If you are choosing solar shading analysis software for French work in 2026, the honest starting point is that no French regulation obliges you to produce a shading study. There is no equivalent of the British MCS shade factor and no mandatory Verschattungsanalyse in the German sales sense. What makes shading a first-order commercial problem in France is something else entirely: the tarif d’achat steps by system size, and a shading estimate is one of the main things that pushes a designer to add or remove modules. Get the shading number wrong and you do not simply misstate production by four percent. You risk sizing the array across a capacity bracket boundary and repricing every kilowatt-hour it will sell for the next twenty years. That is why a French shading tool has to feed a bracket-aware financial model rather than print a percentage. This guide ranks the ten tools French designers genuinely use for shading, priced in euros, starting with SurgePV at roughly €1,180 per user per year, and naming exactly where it loses.
Direct answer. The best solar shading analysis software for France in 2026 is SurgePV, at about €1,180 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, because it runs an 8,760-hour module-level simulation and feeds the result straight into a tarif d’achat and prime a l’autoconsommation model held as bracketed tables, so it shows when compensating for shade pushes a system over a bracket boundary and reduces total revenue. For a lender-grade loss diagram, PVsyst at CHF 700 per user per year still wins. For a deep UTE C15-712-1 technical file, archelios remains the French answer.
This guide is written for installateurs RGE QualiPV, bureaux d’etudes and EPC design teams whose yield numbers are being challenged. If you want the physics without the French commercial layer, read the global pillar on solar shading analysis software first. For the wider tool decision, our best solar design software in France ranking covers the full workflow.
Why French Shading Analysis Is a Revenue Question, Not a Compliance One
Start with the thing most roundups get wrong. France does not mandate a shading study. You can install a compliant, Consuel-attested, Enedis-connected photovoltaic system in France without ever producing a shading report to any authority. Anybody telling you otherwise is inventing a requirement to sell you software.
What France does have is a payment structure that punishes a sizing error more severely than most markets. Under the obligation d’achat, the tarif d’achat paid for your production or your surplus is stepped by installed capacity bracket, and the prime a l’autoconsommation is stepped the same way. The steps are not smooth. A system in a lower bracket can receive a higher rate per kilowatt-hour and a higher premium per kilowatt-peak than a system one bracket up.
Now connect that to shading, which is the connection nobody makes explicitly.
A designer who finds a shading loss has three responses available. Accept the lower production. Move or regroup the array. Or add modules to recover the target output. The third is the most common response in residential work, because the customer was quoted an annual figure and the easiest way to hold that figure is more capacity. And that is exactly the move that crosses a bracket boundary.
Work it through. Say a customer is sold a system near a bracket edge and the designer discovers a chimney and a neighbouring gable costing eight percent of annual yield. Adding two 500 Wp modules restores the production number. It also lifts the installed capacity past the boundary. Every kilowatt-hour the system exports for twenty years is now priced in the lower bracket, and the prime per kilowatt-peak has stepped down across the whole system rather than only across the added kilowatts. The customer got the annual kWh they were promised and a worse twenty year cash flow. Nothing in the design was technically wrong.
📘 Regulation note
No French rule requires a photovoltaic shading study. What is regulated is the connection and the conformity path: the Enedis raccordement process, the Consuel attestation de conformite before mise en service, and the obligation d'achat tariff arrangements published under the oversight of the Commission de Regulation de l'Energie. Bracket rates are revised quarterly and the applicable rate is tied to the queue date of the connection request, so confirm current values 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 pricingWhat a Shading Tool Has to Do to Be Safe in a Bracketed Market
The requirement follows directly. A shading result in France is an input to a sizing decision that has a discontinuous payoff, so the tool has to carry the discontinuity.
Three capabilities separate a French-safe tool from a percentage printer.
It has to hold the tariff table, not a rate. A financial engine that multiplies annual kWh by one number is structurally blind to the cliff. It will always recommend more capacity when shading appears, because more capacity always produces more energy. Only a model holding the bracketed table can report that the larger array earns less.
It has to run the sizing sweep after the shading run, not before. The right sequence is: model the obstructions, get the module-level loss, then re-solve system size across the bracket table with that loss applied. Tools that size first and shade second give you a number you then have to re-litigate by hand in a spreadsheet, which is where the error enters.
It has to separate vente totale from vente du surplus. They pay different rates and imply different optimal sizes, and shading changes the self-consumption fraction as well as the total. An array shaded in the morning loses energy at a different hour of the household load curve than one shaded in the late afternoon, and on the surplus route that changes the answer.
What 48.9N and 43.3N Do to Shadow Length
France spans a genuine latitude range, and that is unusual enough among European markets to matter. Metropolitan France runs from roughly 51N at Dunkerque to about 42.5N at the Pyrenean and Mediterranean edges. A single national spacing rule is wrong at both ends.
Solar noon elevation on the winter solstice is approximately 90 minus latitude minus 23.44. The shadow multiplier is 1 / tan(elevation).
| City | Latitude | 21 Dec noon elevation | Shadow multiplier | 3 m obstruction casts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lille | 50.6N | 16.0 degrees | 3.49 | 10.5 m |
| Paris | 48.9N | 17.6 degrees | 3.14 | 9.4 m |
| Lyon | 45.8N | 20.8 degrees | 2.64 | 7.9 m |
| Bordeaux | 44.8N | 21.8 degrees | 2.50 | 7.5 m |
| Marseille | 43.3N | 23.2 degrees | 2.33 | 7.0 m |
A three metre chimney throws nine and a half metres of shadow in Paris and seven metres in Marseille at the best moment of the shortest day. That is a difference of two and a half metres of roof on a residential job, and on a flat commercial roof it compounds across every row.
Inter-row spacing, worked twice. Take a 2.28 m module in portrait at 20 degrees tilt on a flat roof. The vertical rise is 2.28 x sin(20) = 0.78 m. Its own horizontal projection is 2.28 x cos(20) = 2.14 m.
- Paris (48.9N): clearance
0.78 x 3.14 = 2.45 m, so pitch near 4.6 m and a ground coverage ratio around 0.50. - Marseille (43.3N): clearance
0.78 x 2.33 = 1.82 m, so pitch near 4.0 m and a ground coverage ratio around 0.58.
Sixteen percent more usable capacity on the same roof area in Marseille than in Paris, from geometry alone. A national default in a design template quietly overbuilds the north and underbuilds the south, and in a bracketed tariff market an unintentional capacity change is not a rounding error. Our shading loss glossary entry sets out the underlying definitions.
The morning and evening problem is worse than the noon number suggests. Three hours either side of solar noon on 21 December, Paris sits near 6 degrees of elevation and the multiplier passes 9. Imported American rules that demand a shade-free window from 9am to 3pm on the winter solstice are unreachable on a dense Parisian or Lyonnais roof. French practice narrows the window and quantifies the winter loss instead, which is only defensible if your tool reports monthly rather than annual shading.
Get your sizing sanity-checked. For a fast second opinion on array size, spacing and winter shading loss before you commit to a layout, run the numbers through our free solar calculator or talk to our engineering team.
The Consuel and Enedis Cost of Late-Discovered Shading
The second France-specific angle is procedural, and it turns a design error into a dated cost.
In most markets, discovering shading late means a redesign and an awkward conversation. In France it can mean a date moving. The connection path has stages that carry calendar time: the Enedis raccordement request goes in and takes its place in a queue, a proposition de raccordement is issued and accepted, works are scheduled, and the mise en service follows the Consuel attestation de conformite. Change the design materially after the request is lodged and you are re-entering steps that already consumed weeks.
Three concrete consequences.
A capacity change can change the applicable tariff. The rate is tied to when the connection request entered the queue, and rates are revised quarterly. If a shading discovery forces a resubmission that lands in the next quarter, the customer is on a different number than the one in your devis. This is the failure mode that turns a shading oversight into a commercial dispute rather than an engineering correction.
The attestation rests on the drawings and the equipment schedule. If shading forces a string regrouping, the DC arrangement in the technical file changes, the labelling changes, and the document set the Consuel attestation depends on has to be regenerated consistently. A tool that models shading but cannot reissue the matching single-line diagram has left you half a job.
A refused attestation or a defect found on inspection moves the energisation date. Whatever your position on whose fault that is, the customer’s cash flow starts later and your retention payment starts later with it.
⚠️ Watch out
Run the shading study before the raccordement request, not after the signature. In France the cost of a late shading discovery is measured in weeks of queue position and a possible change of tariff quarter, which is a larger number than the shading loss itself on most residential jobs.
The 5-Point France Shading Bench
This is the framework we use before putting any shading tool in front of a French design team. Score each axis 1 to 10, out of 50. Nothing below 38 goes into production work.
- Bracket-aware financial feed. Does the shading result flow into a tarif d’achat and prime a l’autoconsommation model held as bracketed tables, with vente totale and vente du surplus separated?
- Sizing sweep after shading. Can it re-solve system size with the shading loss applied, and show the revenue cliff rather than only the energy gain?
- Latitude honesty. Does it compute spacing and winter loss from the actual site latitude rather than a national default, and report monthly rather than annually?
- Horizon capture and import. Can it take a measured or terrain-derived horizon profile, including a PVGIS export, rather than only inferring obstructions from satellite imagery?
- Document regeneration. If shading forces a string regrouping, does the single-line diagram and equipment schedule reissue consistently for the Consuel file?
Scores across the ten tools below: SurgePV 43, PVsyst 40, archelios 38, PV*SOL premium 37, HelioScope 33, Aurora Solar 28, Solmetric SunEye 33, Scanifly 30, PVGIS horizon import 30, Autocalsol 24. The scoring is ours and it is opinionated. PVsyst sits three points back only because it has no tariff model at all, not because its physics is weaker. On axis three alone it beats everything here.
Top 10 Solar Shading Analysis Tools in France Compared
Pricing is 2026, annualised, quoted in each vendor’s own billing currency. PVsyst bills in Swiss francs, PV*SOL in euros, and the US products in dollars; where a euro figure is shown for a dollar product it is approximate at €0.91 per US dollar. Hardware is one-off capital, shown separately.
| # | Tool | Price, vendor currency | Shading capability | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SurgePV | US$1,299/user/yr (~€1,180) | 8,760-hr module-level shading feeding a bracketed tarif model | Installateurs doing 5+ French jobs a month |
| 2 | PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr, annual subscription | Reference near-shading 3D scene plus horizon file import | Bankable reports and disputed yield claims |
| 3 | Trace Software archelios Pro | archelios PRO Platinum €1,990/yr excl. tax; archelios CALC €1,350/yr excl. tax | 3D shading tied to a UTE C15-712-1 technical file | Bureaux d’etudes producing the dossier |
| 4 | PV*SOL premium | EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT | Animated 3D shading walkthrough, strongest visual output | Winning shading arguments in the client meeting |
| 5 | HelioScope | US$159/mo Basic, US$259/mo Pro | Module-level 8,760-hr on C&I roofs, clean loss tree | Commercial rooftop consultancies |
| 6 | Solmetric SunEye 210 | US$2,195 base, one-off | Fisheye horizon capture at the array position | Measured evidence on dense urban sites |
| 7 | Scanifly | Not publicly listed | Drone photogrammetry into a shade-capable 3D model | Complex, steep or unsafe French roof stock |
| 8 | PVGIS horizon import | Free | Terrain horizon profile for any French coordinate | Alpine, Pyrenean and Massif Central sites |
| 9 | Aurora Solar | US$135/user/mo Basic, US$220 Premium, billed annually | Residential shade capture inside a sales workflow | Groups already standardised on Aurora |
| 10 | Autocalsol (INES) | Free | Fast French pre-sizing with a coarse shading input | Feasibility calls and training |
The honest read: positions 1 to 4 are the working shortlist for a French firm. Position 8 is free and position 6 is a one-off instrument purchase rather than a licence, so both are inputs to a simulator rather than products that replace one. Two of the licences here undercut ours outright: five PVsyst seats cost CHF 3,500 a year and five PV*SOL premium seats EUR 4,225, against €5,900 for five SurgePV seats.
1. SurgePV
What it does best for French shading. SurgePV builds the 3D roof from a satellite address, detects chimneys, dormers, souches, adjacent gables and parapets, then runs an 8,760-hour module-level simulation with bypass-diode physics and an anisotropic sky model. The French-specific part is what happens next. The shading loss feeds a financial engine that holds the tarif d’achat and the prime a l’autoconsommation as bracketed tables, separates vente totale from vente du surplus, and prices self-consumed energy against the customer’s actual tariff. Re-solve the system size with the shading loss applied and it will tell you when adding two modules to recover the production figure moves the array across a bracket boundary and reduces twenty year revenue. That single behaviour is the reason it heads this list. The shadow analysis module is bundled on every paid plan rather than gated behind a tier, and the annual heat map colours every module by percent irradiance loss so a designer spots a shaded northern row in seconds.
Pricing. €1,180 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so €5,900 for five seats. Individual seats run about €1,730 a year. Free trial, no credit card.
Who it suits. Installateurs RGE QualiPV and EPCs doing five or more French designs a month, especially teams whose residential work regularly lands near a capacity bracket edge.
Honest limitations. Four concrete ones. It does not assemble or file the Consuel attestation dossier. It produces the drawings and the equipment schedule the attestation rests on, and after a shading-driven string regrouping it reissues them consistently, but the submission is still your team’s job and that is the step French installers most want automated. Its DC-side verification is not as exhaustive as archelios Calc, so a bureau d’etudes on complex commercial work will keep archelios alongside it and pay twice. Its horizon capture is satellite-derived, not measured, so on a dense Lyon courtyard or a poorly imaged rear elevation you still want a SunEye reading, which it will import rather than generate. And the deciduous tree model is coarse: a single seasonal canopy density flag does not distinguish a bare December plane tree from a leafed July one as well as a hand-built PVsyst scene with two shading objects does, which matters on the tree-lined suburban streets that make up a lot of French residential stock.
Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real job sitting within a kilowatt or two of a bracket boundary, because that is where the bracketed modelling either earns its keep or does not.
2. PVsyst
What it does best. PVsyst remains the reference for near-shading. Its 3D shading scene builds obstructions to real dimensions, its horizon file import accepts profiles from PVGIS, Meteonorm and most survey handsets, and its loss diagram separates near shading from horizon shading from electrical mismatch. On a financed French commercial roof or a ground-mount site, that breakdown is what the technical adviser to the bank asks for by name.
Pricing. PVsyst bills in Swiss francs and sells an annual subscription rather than a perpetual licence: CHF 700 per user per year for the Professional licence, with Education at CHF 420, Training and Research at CHF 560, Student and Classroom at CHF 25, and PVsystCLI at CHF 3,000. Group discounts run 5 to 20 percent by quantity. Five Professional seats therefore cost CHF 3,500 a year, which is less than five SurgePV seats at €5,900, and that is worth saying plainly.
Who it suits. Independent engineers, technical due diligence teams and anyone whose shading number will be argued about in front of a lender.
Honest limitations. Windows desktop only, a steep learning curve, and building a shading scene by hand takes an hour on a roof SurgePV models in a minute. Critically for this page, it has no tarif d’achat model whatsoever, so it cannot see the bracket cliff and will never warn you about it. It is a physics tool. Our PVsyst alternative guide covers where the tradeoff sits for a working installateur, and Heaven Designs keeps a deeper PVsyst resource centre for teams whose deliverable is the loss diagram itself.
3. Trace Software archelios Pro
What it does best. archelios is French, and it is the incumbent for good reasons rather than habit. archelios Pro handles PV simulation with 3D shading, and it sits beside archelios Calc, which verifies cable sizing, voltage drop, protection selection and earthing against UTE C15-712-1. That pairing matters for shading specifically: when a shading result forces a string regrouping, archelios re-verifies the DC arrangement in the same vocabulary a French reviewer uses, which shortens every conversation with a bureau de controle. No imported tool does that.
Pricing. Trace Software sells archelios from its own online shop, as annual subscriptions rather than perpetual licences. archelios PRO Platinum is €1,990 a year excluding tax, and archelios CALC is €1,350 a year excluding tax with Silver services included and a choice of IEC or NF electrical standards. There is also a free archelios PRO tier limited to projects up to 36 kWp. Renewals are handled by the commercial team rather than automatically, so confirm the renewal figure before you budget year two.
Who it suits. Bureaux d’etudes and electrical designers whose deliverable is a technical file, especially on commercial jobs where the electrical verification is the hard part.
Honest limitations. Desktop-first with limited real-time collaboration, no satellite-derived 3D roof capture, so geometry entry is manual and a shading study costs real hours. The customer-facing output is a technical document rather than a sales artefact. And while its French regulatory depth is the best here, it does not run a bracketed sizing sweep against the tariff table, so the specific revenue cliff this page is about is still yours to catch.
4. PV*SOL premium
What it does best. Valentin Software’s animated 3D shading walkthrough is the most persuasive customer-facing shading artefact any tool produces. When a customer in a village near Annecy insists the neighbour’s walnut tree is not a problem, playing the December shadow sweep across their own roof ends the conversation in ninety seconds. It also copes well with the awkward geometry of French housing stock, mansard roofs, hips and dense village settings.
Pricing. PVSOL premium is a named-user subscription, not a perpetual licence: EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, with standard PVSOL at EUR 585. Five named users come to EUR 4,225 a year, which is meaningfully cheaper than five SurgePV seats at €5,900. Licences bought before 19 November 2024 remain usable indefinitely, but maintenance renewals on them ended on 1 October 2024.
Who it suits. Design-led French firms that lose jobs to shading disputes rather than to price.
Honest limitations. Windows desktop only, no collaboration, no satellite roof capture so every job starts with manual modelling, no tarif d’achat brackets and no Consuel awareness. The proposal output needs rework before a customer sees it. Our PV*SOL alternative writeup has the detail.
5. HelioScope
What it does best. Module-level 8,760-hour simulation with a loss tree French independent engineers read without argument. On a 600 kW logistics roof near Lyon with rooftop plant, ducting and a parapet, HelioScope quantifies partial-shade mismatch losses properly rather than averaging them away.
Pricing. HelioScope publishes US dollar prices: Basic US$159 a month or US$1,620 a year, Pro US$259 a month or US$2,640 a year, with Enterprise quoted. Each covers one user and ten projects a month, with DC design capped at 1.25 MW on Basic, 5 MW on Pro and 30 MW on Enterprise. Five Basic seats are US$8,100 a year, roughly €7,371 at €0.91 per dollar.
Who it suits. Commercial and industrial consultancies whose deliverable is a yield report.
Honest limitations. No French regulatory layer, no tarif d’achat modelling, no horizon handset import worth the name, no satellite roof capture, and weak proposal tooling that forces a second licence. Read our HelioScope alternative comparison before committing seats.
6. Solmetric SunEye 210
What it does best. A fisheye camera handset held at the array position that captures the actual horizon and overlays the sun path, returning monthly and annual solar access percentages. It is measured evidence rather than modelled inference, which is worth a great deal on a dense Parisian courtyard or a Marseille hillside where satellite imagery of the rear elevation is poor.
Pricing. The SunEye 210 is a current product, not a discontinued one. Solmetric, a Fluke company since the acquisition announced on 12 September 2023, lists it at US$2,195 for the base kit in North America, roughly €1,997 at €0.91 per dollar, and the price includes a lifetime PV Designer licence. As of 2 August 2026 it is out of stock with a stated 10 to 12 week lead time, so order well ahead of a survey programme rather than assuming shelf stock.
Who it suits. Survey teams doing volume residential work in dense urban settings.
Honest limitations. The lead time is the headline risk: a 10 to 12 week wait does not fit a project that needs a reading next month. Beyond that it is a capture device: it gives solar access percentages, not module-level energy, so it feeds a simulator rather than replacing one. Readings are position-sensitive, and a reading taken from the ground rather than the array plane describes a roof you are not building.
7. Scanifly
What it does best. Drone photogrammetry converts a flight into an as-built 3D site model with real obstruction geometry, which then drives a shading calculation. On a steep slate roof, a building in a protected sector or a multi-dormer town house where sending a surveyor up is the wrong call, this is a safety gain as well as an accuracy gain.
Pricing. Scanifly does not publish pricing. Per-project and per-seat figures circulating in software directories are unverified, so treat a quote from Scanifly as the only reliable number, and budget the drone programme separately.
Who it suits. Installers with complex French roof stock and an existing drone programme.
Honest limitations. It is capture first and simulation second, so a bankable yield report still comes from elsewhere. French drone operating rules and protected-sector restrictions around historic buildings cut usable sites more than the vendor’s US material implies, and it produces no French regulatory output. Our Scanifly alternative writeup covers the cheaper routes.
8. PVGIS Horizon Import
What it does best. This is a technique rather than a product, and it is the most under-used capability in French shading work. The JRC PVGIS tool publishes a terrain-derived horizon profile for any European coordinate, downloadable as a file that imports directly into PVsyst and most serious simulators. For a site in an Alpine valley, a Pyrenean foothill or a steep Massif Central commune, terrain horizon shading can cost several percent of annual yield, and no satellite roof model will ever see it because the obstruction is a mountain three kilometres away. PVGIS is also the reference dataset for French irradiance, which makes it a free cross-check on any tool’s climate assumptions.
Pricing. Free. Meteonorm sells a richer commercial equivalent and publishes its own price: CHF 675 for a first licence and CHF 350 for each additional licence, excluding VAT, bought once per software version rather than as an annual subscription.
Who it suits. Any engineer who already owns a simulator and works outside flat northern France.
Honest limitations. Terrain horizon data knows nothing about buildings, trees or anything built by humans, so it complements a near-shading model rather than replacing one. Resolution is coarse on short-range obstructions, and combining a terrain horizon with a near-shading scene without double-counting the overlap requires care.
9. Aurora Solar
What it does best. Aurora’s shade capture inside a residential sales workflow is genuinely good, with mature roof plane detection and irradiance maps that present well to a homeowner.
Pricing. Aurora publishes US dollar prices: Basic US$135 per user per month billed annually and Premium US$220, which is about €123 and €200 at €0.91 per dollar. Five Premium seats are US$13,200 a year, roughly €12,012, and five Basic seats US$8,100, roughly €7,371. LIDAR modelling and bankable shade reports sit on Premium, and plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion. Worth saying plainly: Aurora Basic at US$1,620 a year is cheaper than a SurgePV Individual seat at US$1,899.
Who it suits. Multinational residential operations extending an existing Aurora process into France.
Honest limitations. The French layer is close to absent. No tarif d’achat brackets, no prime a l’autoconsommation, no Consuel concept, and a financial model built around net metering and United States tax credit mechanics that do not exist here. In a bracketed market that is not a cosmetic gap, it is the gap this whole page is about. See our Aurora Solar alternative comparison.
10. Autocalsol
What it does best. Autocalsol is the free pre-sizing and yield estimation tool from INES, the French national solar institute. It uses French irradiance data, it is fast, and it is widely used in French PV training, so most younger designers have seen it. As a sanity check on a system size in the first ten minutes of a job it is genuinely useful.
Pricing. Free.
Who it suits. Feasibility calls, sales qualification and training.
Honest limitations. Its shading input is a coarse correction rather than a geometric model. No 3D scene, no module-level simulation, no horizon import, no bracketed sizing sweep. Treat it as a cross-check, which is exactly what it is good at, and never as the basis for a shading claim in a devis.
Send us a disputed roof. If a customer or a funder is challenging your yield figure, send us the design and our engineers will return an independent shading and yield opinion within 48 hours. Request a review →
Pricing in Euros for a Five-Person French Team
| Tool | Per seat | Five seats per year | What you get for shading |
|---|---|---|---|
| SurgePV | US$1,299/user/yr (~€1,180) | US$6,495 (~€5,900) | 8,760-hr module-level shading feeding a bracketed tarif model, heat map, horizon import |
| PVGIS horizon import | Free | €0 | Terrain horizon profile for any French coordinate |
| Autocalsol | Free | €0 | Coarse shading correction on a pre-sizing estimate |
| PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr | CHF 3,500 | Reference near-shading scene and loss diagram |
| archelios PRO Platinum | EUR 1,990/yr excl. tax | EUR 9,950 | 3D shading tied to UTE C15-712-1 verification |
| PV*SOL premium | EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT | EUR 4,225 | Animated 3D shading walkthrough |
| Solmetric SunEye 210 | US$2,195 one-off (~€1,997) | US$4,390 for two units | Measured fisheye solar access |
| HelioScope | US$159/mo Basic (US$1,620/yr) | US$8,100 (~€7,371) | C&I module-level simulation |
| Scanifly | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Drone capture into a 3D shade model |
| Aurora Solar | US$135/user/mo Basic, US$220 Premium, annual | US$8,100 Basic, US$13,200 Premium | Residential shade inside a sales workflow |
Read that table honestly and two rivals come out cheaper than us on licence cost alone. Five PVsyst seats at CHF 3,500 and five PV*SOL premium seats at EUR 4,225 both sit below €5,900 for five SurgePV seats, and neither of them charges for a bracket model because neither of them has one.
The comparison a French firm should actually run is not SurgePV against PVsyst. It is SurgePV plus free PVGIS horizon data plus one shared SunEye 210 at roughly €7,900 in year one against archelios for the file, plus PVsyst for the yield report, plus a spreadsheet holding the tariff brackets by hand. That split-tool route totals CHF 3,500 for five PVsyst seats plus €1,990 a year for one archelios PRO Platinum subscription, with three logins and the bracket arithmetic living in the one place nobody audits. For a two-person bureau doing mostly electrical verification, archelios plus free PVGIS is still the honest answer and we would say so on a call.
Mistakes French Designers Make on Shading
-
1
Adding modules to compensate for shading without re-checking the bracket. Recovering the promised annual kWh by lifting installed capacity past a boundary can reduce twenty year revenue even though production rose. The design is correct and the deal is worse.
-
2
Running the shading study after the raccordement request. A material design change after the request restarts steps that carry weeks, and a resubmission landing in a new quarter can change the applicable tariff.
-
3
Using one national row pitch rule. The same 20 degree array needs about 4.6 m of pitch near Paris and about 4.0 m near Marseille. A single default underbuilds the south and overbuilds the north.
-
4
Ignoring terrain horizon on mountain and valley sites. A satellite roof model cannot see a ridge three kilometres west. Import the free PVGIS horizon profile before quoting anything in the Alps, the Jura or the Pyrenees.
-
5
Regrouping strings for shade without reissuing the technical file. The DC arrangement, the labelling and the equipment schedule are what the Consuel attestation rests on. A shading fix that leaves stale drawings behind creates an inspection finding.
The wider set of workflow errors is covered in our writeup on common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar. On the inverter side of a shading-driven regrouping decision, our sister engineering team’s dual MPPT versus single MPPT guide sets out when a second tracker is the cheaper fix than moving modules.
Should a French Team Standardise on SurgePV for Shading?
- ✓ Your residential jobs land near tariff bracket boundaries
- ✓ You want shading, string regrouping and the devis in one licence
- ✓ You bid commercial roofs alongside residential
- ✓ You want a per-module heat map a customer can read
- ✗ Your deliverable is lender due diligence (PVsyst)
- ✗ Your deliverable is a deep UTE C15-712-1 file (archelios)
- ✗ Your problem is winning a shading argument in the kitchen (PV*SOL)
- ✗ Your roofs cannot be safely surveyed (Scanifly first)
Verdict. For a five-person French installateur, SurgePV is the strongest shading stack in euros because it is the only tool here that connects a shading loss to a bracketed tariff decision. For a disputed commercial yield figure, keep PVsyst. For a bureau d’etudes whose product is the technical file, archelios stays, and the honest advice is to buy the cloud tool for the sales and design side only rather than pretending you will retire it.
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 defend a yield figure to a customer six months after handover. For French teams the entry points are:
- Shadow analysis for 8,760-hour module-level shading with an exportable horizon profile and per-module heat map.
- 3D pre-design and satellite roof modelling when the obstruction geometry has to be built before the shading study can start.
- Electrical drawing packages when a shading-driven string regrouping means the whole DC schematic set has to be reissued.
- A bracket sanity check on any residential job within a kilowatt or two of a tariff boundary, before the raccordement request goes in rather than after.
For the wider French tool decision see our best solar design software in France ranking, the best solar proposal software in France guide and the full French software stack. Market context sits with the IEA renewables tracker and IRENA country profiles. Choosing the best solar shading analysis software in France comes down to one question almost no global vendor asks: when shading forces you to resize, does the tool know what that resize does to twenty years of tariff revenue?
Related Shading and Design Guides
- Solar Shading Analysis Software: The Global Pillar
- Best Solar Shading Analysis Software UK
- Best Solar Shading Analysis Software in Ireland
- Best Solar Design Software in France
- Best Solar Design Software in Italy
- Best Solar Design Software in Spain
- Solar Design Software Germany: Top 10 Tools Ranked
- Solar Simulation Software Compared
- Commercial Solar Design Software Compared
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a solar shading study required by law in France?
No. There is no French regulation that obliges you to produce a photovoltaic shading study, and no equivalent of the British MCS shade factor. What is regulated is the connection path: the Enedis raccordement request, the Consuel attestation de conformite before mise en service, and the obligation d’achat tariff arrangements. The shading study matters commercially rather than legally, because a shading error changes system sizing and system sizing changes which tarif d’achat bracket the installation falls into.
How does shading interact with the tarif d’achat brackets?
Both the tarif d’achat and the prime a l’autoconsommation step by installed capacity, and the steps are not smooth. When a designer discovers a shading loss, the most common response is to add modules to hold the promised annual production. That extra capacity can push the system past a bracket boundary, which drops the rate applied to every kilowatt-hour for twenty years and steps the premium down across the whole system. The production target is met and the customer is worse off.
How long is a winter shadow in Paris compared with Marseille?
At solar noon on 21 December the sun reaches about 17.6 degrees in Paris at 48.9N, giving a shadow length near 3.1 times the obstruction height, so a 3 metre chimney casts about 9.4 metres. In Marseille at 43.3N the sun reaches roughly 23.2 degrees, a multiplier near 2.3, so the same chimney casts about 7.0 metres. That is why a single national inter-row spacing rule is wrong: the same 20 degree tilt array needs roughly 4.6 metres of pitch near Paris and 4.0 metres near Marseille.
What does late-discovered shading actually cost in France?
More than the lost kilowatt-hours. A material design change after the Enedis raccordement request restarts steps that carry calendar time, and because the applicable tariff is tied to the queue date and rates are revised quarterly, a resubmission landing in the next quarter can put the customer on a different rate than the one in your devis. If the change alters the DC arrangement, the drawings and equipment schedule behind the Consuel attestation have to be reissued too.
Is archelios still the right choice for French shading work?
For a bureau d’etudes whose deliverable is a technical file, yes. archelios Pro handles 3D shading and archelios Calc re-verifies the DC arrangement against UTE C15-712-1 in the vocabulary a French reviewer expects, which is genuinely valuable when a shading result forces a string regrouping. It is desktop-first with manual geometry entry and no satellite roof capture, and it does not run a bracketed sizing sweep against the tariff table, so it answers the compliance question well and the revenue question not at all.
Can PVsyst tell me if shading has pushed my system into a worse tariff bracket?
No. PVsyst is the strongest near-shading physics on this list and its loss diagram separates near shading, horizon shading and electrical mismatch better than anything else here. It has no tarif d’achat model of any kind, so it cannot see a bracket boundary and will never warn you about one. Use it for the loss diagram and the bankable report, and run the bracket arithmetic in a tool that holds the tariff table.
How do I model terrain shading in the Alps or the Pyrenees?
Download the horizon profile for the site coordinates from the JRC PVGIS tool, which derives it from terrain elevation data, then import the resulting file into your simulator. PVsyst accepts it directly and most serious tools accept the same format. On an Alpine valley floor or a steep Pyrenean commune this can account for several percent of annual yield on its own, and no satellite roof model will detect it because the obstruction is a mountain kilometres away.
What is SurgePV’s biggest weakness for French shading work?
It does not assemble or file the Consuel attestation dossier. It produces the drawings and equipment schedule the attestation rests on, and reissues them after a shading-driven regrouping, but the submission remains your team’s job. Its DC-side protection verification is also thinner than archelios Calc, its horizon capture is satellite-derived rather than measured so dense urban rear elevations still want a SunEye reading, and its deciduous tree model uses a single seasonal density flag that is coarse on tree-lined French streets.
Does SurgePV handle inter-row shading on French flat roofs?
Yes. Set the row pitch and tilt and the engine models self-shading between rows across all 8,760 hours from the actual site latitude rather than a national default. The arithmetic worth checking yourself first: a 2.28 metre module at 20 degrees tilt needs roughly a 4.6 metre pitch to clear the row behind at midwinter noon in Paris, for a ground coverage ratio near 0.50, against about 4.0 metres and 0.58 in Marseille. That is sixteen percent more capacity on the same southern roof.
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.