and quoted in the vendor’s billing currency, with a peso equivalent converted at approximately PHP 58 per US dollar. Vendors quoting in USD, EUR or CHF will move with the exchange rate, so treat peso figures as indicative.
| # | Platform | Price (PHP, mid plan) | Key capability | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SurgePV | PHP 75,000/user/yr (US$1,299) | All-in-one design, 8,760-hr simulation, SLD, BOQ, proposals | Installers and EPCs doing 5+ projects a month |
| 2 | Aurora Solar | US$135/user/mo Basic, US$220 Premium, billed annually (~PHP 7,800 to 12,800) | Deepest residential design and sales workflow | Foreign-owned shops with existing Aurora process |
| 3 | HelioScope | US$159/mo Basic, US$259/mo Pro (~PHP 9,200 to 15,000) | Bankable C&I yield simulation | Consultancies on 100 kW to 5 MW rooftops |
| 4 | PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr Professional | Reference-grade simulation physics | Lender due diligence and independent engineers |
| 5 | OpenSolar | Core platform free | Full free platform | Solo installers and new market entrants |
| 6 | PV*SOL Premium | EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT | Detailed 3D shading and hybrid storage | Small consultancies wanting desktop depth |
| 7 | PVcase | Not publicly listed, quote only | Terrain-aware ground-mount layout in CAD | Ground-mount developers in Luzon and Mindanao |
| 8 | RatedPower | Not publicly listed, quote only | Automated utility-scale plant engineering | 20 MW+ developers |
| 9 | Solargraf | US$2,799/yr Starter up to US$12,999 Enterprise | Fast residential proposals | Small residential-only sellers |
| 10 | SolarEdge Designer | Free | Free string design for SolarEdge hardware | Teams standardised on SolarEdge inverters |
The honest read: positions 1 through 3 are the full-workflow contenders. PVsyst at four is a fit ranking, not a quality ranking, because its physics is the most trusted on this list and it produces none of the proposal or drafting workflow a Philippine EPC needs. SolarEdge Designer at ten is free and genuinely useful, but only if every project uses SolarEdge hardware, which is a strategic lock-in decision rather than a software decision.
1. SurgePV
What it does best. One licence covers the whole motion: satellite address to AI-generated 3D roof, 8,760-hour module-level shading, string sizing, single-line diagram, bill of quantities, peso-denominated financial model and branded proposal. For the Philippines specifically, the financial engine models the RA 9513 split correctly, valuing self-consumed energy at the full retail tariff and exported energy at the generation charge, which is the single most common error in imported proposal templates. Soiling is modelled as a seasonal profile rather than a flat annual number, and export limiting for above-cap commercial systems is a design option rather than an afterthought.
Pricing. About PHP 75,000 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so roughly PHP 377,000 for five seats. Individual seats run about PHP 110,000 (US$1,899) per year. Enterprise is quoted. Free trial, no credit card.
Who it suits. Philippine EPCs and installers doing five or more designs a month, teams bidding commercial and industrial rooftops alongside residential, and anyone currently paying per-seat monthly pricing plus a second licence for proposals.
Honest limitations. Three worth stating. First, there is no native Meralco application pack: SurgePV produces a clean SLD and equipment schedule, but someone on your team still assembles the utility’s specific forms. Second, brand recognition in the Philippines is low because the product launched in 2025, so if a bank or a Japanese parent company asks whose software produced the yield report, you will be explaining. Third, the NSCP wind-zone handling is an input to the racking BOQ rather than a full structural analysis, so a Zone 1 project still needs a structural engineer to run the uplift calculation properly. SurgePV also does not do drone capture, which matters on large industrial roofs with poor drawings.
Book a SurgePV demo with one of your own Philippine sites so you can test the soiling and export-credit handling on a real bill.
2. Aurora Solar
What it does best. The deepest residential design and sales workflow in the market, with mature templates and strong roof-plane detection. Foreign-owned installers operating in the Philippines with an existing Aurora process get real continuity.
Pricing. Basic is US$135 per user per month billed annually (US$1,620 a year, US$159 if you pay monthly) and Premium is US$220 billed annually (US$2,640 a year, US$259 monthly), with Enterprise on custom pricing. Five Basic seats is US$8,100 a year, roughly PHP 470,000, and five Premium seats US$13,200, roughly PHP 766,000. Each plan covers 1 user and 50 projects a month, LIDAR modelling and bankable shade reports and battery modelling are Premium-only, plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, and site models start at US$9.99.
Who it suits. Larger residential-led operations with US parentage and stable headcount.
Honest limitations. The Philippine regulatory layer is essentially absent: no RA 9513 export-credit logic, no Meralco format, no PEC-specific labelling, and dollar-denominated per-seat pricing that hurts as the peso moves. Onboarding takes two to three weeks per designer. See our Aurora Solar alternative breakdown.
3. HelioScope
What it does best. Commercial and industrial yield simulation that Philippine banks and independent engineers accept. Module-level 8,760-hour modelling with a clear loss tree, which is exactly what a 1 MW Laguna factory roof needs to reach financial close.
Pricing. US$159 a month on Basic (US$1,620 a year) and US$259 on Pro (US$2,640 a year), each covering 1 user and 10 projects a month, with DC design caps of 1.25 MW on Basic and 5 MW on Pro. Five Basic seats is US$8,100 a year, roughly PHP 470,000. HelioScope is Aurora-owned.
Who it suits. Engineering consultancies and C&I-only teams where the deliverable is a yield report.
Honest limitations. No proposal tooling worth the name, no AI 3D roof, no net metering library for RA 9513, and no wind-load input. You will licence a second tool for the customer-facing output. Our HelioScope alternative guide covers the tradeoff.
4. PVsyst
What it does best. The reference simulation engine. When a lender funding a 20 MW Mindanao project wants an independent yield opinion, the PVsyst loss diagram is what they ask for. Its soiling and thermal loss handling is transparent and adjustable, which suits tropical conditions where defaults are wrong.
Pricing. CHF 700 per user per year on the Professional annual subscription, with group discounts of 5 to 20 percent by quantity. Five seats is CHF 3,500, well under SurgePV’s PHP 377,000 equivalent, and we would rather concede that than talk around it. Education is CHF 420, Training and Research CHF 560, Student CHF 25 and PVsystCLI CHF 3,000.
Who it suits. Independent engineers, technical due diligence teams and utility-scale developers.
Honest limitations. Desktop-only, a genuinely steep learning curve, no proposals, no CRM, no collaboration and no Philippine code output. It is a physics tool. See our PVsyst alternative comparison.
5. OpenSolar
What it does best. A free core platform that is hard to beat for a solo installer doing two or three residential jobs a month in Cebu or Davao. Short learning curve, active community.
Pricing. The core platform is free, and that is the whole platform rather than a stripped tier. From 16 April 2026 OpenSolar charges for API Access, billed per project when a project is created, and for Connectors as a flat monthly fee, but it has not published those rates and they vary by geography.
Who it suits. Solo installers and new entrants who cannot justify a licence commitment yet.
Honest limitations. It does not carry commercial work or bankable shading, and there is no Philippine net metering logic. On price it beats every paid platform here, ours included, so the reason to leave is capability rather than cost. Read our OpenSolar alternative analysis.
6. PV*SOL Premium
What it does best. Detailed 3D shading plus solid hybrid storage simulation, which matters in a market with frequent brownouts. For a small consultancy that wants desktop depth without a cloud platform’s scope, it is a strong technical buy.
Pricing. EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, with standard PV*SOL at EUR 585. It is a user-based annual subscription, not a perpetual licence. Perpetual licences bought before 19 November 2024 remain usable indefinitely, but maintenance renewals ended on 1 October 2024 and new buyers cannot get one. Five premium named users is EUR 4,225, cheaper than five SurgePV seats.
Who it suits. Small engineering consultancies and technical trainers who want depth at a lower annual outlay than a bundled cloud suite.
Honest limitations. Desktop software with a dated interface, slow on large commercial arrays, weak proposal output and no Philippine regulatory content. Collaboration across a distributed team is painful.
7. PVcase
What it does best. Terrain-aware ground-mount layout inside AutoCAD. Philippine ground-mount sites are frequently sloped and irregular, and PVcase handles that far better than a rooftop-oriented tool.
Pricing. Not publicly listed. PVcase is quote only, and any per-seat figure in a software directory is an unverified third-party estimate. You also need your own AutoCAD licence on top.
Who it suits. Ground-mount developers and EPCs working sites in Luzon, Negros and Mindanao.
Honest limitations. No rooftop or residential relevance, no proposal workflow, and it requires an AutoCAD-fluent operator. For the rooftop-dominated Philippine market that rules it out for most readers.
8. RatedPower
What it does best. Automated utility-scale plant engineering that produces layouts, electrical design and documentation for large ground-mount projects in hours.
Pricing. Not publicly listed. RatedPower is quote only, and the $15,000-plus per seat figure that circulates in the industry is an observed estimate rather than anything the vendor has confirmed.
Who it suits. Developers at 20 MW and above, which in the Philippines means a small set of players working on the DOE’s competitive renewable energy zones.
Honest limitations. No rooftop capability, enterprise contract terms, no Philippine code library. Irrelevant to the majority of the installer market here.
9. Solargraf
What it does best. Fast, clean residential proposals with a short learning curve, now owned by Enphase and strongest when the design uses Enphase microinverters.
Pricing. Solargraf sells annual project packages rather than seats. Starter is US$2,799 for 240 projects and 2 users, rising to Enterprise at US$12,999 for 1,500 projects, and API access is US$4,000 a year on every plan except Enterprise.
Who it suits. Small residential-only sellers wanting quick quotes, provided the annual project volume matches a package.
Honest limitations. Weak shading, no commercial capability, no bankable yield output, no Philippine tariff or net metering content, and a component workflow biased toward Enphase hardware. It is also not the cheap option this page previously implied: Starter at US$2,799 for two users is roughly PHP 162,000 a year, so the entry price sits well above a couple of SurgePV seats.
10. SolarEdge Designer
What it does best. It is free, it is browser-based, and for SolarEdge power optimiser and inverter designs the string sizing and mismatch handling are exact because the vendor wrote them.
Pricing. Free.
Who it suits. Installers standardised on SolarEdge hardware, common in higher-end Metro Manila residential work.
Honest limitations. It only designs SolarEdge systems, so it locks your BOQ to one manufacturer. Simulation depth is limited, there is no bankable report, no BOQ for non-SolarEdge components, and no proposal or financial modelling for Philippine tariffs.
Mistakes Philippine Installers Make Choosing Design Software
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1
Crediting exports at the retail rate. Under RA 9513 exports are credited at the generation charge, roughly half the retail tariff. A model that misses this overstates savings on every export-heavy design.
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2
Designing past the 100 kW net metering cap by accident. A 120 kW rooftop is not a slightly better 100 kW rooftop. It is a different commercial structure with export limiting and a different approval path.
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3
Using a 2 percent soiling default. Metro Manila and industrial Calabarzon sites commonly lose 4 to 8 percent a year, concentrated in the February to May dry season.
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4
Assuming ballasted racking works in Zone 1. At 250 kph basic wind speed the required ballast mass usually exceeds the roof's allowable load. Plan for mechanical attachment and the waterproofing detail that comes with it.
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5
Ignoring brownouts in the savings model. Outside Metro Manila, grid availability is not 100 percent. For many commercial clients the honest answer is a hybrid system, which needs battery modelling in the tool.
The wider pattern set is covered in our common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar writeup.
Should a Philippine Installer Standardise on SurgePV?
- ✓ You design 5+ projects a month
- ✓ You bid C&I rooftops alongside residential
- ✓ You need the RA 9513 export-credit split modelled correctly
- ✓ You want proposals bundled instead of a second licence
- ✗ Your deliverable is lender due diligence (PVsyst)
- ✗ You want desktop depth at a lower annual outlay (PV*SOL at EUR 845 per named user)
- ✗ You are SolarEdge-only residential (their free Designer is enough)
- ✗ You build 20 MW+ ground-mount (PVcase or RatedPower)
Verdict. For a five-person Philippine EPC covering commercial rooftops and residential from the same office, SurgePV wins on bundled scope and on the RA 9513 modelling. It does not win on headline licence cost: PVsyst at CHF 3,500 for five seats, PV*SOL Premium at EUR 4,225 and a free OpenSolar all come in under SurgePV’s roughly PHP 377,000. It wins on total cost only when it replaces two or three of those at once. For a pure yield-report consultancy, HelioScope or PVsyst remains the honest answer, and no amount of bundling changes that.
How Heaven Green Energy and SurgePV Help Philippine Teams
Heaven Green Energy has delivered more than 10,000 solar installations, and our engineering group builds the tools we use on our own jobs. That is where SurgePV came from: designers who had to hand an electrical engineer a drawing they would actually sign. For Philippine teams the useful entry points are:
- Shadow analysis for 8,760-hour module-level shading on cluttered urban rooftops.
- Solar simulation software for P50, P75 and P90 yield reports with adjustable tropical soiling.
- Heaven Designs rooftop detailed engineering when you need a full drawing package rather than a design file.
- Hybrid battery sizing guide for brownout-prone sites where pure grid-tie is the wrong answer.
- Writing a solar proposal that closes if your bottleneck is sales rather than design.
For our own project delivery approach, see the commercial solar and industrial solar pages. Regional market context sits with the IEA Southeast Asia energy outlook and IRENA country profiles.
Related Solar Design Software Guides
- Solar Design Software 2026: 7 Tools Compared and Priced
- Solar Design Software India: Platforms Compared
- Solar Design Software USA: Top Tools Ranked
- Solar Design Software Australia: Top Tools
- Best Solar Design Software: The Global Ranking
- Commercial Solar Design Software Compared
Compare Other Markets and Tool Categories
- Best solar proposal software in the Philippines
- Best solar the full software stack in the Philippines
- Best solar design software in Malaysia
- Best solar design software in Singapore
- Best solar shading analysis software in the Philippines
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best solar design software in the Philippines in 2026?
SurgePV ranks first on our 4-point Philippines bench with 36 of 40, at about PHP 75,000 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, roughly PHP 377,000 for five seats. It models the RA 9513 export-credit split correctly, carries seasonal soiling profiles suited to Metro Manila, and bundles SLD, BOQ and proposals in one licence. Aurora Solar, HelioScope and PVsyst all score 31 and remain reasonable choices for specific workflows. On price alone SurgePV does not win: OpenSolar’s core platform is free, and five PVsyst seats at CHF 3,500 cost less than five SurgePV seats.
How does net metering work in the Philippines under RA 9513?
Qualified end-users may install up to 100 kW and export surplus energy to their distribution utility. Exported energy is credited at the utility’s blended generation charge, not the full retail tariff, so an exported kilowatt-hour is worth roughly half a self-consumed one. Credits offset the customer’s bill. Systems above 100 kW fall outside net metering and are normally designed for self-consumption with export limiting at the inverter.
Does solar design software handle Meralco interconnection requirements?
Partly. No platform on this list ships a native Meralco application pack. The better tools, including SurgePV, produce a clean single-line diagram, load schedule and equipment list that transfer into Meralco’s forms with modest editing, plus the documentation a distribution impact study needs on larger connections. Assembling and filing the actual application remains manual work for your team.
How do typhoon wind loads change a Philippine solar design?
NSCP 2015 sets basic wind speed at 250 kph in Zone 1, 200 kph in Zone 2 and 150 kph in Zone 3, adjusted for height, exposure and terrain. Practically this tightens clamp and rail spacing, raises attachment counts near roof edges and corners, and usually rules out ballasted racking on Zone 1 flat roofs because the required ballast mass exceeds the roof’s allowable load. Mechanical attachment becomes the default.
What soiling loss should I model for a Metro Manila rooftop?
Between 4 and 8 percent annually for most Metro Manila and Calabarzon sites, higher near cement plants, unpaved roads or coastal salt spray. The loss is seasonal, peaking through the February to May dry season and largely resetting with the June to November rains. A flat 2 percent default carried over from a US or European template will overstate annual production noticeably on a Philippine commercial roof.
How much does solar design software cost in the Philippines?
From free upward. OpenSolar’s core platform and SolarEdge Designer both cost nothing. SurgePV is about PHP 75,000 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so around PHP 377,000 for five seats. Quoting each vendor in its own currency: Aurora is US$135 or US$220 per user per month billed annually, HelioScope US$159 or US$259 a month, PVsyst CHF 700 per user per year, PVSOL Premium EUR 845 per named user plus VAT, and Solargraf US$2,799 to US$12,999 a year as project packages rather than seats. PVcase and RatedPower do not publish pricing at all. Note that five PVsyst seats (CHF 3,500) and five PVSOL Premium named users (EUR 4,225) both come in cheaper than five SurgePV seats.
Do Philippine solar drawings need a licensed engineer’s signature?
Yes. Electrical plans for a solar installation are expected to be signed and sealed by a Professional Electrical Engineer or Registered Electrical Engineer in line with Philippine practice, and the design must follow the Philippine Electrical Code. Design software does not replace that signature. What good software does is produce a single-line diagram close enough to PEC conventions that the engineer signs it rather than redrawing it.
What is SurgePV’s biggest weakness in the Philippine market?
It has no native Meralco or electric cooperative application pack, so utility paperwork stays manual. Brand recognition is also low because the product launched in 2025, which can add a conversation when a bank or foreign parent company reviews the yield report. Its wind-zone handling feeds the racking bill of quantities but does not replace a structural engineer’s uplift calculation on a Zone 1 site.
Stop paying for four tools. Design it all in one.
SurgePV replaces Aurora + HelioScope + PVsyst + a separate proposal tool in a single license. AI 3D roof in under 60 seconds, bankable 8,760-hour simulation, auto-SLD, BOQ, DXF/DWG export and branded proposals.
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.