Best Solar Shading Analysis Software in Ireland 2026

If you are choosing solar shading analysis software for Irish work in 2026, start by getting the obligation right, because most guidance you will find online is British and does not apply. There is no MCS in the Republic. The SEAI Solar PV Scheme requires an installer on the SEAI register and a compliant installation, and it does not require a shade factor in a defined format. An ESB Networks NC6 notification or NC7 mini-generation application is a connection process, and it does not ask for a shading study either. So the honest framing is this: an Irish shading study is a commercial document, not a certification deliverable. It exists to make your yield number credible to the customer signing, to the funder lending, and to the solicitor who reads the contract when generation disappoints in year two. That changes what you should buy. The tool that wins our 2026 bench is SurgePV at roughly €1,180 per user per year, and the reasons it wins are physics reasons rather than paperwork reasons.

Direct answer. The best solar shading analysis software in Ireland for 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 that applies a genuine sky view factor to partial obstructions, which is the behaviour that matters most under Ireland’s heavily diffuse maritime sky. No Irish scheme mandates a shading factor, so the study is a credibility document rather than a compliance one. For anything financed, PVsyst at CHF 700 per user per year is still the report a bank’s technical adviser asks for by name.

This guide is for SEAI registered installers, Safe Electric registered contractors and design engineers whose yield figures are being challenged. For the physics without the country layer, read the global pillar on solar shading analysis software. For the full tool decision, our best solar design software in Ireland ranking covers the wider workflow.

What Irish Rules Actually Ask For, and What They Do Not

Getting this right is worth more than any feature comparison, because it stops you buying the wrong product.

The SEAI grant does not ask for a shading study. The SEAI Solar PV Scheme pays €700 per kWp for the first 2 kWp and €200 per kWp from 2 to 4 kWp, capped at €1,800, and its conditions concern installer registration, property eligibility and installation quality. There is no equivalent of a mandated performance-estimate method with a defined shade factor. If a vendor tells you their tool produces “the SEAI shading calculation”, ask them to show you the document that requires one.

ESB Networks does not ask for one either. An NC6 notification covers micro-generation up to 6 kVA single phase or 11 kVA three phase. Above that, NC7 mini-generation involves a paid application, a technical assessment and a connection offer. Both processes care about inverter rating, protection settings and export behaviour. Neither cares how much of the roof a chimney shades.

And a word on what is not Irish at all. MCS, the Standard Estimation Method, the Smart Export Guarantee, Ofgem and the G98 or G99 connection process are British institutions with no standing in the Republic. Export here pays under the Clean Export Guarantee at supplier-set rates. The connection is NC6 or NC7. The wiring rules are I.S. 10101. Our best solar shading analysis software in the UK guide covers the British obligation properly, and it is a genuinely different page for a genuinely different market.

So why run the study at all? Three commercial reasons, each of which you can price:

1. Yield credibility at the point of sale. A per-module shading heat map next to a rival’s flat kWh figure closes jobs, because the customer can see what you measured.
2. Funder confidence on commercial roofs. Irish commercial PV is increasingly financed, and a lender’s technical adviser will read a loss diagram before releasing drawdown.
3. Dispute protection. Generation shortfalls in Ireland get argued about in the second winter, not the first summer. A dated, position-stamped shading record is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.

What 53.3 Degrees North Does to Shadow Length

Ireland is further north than most designers instinctively register. Dublin sits at 53.3N, level with Liverpool and north of Hamburg, and Donegal reaches past 55N.

Solar noon elevation on the winter solstice is roughly 90 minus latitude minus 23.44. For Dublin that gives 13.3 degrees, and the shadow length multiplier is 1 / tan(13.3) = 4.24.

Applied to real obstructions, and compared with the American Sun Belt numbers that most imported tool defaults were tuned on:

Obstruction	Height	Dublin midwinter noon shadow (53.3N)	Phoenix (33.4N)	Ratio
Parapet wall	1.2 m	5.1 m	1.8 m	2.8×
Chimney stack	3.0 m	12.7 m	4.6 m	2.8×
Neighbouring two-storey gable	8.0 m	33.9 m	12.2 m	2.8×
Mature sycamore	12.0 m	50.9 m	18.3 m	2.8×

Away from solar noon it gets sharper still. Two hours either side of noon on 21 December the Dublin sun is at about 9.0 degrees, multiplier 6.3. Three hours either side it is near 4.0 degrees, multiplier 14.5, at which point a 3 metre chimney casts a 43 metre shadow. The American convention of designing for a shade-free window from 9am to 3pm on the winter solstice is not a demanding target in Ireland, it is an arithmetically impossible one on any urban roof. Irish practice instead quantifies the winter loss and accepts it, which is only defensible if the tool reports the loss month by month rather than as an annual average.

Inter-row spacing on Irish flat roofs. A 2.28 m module in portrait at 20 degrees tilt has a vertical rise of 0.78 m. Clearing the row behind at Dublin midwinter noon needs 0.78 × 4.24 = 3.3 m plus the module’s own 2.14 m horizontal projection, so a pitch near 5.45 m and a ground coverage ratio around 0.42. The Phoenix equivalent is about 3.3 m and 0.68. On a 2,000 square metre Irish warehouse roof, that spacing difference is the reason your capacity estimate and the American reference design disagree by roughly a third, and it is why shallow east-west ballast at 10 to 12 degrees dominates Irish flat-roof work.

Get your sizing sanity-checked. For a fast independent second opinion on array size, spacing and winter shading loss, run the numbers through our free solar calculator or talk to our engineering team.

The Diffuse Sky Problem, Which Is Worse in Ireland Than in Britain

This is the criterion that should decide your purchase, and it is the one vendors are least able to answer.

Ireland’s climate delivers a very high proportion of annual irradiance as diffuse sky radiation rather than direct beam. Persistent Atlantic cloud, high humidity and a low sun angle combine to push the diffuse fraction above what Britain sees, and Ireland sits at or near the top of that range among European markets. You can verify the split for any Irish coordinate in the JRC PVGIS dataset, and Met Eireann publishes the sunshine-hour records that explain why.

What that does to shading is specific and often mismodelled. When a chimney sits south of an array in Andalusia, its main effect is to remove sunbeam hours. When the same chimney sits south of an array in Cork, most of what it removes is sky dome, and it removes it in every hour of the year including the many hours with no beam at all. A tool that computes shadow polygons and subtracts beam irradiance is answering a question that describes a minority of the Irish resource.

Tool behaviour	What it computes	Failure mode on an Irish roof
Beam-only shadow polygons	Direct beam blocked per hour	Understates loss badly on obstructions blocking large sky angles
Isotropic sky (Liu and Jordan)	Uniform dome brightness	Misprices horizon-band obstructions, which is most of them here
Hay and Davies	Circumsolar plus isotropic background	Reasonable, thin on horizon brightening
Perez with sky view factor	Circumsolar, horizon brightening, background, per-module view factor	Matches measured maritime conditions most closely

The test to run in a vendor demo: take one Dublin terrace, model it with and without a 3 metre chimney to the south, and ask the salesperson to show you where the sky view factor is applied. If the tool cannot tell you what fraction of the sky dome each module sees, it is guessing at the majority of your resource. On our own comparisons the spread between a beam-only figure and a Perez-based figure on the same shaded Irish roof commonly runs two to four percent of annual yield, which on a 5 kWp domestic system across a 25 year life is real money on the proposal you signed. Our diffuse horizontal irradiance and shading loss glossary entries define the terms, and solar irradiance covers the components.

The 5-Point Diffuse Sky Shading Test

This is the framework we use before deploying any shading tool on Irish work. Score each axis 1 to 10, out of 50. Nothing below 38 goes on a job where the yield figure is contractual.

1. Sky view factor. Does the engine compute what fraction of the sky dome each module sees, or does it only trace beam shadows?
2. Transposition model. Perez or equivalent anisotropic model, with horizon brightening handled separately from background sky.
3. Horizon handling. Can it import a terrain or measured horizon profile, and does it combine that with near-shading without double-counting?
4. Seasonal transparency. Monthly or hourly output that exposes the December collapse rather than hiding it inside an annual mean.
5. Defensibility. A dated report with obstruction dimensions, capture position and a loss breakdown you can hand to a funder or a solicitor.

Scores across the ten tools below: SurgePV 42, PVsyst 44, HelioScope 38, PV*SOL premium 40, horizon-import workflow 36, Aurora Solar 32, Solmetric SunEye 37, Solar Pathfinder 33, Scanifly 32, Solargraf 27. Note that PVsyst outscores SurgePV on this bench, which is the opposite of our Irish design-software result. That is the honest outcome when the axis is pure shading physics and none of the axes is workflow or price.

Top 10 Solar Shading Analysis Tools in Ireland Compared

Pricing is 2026, annualised, quoted in each vendor’s own billing currency. PVsyst bills in Swiss francs and PV*SOL in euros; the US products bill in dollars, and where a euro figure follows it is approximate at €0.91 per US dollar. Hardware is one-off capital.

#	Tool	Price, vendor currency	Shading capability	Best for
1	SurgePV	US$1,299/user/yr (~€1,180)	8,760-hr module-level, Perez sky, sky view factor, annual heat map	Irish installers doing 5+ jobs a month
2	PVsyst	CHF 700/user/yr, annual subscription	Reference near-shading scene, best diffuse and horizon modelling	Financed projects and disputed yield
3	HelioScope	US$159/mo or US$1,620/yr Basic; US$259/mo or US$2,640/yr Pro	Module-level 8,760-hr on C&I roofs, clean loss tree	Commercial rooftop consultancies
4	PV*SOL premium	EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT	Animated 3D shading walkthrough	Winning shading arguments with customers
5	Horizon import workflows	PVGIS free; Meteonorm CHF 675 first licence, CHF 350 additional	PVGIS or Meteonorm terrain horizon into a simulator	Rural and drumlin-country sites
6	Aurora Solar	US$135/user/mo Basic, US$220 Premium, billed annually	Residential shade capture inside a sales workflow	Larger firms already on Aurora
7	Solmetric SunEye 210	US$2,195 base, one-off	Measured fisheye horizon at the array position	Dense urban terraces and poor imagery
8	Solar Pathfinder	US$299 to US$349 device, US$219 software	Reflective dome horizon trace, no power needed	Cheap dated evidence on every survey
9	Scanifly	Not publicly listed	Drone photogrammetry into a 3D shade model	Complex, steep or unsafe roof stock
10	Solargraf	US$2,799/yr Starter (2 users, 240 projects) to US$12,999 Enterprise	Fast residential shade inside an Enphase workflow	Enphase-heavy residential installers

Say the awkward part out loud before the detail: two of the tools above are cheaper than we are. Five PVsyst seats cost CHF 3,500 a year and five PV*SOL premium named users EUR 4,225, against €5,900 for five SurgePV seats. Aurora Basic at US$1,620 a year also undercuts a SurgePV Individual seat at US$1,899.

The honest read: positions 1 to 4 are the working shortlist for anyone whose yield number is contractual. Position 5 is a technique rather than a product and it is the most under-used capability in Irish solar. Positions 7 and 8 are hardware that feeds software rather than replacing it.

1. SurgePV

What it does best for Irish shading. SurgePV builds the 3D roof from a satellite address, detects chimneys, dormers, gables and adjacent buildings, then runs an 8,760-hour module-level simulation with bypass-diode physics and a Perez-style anisotropic sky model. The behaviour that matters in Ireland is that it applies a sky view factor to partially obstructed modules rather than treating obstructions as beam blockers, so a chimney on a Rathmines terrace is priced for the sky it removes rather than only for the sunbeams it interrupts. The annual heat map colours every module by percent irradiance loss, and the monthly breakdown exposes the December collapse instead of averaging it away. Because no Irish scheme prescribes a report format, what you want is a document a customer and a funder both find legible, and the shadow analysis module produces that on every paid plan rather than gating it behind a tier.

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. SEAI registered installers and EPCs doing five or more designs a month who want the shading run, the string regrouping and the proposal in one licence.

Honest limitations. Four concrete ones. It does not import a raw fisheye horizon capture from a SunEye or a Pathfinder trace directly, so a measured horizon has to be reduced to obstruction geometry by hand, where PVsyst takes a horizon file as an input. Its brand is unknown to Irish funders, because it launched in 2025, so on a financed commercial roof in Ireland’s small and conservative lending market you will still be asked for a PVsyst loss diagram, and PVsyst genuinely beats it on that axis. Its deciduous tree model is coarse, using a single seasonal density flag, which matters on Irish sites where mature broadleaf canopy is the dominant obstruction on rural houses. And satellite imagery quality is uneven outside the cities, so obstruction auto-detection on a rural Leitrim farmhouse needs manual correction more often than the demo suggests.

Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real Irish roof with a chimney and a neighbouring gable, so you can judge the sky view factor behaviour rather than a showcase file.

2. PVsyst

What it does best. PVsyst is the strongest shading tool on this list on physics alone, and Ireland is the market where that gap matters most. Its transposition and diffuse sky models are the reference, its 3D near-shading scene lets you build obstructions to measured dimensions, and its horizon file import accepts PVGIS, Meteonorm and survey handset profiles directly. The loss diagram separates near shading from horizon shading from electrical mismatch, which is exactly the breakdown a bank’s technical adviser reads before drawdown.

Pricing. PVsyst bills in Swiss francs on an annual subscription, not a perpetual licence: CHF 700 per user per year for Professional, CHF 560 Training and Research, CHF 420 Education, CHF 25 Student and Classroom, CHF 3,000 for PVsystCLI. Group discounts run 5 to 20 percent by quantity, so five Professional seats are CHF 3,500 a year, which is less than five SurgePV seats at €5,900.

Who it suits. Independent engineers, technical due diligence teams, and any Irish firm whose yield figure will be argued about in front of a funder.

Honest limitations. Windows desktop only, a steep learning curve, and hand-building a shading scene takes an hour on a roof SurgePV models in a minute. No proposal output, no customer-facing visual, no CEG or SEAI modelling and nothing a salesperson can use. Our PVsyst alternative guide covers where the tradeoff sits.

3. HelioScope

What it does best. Module-level 8,760-hour simulation with a loss tree that independent engineers accept without argument. On a 400 kW distribution shed outside Dublin with rooftop plant, ducting and parapets, it quantifies partial-shade mismatch properly rather than averaging it into a system-level derate.

Pricing. US$159 per user per month or US$1,620 a year on Basic, US$259 a month or US$2,640 a year on Pro, with Enterprise quoted. Each seat covers one user and ten projects a month, with DC design capped at 1.25 MW on Basic and 5 MW on Pro. Five Basic seats billed annually are US$8,100, roughly €7,371 at €0.91 per dollar.

Who it suits. Commercial and industrial consultancies whose deliverable is a yield report.

Honest limitations. No satellite roof capture, no horizon file import worth the name, and proposal tooling weak enough to force a second licence. Its sky model is credible but not at PVsyst’s level, which matters more in Ireland than it would in Portugal. Read our HelioScope alternative comparison first.

4. PV*SOL premium

What it does best. The animated 3D shading walkthrough is the most persuasive customer-facing shading artefact any tool produces. In an Irish kitchen conversation about a neighbour’s sycamore, playing the winter shadow sweep across the customer’s own roof settles the argument in under two minutes. The European component database is deep and the simulation is trusted.

Pricing. PVSOL premium is a named-user subscription rather than a perpetual licence: EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, with standard PVSOL at EUR 585. Five named users cost EUR 4,225 a year, plainly cheaper than five SurgePV seats. Licences bought before 19 November 2024 stay usable indefinitely, but maintenance renewals on them ended on 1 October 2024.

Who it suits. Engineering-led Irish consultancies and any firm losing jobs to shading disputes.

Honest limitations. Windows desktop, no collaboration, no satellite capture so every job starts with manual 3D modelling, and no Irish regulatory or financial layer at all. Our PV*SOL alternative writeup has the detail.

5. Horizon Import Workflows

What it does best. This is a technique rather than a product, and in Ireland it earns its place at number five. PVGIS publishes a terrain-derived horizon profile for any coordinate in Europe, free, downloadable as a .hor or CSV file that PVsyst and most serious simulators read directly. Meteonorm sells a richer commercial version. Ireland’s drumlin country, the Wicklow and Kerry uplands and countless valley sites carry terrain horizon shading that no satellite roof model will ever see, because the obstruction is a hill two kilometres away. On a west-facing Kerry site, terrain horizon alone can account for several percent of annual yield, and it disproportionately removes the low-sun winter hours you can least afford to lose.

Pricing. PVGIS horizon data is free. Meteonorm publishes its own price in Swiss francs: CHF 675 for a first licence and CHF 350 for each additional licence, excluding VAT. It is bought once per software version rather than renewed annually.

Who it suits. Any Irish engineer who already owns a simulator and works outside flat urban Dublin.

Honest limitations. Terrain data knows nothing about buildings, trees or hedgerows, so it complements a near-shading model rather than replacing one. Resolution is coarse at short range, and combining a terrain horizon with a near-shading scene without double-counting the overlap takes care and a documented convention.

6. Aurora Solar

What it does best. Mature roof plane detection and a shade capture workflow embedded in a residential sales process, with irradiance maps that present well to a homeowner.

Pricing. Aurora publishes two per-user plans: Basic at US$135 per user per month billed annually (US$159 month to month) and Premium at US$220 billed annually (US$259 month to month), about €123 and €200 at €0.91 per dollar, plus a quoted Enterprise tier. LIDAR modelling and bankable shade reports are Premium features, and plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion. Aurora Basic works out at US$1,620 a year, cheaper than a SurgePV Individual seat at US$1,899.

Who it suits. Larger Irish residential firms already running Aurora, often because they operate in another market too.

Honest limitations. LIDAR modelling and bankable shade reports are gated on Premium, so Basic is thinner than the marketing implies, the diffuse handling is not at PVsyst or SurgePV level, and there is no Irish regulatory or financial layer at all. See our Aurora Solar alternative comparison.

7. Solmetric SunEye 210

What it does best. A fisheye handset held at the array position that captures the real 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 an Irish rear elevation that satellite imagery renders as a grey smudge.

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.

Who it suits. Survey teams doing volume domestic work in Dublin, Cork and Galway terraces.

Honest limitations. The 10 to 12 week lead time is the headline risk, because it does not fit a dispute that needs a reading this quarter. It also produces solar access percentages, not module-level energy, so it feeds a simulator rather than replacing one. Readings are position-sensitive: taken from the ridge rather than the eaves, it describes a roof you are not building.

8. Solar Pathfinder

What it does best. A reflective transparent dome over a sun path diagram, traced by hand. No battery, no firmware, no licence. On a wet Mayo roof in January it works when a handset has gone flat, and the trace is a dated physical record that costs almost nothing to produce on every survey.

Pricing. Solar Pathfinder bills in US dollars and publishes its prices: US$299 to US$349 for the device depending on configuration and US$219 for the Assistant software, with 5% off when bought together. At about €0.91 to the dollar that is roughly €272 to €318 for the device and about €199 for the software, both approximate, before shipping from the United States and Irish import VAT.

Who it suits. Any Irish surveyor who wants cheap, durable, defensible horizon evidence as standard practice.

Honest limitations. Manual tracing introduces operator error, it is slow across a multi-plane roof, and it gives you a horizon profile rather than an energy number. Reading a low-contrast horizon through the dome under Irish overcast is also harder than the marketing photographs suggest.

9. Scanifly

What it does best. Drone photogrammetry turns a flight into an as-built 3D site model with real obstruction geometry that drives a shading calculation. On a steep slate roof, a protected structure or a multi-dormer terrace, capturing from the air is a safety gain as well as an accuracy gain.

Pricing. Scanifly does not publish pricing. The per-seat and per-project figures circulating in software directories are unverified, so a direct quote is the only number worth budgeting against, and the drone, the pilot and the IAA permissions sit on top of it.

Who it suits. Irish installers with complex roof stock and an existing drone programme.

Honest limitations. Capture first, simulation second, so a defensible yield report still comes from elsewhere. Irish weather and IAA operational rules cut usable flying days sharply, and the per-seat cost is hard to justify below a steady survey volume. Our Scanifly alternative writeup covers cheaper routes.

10. Solargraf

What it does best. Enphase’s design and proposal tool turns a remote site into a layout and a customer-facing quote quickly, with sensible microinverter configuration. Module-level power electronics genuinely mitigate partial shading, and Solargraf reasons about that hardware correctly.

Pricing. Solargraf is not a per-seat product. It prices by plan: Starter at US$2,799 a year covering 240 projects and 2 users, rising to Enterprise at US$12,999 for 1,500 projects, with API access at US$4,000 a year on every plan except Enterprise. At €0.91 per dollar that is roughly €2,547 to €11,829.

Who it suits. Enphase-heavy Irish residential installers who value speed over engineering depth.

Honest limitations. The shading model is materially lighter than a dedicated simulator, it leans toward one manufacturer’s hardware, and it will not produce a report a funder reads. Fine for a straightforward unshaded bungalow, wrong for the roof you are worried about.

Send us a disputed roof. If a customer or a funder is challenging your Irish 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 Irish 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, Perez sky, sky view factor, heat map, plus full design and proposals
Horizon import (PVGIS)	Free	€0	Terrain horizon profile for any Irish coordinate
Solar Pathfinder	US$518 device plus Assistant (~€471) one-off	US$1,036 for two kits (~€943)	Manual horizon trace, no licence
PVsyst	CHF 700/user/yr	CHF 3,500	Reference near-shading and diffuse modelling
PV*SOL premium	EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT	EUR 4,225	3D animated shading walkthrough
Solargraf	Not per seat: US$2,799/yr Starter (2 users)	US$12,999 Enterprise covers 1,500 projects	Fast Enphase-oriented shade and proposal
Solmetric SunEye 210	US$2,195 one-off (~€1,997)	US$4,390 for two units	Measured fisheye solar access
HelioScope	US$1,620/yr Basic	US$8,100 (~€7,371)	C&I module-level simulation
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
Scanifly	Not publicly listed	Not publicly listed	Drone capture into a 3D shade model

Two things in that table are worth naming rather than glossing over. Five PVsyst seats at CHF 3,500 and five PV*SOL premium named users at EUR 4,225 both cost less than five SurgePV seats at €5,900, and on the pure shading-physics bench above PVsyst also scores higher than we do. What you buy with the difference is the design, string regrouping and proposal workflow attached to the same project file, not better shading physics.

The comparison an Irish firm should actually run is SurgePV at €5,900 plus one PVsyst seat at CHF 700 plus free PVGIS horizons, which is under €6,700 in total, against a stack of Aurora Premium for design plus HelioScope for commercial plus a separate proposal tool, which for five people lands above US$21,000 across three logins with no shared project state. For a two-person domestic-only outfit, one PVsyst seat at CHF 700 a year and a €330 Solar Pathfinder covers the engineering for roughly €1,100 in year one and under €800 a year after that, and we would say so on a call.

Irish Shading Details Most Software Gets Wrong

Hedgerows and mature broadleaf are the dominant rural obstruction. Irish rural housing sits behind field boundaries that are frequently 6 to 10 metres of dense growth. At a 4.24 midwinter multiplier, an 8 metre hedge line 30 metres south of a farmhouse still clears the roof, but the same hedge at 25 metres does not. Satellite obstruction detection classifies hedgerow poorly, and a single seasonal density flag does not distinguish a bare December hawthorn from a leafed August one.

Export limiting changes which modules matter. Because ESB Networks assesses the inverter rating rather than array size, oversized DC to AC ratios are common on Irish domestic jobs to stay inside the 6 kVA NC6 threshold. On an export-limited array, a shaded string that clips less often is worth less than the raw shading percentage suggests, and a tool that reports shading loss without applying the AC limit overstates the harm. Ask your simulator whether shading loss is computed before or after inverter clipping.

Winter matters more than the annual average implies. Irish demand peaks in the dark half of the year, and self-consumption value is highest exactly when the sun is at 13 degrees. An array with 4 percent annual shading loss concentrated in November through February is a worse commercial proposition than one with 6 percent spread evenly, even though the annual figure looks better. Report the monthly shape.

Mistakes Irish Designers Make on Shading

1. 1
   Assuming a shading study is mandatory, then buying compliance features that do not exist here. No SEAI or ESB Networks process requires a shade factor. Buy physics and defensibility, not a certificate template.
2. 2
   Running a beam-only shading model. Ireland has one of the highest diffuse fractions in Europe. An obstruction removes sky dome, and a tool without a sky view factor misprices every obstructed roof it touches.
3. 3
   Using American spacing defaults. Dublin midwinter shadows are 2.8 times the Phoenix equivalent. A ground coverage ratio of 0.68 imported from a US reference design costs you a third of your flat-roof capacity in self-shading.
4. 4
   Skipping the free PVGIS horizon on rural sites. Terrain shading in drumlin and upland country is invisible to a satellite roof model and costs several percent of annual yield. The download takes two minutes and is free.
5. 5
   Reporting only an annual shading percentage. Irish demand peaks in winter, which is precisely when shading is worst. An annual mean hides the seasonal shape the customer will actually experience.

The wider set of workflow errors sits in our writeup on common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar.

Should an Irish Team Standardise on SurgePV for Shading?

Verdict. For a five-person Irish installer, SurgePV plus one shared PVsyst licence plus free PVGIS horizons is the strongest shading stack in euros. SurgePV carries the daily work and the customer-facing output, PVsyst carries anything a funder reads, and PVGIS catches the terrain neither of them can see from a satellite. For a two-person domestic firm, one PVsyst seat at CHF 700 a year plus a €330 Solar Pathfinder is complete, and it is cheaper than anything we sell.

How Heaven Green Energy and SurgePV Help Irish 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 two winters after handover. For Irish teams the entry points are:

• Shadow analysis for 8,760-hour module-level shading with a diffuse sky view factor and a monthly loss breakdown.
• Heaven Designs PVsyst resource centre when the deliverable is a lender-grade loss diagram rather than a customer proposal.
• Structural and civil engineering for wind uplift verification on exposed Atlantic coast roofs.
• String versus microinverter for the hardware side of a shading mitigation decision.

For the wider Irish tool decision see our best solar design software in Ireland ranking, the best solar proposal software in Ireland guide and the full Irish software stack. Market context sits with the IEA renewables tracker and IRENA country profiles.

Related Shading and Design Guides

• Solar Shading Analysis Software: The Global Pillar
• Best Solar Shading Analysis Software in the UK
• Best Solar Design Software in Ireland
• Best Solar Proposal Software in Ireland
• Best Solar Software in Ireland: The Full Stack
• Solar Design Software UK: Top 10 Platforms Ranked
• Solar Simulation Software Compared
• Best Solar Design Software in the Netherlands

Shading Analysis in Nearby Markets

Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands share the high-diffuse maritime sky that makes an isotropic sky model misprice a partly shaded roof.

• Best solar shading analysis software in the Netherlands
• Solar shading analysis software: the global guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a shading analysis required for an SEAI solar grant?

No. The SEAI Solar PV Scheme conditions concern installer registration on the SEAI list, property eligibility and installation quality. There is no requirement for a shading study or a defined shade factor, and no prescribed performance-estimate method equivalent to the UK’s MCS Standard Estimation Method. An Irish shading study is therefore a commercial and yield-credibility document rather than a certification gate, which is exactly why the buying criteria are physics and defensibility rather than report templates.

Does ESB Networks need a shading report for an NC6 or NC7?

No. An NC6 notification covers micro-generation up to 6 kVA single phase or 11 kVA three phase, and NC7 mini-generation above that requires a paid application, a technical assessment and a connection offer before energising. Both processes assess inverter rating, protection settings and export behaviour. Neither asks how much of the roof is shaded. Shading affects your yield estimate and your customer’s payback, not your connection route.

How long is a winter shadow in Dublin?

At solar noon on 21 December the sun reaches about 13.3 degrees in Dublin, giving a shadow length of roughly 4.24 times the obstruction height. A 3 metre chimney casts a 12.7 metre shadow at the sunniest moment of that day. Two hours either side of noon the sun is near 9 degrees and the multiplier rises to 6.3, and three hours out it is near 4 degrees with a multiplier of 14.5.

Why does diffuse modelling matter more in Ireland than in Britain?

Ireland’s Atlantic maritime climate delivers an even higher share of annual irradiance as diffuse sky radiation than Britain does, and both are at the high end for Europe. That means an obstruction mainly removes part of the sky dome rather than blocking sunbeams, and it does so in every hour of the year including fully overcast ones. A simulator without a proper sky view factor and an anisotropic transposition model will misprice essentially every obstructed Irish roof.

Which shading tool do Irish lenders accept?

PVsyst, in practice. Irish commercial solar lending is a small and conservative market, and a technical adviser reviewing a financed rooftop or ground-mount project will ask for a PVsyst loss diagram by name. Cloud platforms including SurgePV produce simulations of comparable rigour with P50, P75 and P90 outputs, but they do not yet carry the same recognition. Run SurgePV daily and keep one PVsyst licence for anything financed.

What is the cheapest way to improve Irish shading accuracy?

Download the free terrain horizon profile from the JRC PVGIS tool for the site coordinates and import it into your simulator. It costs nothing, takes about two minutes, and on rural and upland Irish sites it catches hillside shading worth several percent of annual yield that no satellite roof model can see. Adding a Solar Pathfinder at roughly €330 for measured horizon evidence on awkward sites is the next cheapest step.

Should an Irish installer just use a UK shading tool?

Only if you understand what you are not getting. The strongest feature of UK-native tools is MCS Standard Estimation Method output with a shade factor, and that has no Irish equivalent, so in the Republic it produces paperwork nobody asked for. The physics carries across the Irish Sea fine. The compliance layer does not. Buy on sky model quality, horizon handling and seasonal reporting instead.

Does shading loss get calculated before or after inverter clipping?

It depends on the tool, and in Ireland the answer matters because export limiting to stay inside the 6 kVA NC6 threshold makes oversized DC to AC ratios common. On a clipped array, shading that removes production during hours the inverter would have limited anyway costs less than the raw irradiance loss implies. Ask your vendor directly. A tool that reports shading loss purely at the array plane overstates the commercial harm on export-limited Irish domestic systems.

What is SurgePV’s biggest weakness for Irish shading work?

Three things. It does not import a raw fisheye horizon file from a SunEye or Pathfinder, so measured horizons have to be reduced to obstruction geometry by hand, where PVsyst takes the file directly. Its brand carries no weight with Irish funders because it launched in 2025. And its deciduous tree model uses a single seasonal density flag, which is coarse for rural Irish sites where mature broadleaf and hedgerow are the dominant obstructions.