Best Solar Shading Analysis Software Philippines 2026

If you are choosing solar shading analysis software in the Philippines, the useful starting point is a piece of geometry that changes what you should worry about. Manila sits at 14.6 degrees north. The sun is high here every month of the year, so the row spacing problem that governs design in Germany, Poland or Canada largely disappears, and inter-row self-shading is rarely the binding constraint on a Philippine rooftop. What replaces it is a set of sky and site problems: a monsoon climate with a very high diffuse fraction, cloud transients that swing plane-of-array irradiance by hundreds of watts per square metre within seconds, and Metro Manila rooftops hemmed in by multi-storey construction on three sides. The tool that wins our 2026 bench test is SurgePV at about PHP 75,000 (US$1,299) per user per year, and this guide ranks ten shading tools in pesos with the arithmetic behind the ranking.

Direct answer. The best solar shading analysis software in the Philippines for 2026 is SurgePV, at about PHP 75,000 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan. It runs an 8,760-hour module-level shading engine with anisotropic sky modelling, builds obstruction geometry from satellite imagery in under 60 seconds, and reports sub-hourly array behaviour that matters under Philippine cloud cover. PVsyst still wins where a lender names the tool.

This guide is for Philippine designers, EPC engineers and consultancies whose yield numbers are being questioned. It gives the sun-angle and sky-model arithmetic first, then the ranking, then the specific errors we see in Southeast Asian shading reports.

Why Manila Latitude Inverts the Shading Playbook

Shading physics is identical everywhere. What varies by latitude is which term dominates the answer. December solar noon elevation is 90 degrees minus latitude minus 23.44 degrees of declination, and that single number drives everything downstream.

Shadow length is obstruction height divided by the tangent of solar elevation. At Manila’s 52 degrees, tan is 1.28, so one metre of array height casts 0.78 m of shadow at the worst moment of the year. At Berlin’s 14 degrees, tan is 0.25, so the same metre casts 4.0 m. That is a factor of five, and it is why a shading tool built around inter-row geometry solves a problem you mostly do not have here.

The corollary matters more than the observation. Because self-shading is cheap to avoid at 14.6N, the residual losses on a Philippine array are dominated by things that do not scale with latitude: the sky radiance distribution, obstruction geometry from adjacent buildings, and how the inverter behaves when a cumulus cell crosses the array. The global pillar on solar shading analysis software covers the engine mechanics that apply in every market. This page covers what actually changes at 14.6 degrees north.

Inter-Row Spacing at 14.6N: The Arithmetic

Solar noon is the easy case. Real spacing rules protect a design window, conventionally 9 am to 3 pm solar time on 21 December, because the sun is both lower and swung further east at 9 am. The row-direction shadow is height divided by tan(elevation), multiplied by the cosine of the sun’s azimuth measured from due south.

At Manila on 21 December at 9 am solar time, solar elevation is about 31.8 degrees and the azimuth sits about 49.8 degrees east of south. That gives a row-direction shadow of 1.04 m per metre of array height, against 0.78 m at noon.

Put a module on that. A 2.28 m module in portrait at the 15 degree tilt common on Philippine flat concrete roofs has a vertical rise of 0.59 m and a horizontal base of 2.20 m. Minimum pitch is base plus shadow:

Configuration	Array rise	Manila min pitch	Berlin-latitude min pitch	Ground coverage ratio (Manila)
2.28 m portrait, 10° tilt	0.40 m	2.66 m	3.84 m	0.86
2.28 m portrait, 15° tilt	0.59 m	2.82 m	4.56 m	0.81
2.28 m portrait, 20° tilt	0.78 m	2.95 m	5.26 m	0.77
1.13 m short side (horizontal mount), 10° tilt	0.20 m	1.32 m	1.91 m	0.86

On a 30 m deep warehouse roof in Calabarzon at 15 degrees tilt, Manila geometry fits 10 rows where the European template fits 6. That is a 66 percent difference in installed capacity on the same slab, and the customer never sees the modules that were not proposed. Ground coverage ratios of 0.8 and above are entirely normal at this latitude and should not be treated as aggressive.

Two Philippine constraints override the geometry, and both push pitch back out. Wind loading under the National Structural Code sets clamp spacing and ballast layout before shading does. And in a humid, high-ambient climate, restricting airflow between rows costs more in thermal derating than the extra modules earn. The practical rule we use is geometric minimum plus 20 percent, then check the structural layout. The tilt angle entry covers the underlying term, and the Philippine design software guide covers the wind load side in detail.

Diffuse Sky Is the Philippine Shading Variable

This is the variable that actually changes a Philippine shading answer, and most designers never touch it. The Philippines has a monsoon climate with heavy convective cloud. Across Luzon typical meteorological year data, the annual diffuse fraction of global horizontal irradiance runs around half, and through the southwest monsoon months of June to September it commonly exceeds 60 percent. Compare that to a desert site where the diffuse fraction sits near 20 percent, and the modelling consequence is direct.

Under a high diffuse fraction, most of the energy reaching a module arrives from the sky dome rather than from the solar disc. That means the assumed shape of sky radiance stops being a rounding error:

• An isotropic sky model treats the entire sky dome as uniformly bright. Shading loss then reduces to a simple sky view factor: block 30 percent of the visible sky and you lose 30 percent of the diffuse component. It is simple and it is wrong under a real monsoon sky.
• An anisotropic model (Perez or Hay-Davies) splits diffuse into circumsolar brightening near the sun, horizon brightening near the skyline, and isotropic background. A parapet or an adjacent building blocks the horizon band, which an isotropic model prices identically to blocking the zenith, when in reality they carry different radiance.

In our own comparison runs across Metro Manila rooftop models, switching from isotropic to Perez changes annual plane-of-array irradiance on an unobstructed array by only 2 to 4 percent. On modules with a restricted sky view, meaning those sitting behind a parapet or against a taller neighbour, the gap widens to 5 to 9 percent, and it does so in the direction that matters: the isotropic model over-penalises modules with a blocked horizon and under-penalises modules with a blocked zenith. Two designs that look equivalent in an isotropic report are not equivalent in reality.

The practical instruction is short. On any Philippine project with obstructions, confirm which sky model your tool is running, insist on an anisotropic one, and note the choice in the report. If a vendor cannot tell you which transposition model they use, they are not doing shading analysis at the level a commercial project deserves. See the diffuse horizontal irradiance and global horizontal irradiance definitions for the underlying quantities, and the PAGASA climate records for monsoon cloud data by station.

Cloud Transients, MPPT Response and the Limits of an Annual Shading Factor

A second Philippine peculiarity: cloud cover here is not a smooth overcast, it is broken and fast-moving. Plane-of-array irradiance on a Metro Manila roof routinely swings from around 900 W/m2 to under 200 W/m2 and back within tens of seconds during the afternoon convective period. An annual shading factor, a single percentage that says the array loses 4 percent to shade, tells you almost nothing about how the system behaves under that.

The Cloud-Transient Check. This is our named framework for Philippine sites, four questions to ask about any array before you accept a shading study:

1. Is partial shading static or moving? A parapet shadow is static and predictable, so string grouping solves it permanently. A cloud edge sweeps the array in seconds and no string layout is optimal for both. Design the strings for the static case and let the inverter handle the moving one.
2. How fast does the inverter re-track? Under a fast irradiance ramp a typical MPPT re-converges within one to a few seconds, which is fine. The expensive behaviour is the global maximum power point sweep that inverters run on partial shading, often at intervals of several minutes, during which the array sits off its optimum. On a roof with static parapet shade plus heavy cloud transients, those two behaviours fight each other.
3. How many MPPT inputs does the design have? More independent trackers means a transient or a static shadow affects a smaller share of the array. On cluttered Metro Manila roofs we default to more MPPT inputs than the DC capacity alone would justify. QBits Energy on dual versus single MPPT covers the tradeoff.
4. Is the DC to AC ratio hiding the loss? An oversized array clips at midday anyway, so shading that occurs during clipping hours costs nothing while shading in the morning shoulder costs full value. An annual percentage cannot distinguish the two. Only an hourly simulation can.

The tooling consequence is that hourly resolution is a floor, not a ceiling. An 8,760-hour engine gives you the shape of the loss across the day and year, which is what drives string grouping and inverter selection. Sub-hourly behaviour is not something design software resolves, and no vendor should claim it does. What good software does instead is show you where in the day the loss sits, so you can reason about the inverter response yourself.

Get your shading numbers sanity-checked. For an independent second opinion on a disputed yield or shading claim before it reaches your client, talk to our engineering team.

Dense Metro Manila Rooftops and Adjacent Construction

The third Philippine variable is the built environment. Metro Manila plot density is high, construction is continuous, and the buildings going up are taller than the ones they replace. On a low-rise commercial roof in Makati, Mandaluyong or Quezon City, the dominant shading object is very often not on the roof at all.

The arithmetic is brutal because the shadow of a tall neighbour is long even at a high sun angle. At Manila’s December noon, with the 0.78 shadow factor:

Adjacent structure	Height above array	December noon shadow	9 am shadow
Parapet wall	1.0 m	0.78 m	1.04 m
Water tank or stair head	3.0 m	2.34 m	3.12 m
Rooftop plant room	4.0 m	3.12 m	4.16 m
Adjacent 5-storey building	15 m	11.7 m	15.6 m
Adjacent 12-storey building	36 m	28.1 m	37.4 m

A 12-storey neighbour sterilises nearly 30 m of roof at noon in December. No sky model, string layout or module technology recovers that. The design decision is where the array goes, and it has to be made before anything else.

Two habits follow. First, model the permitted height on adjacent parcels, not the current height, because a Metro Manila commercial lot can go vertical inside the asset life of the system. Second, on any site where the neighbour is the shading object, put the measurement on the roof rather than trusting satellite geometry, because satellite building height estimates in dense low-rise Manila are the least reliable input in the whole model. That is where a skyline instrument earns its price.

The 5-Point Philippines Shading Bench Test

This is the framework we score shading tools on before deploying them, adapted to Philippine conditions. Five axes, ten points each, out of 50. We do not deploy below 38.

1. Sky model quality. Anisotropic transposition (Perez or Hay-Davies) with the model named in the report, not an unstated isotropic default. Highest weight of the five in this market.
2. Near-object and adjacent-building geometry. Arbitrary 3D objects with explicit heights, including neighbouring structures modelled at permitted rather than current height.
3. Module-level physics. True 8,760-hour simulation at module level with bypass-diode behaviour, giving the time-of-day shape of the loss rather than one annual percentage.
4. Loss separation. Shading, soiling, thermal and mismatch on separate editable lines, since tropical soiling and humidity losses of 4 to 8 percent a year are easily confused with shading. See soiling loss.
5. Cost per finished shading study in pesos, including add-on tiers and scene-building time.

Scores: SurgePV 45, PVsyst 43, HelioScope 40, PVSOL premium 38, Aurora Solar 37, Scanifly 34, Solmetric SunEye 33, SolarEdge Designer 28, Solargis 27 as a data layer rather than a shading engine, Solargraf 24. The scoring is ours and it is opinionated. Three of those scores moved down on the cost axis after we re-checked live vendor pricing in August 2026: PVSOL is a recurring EUR subscription rather than the perpetual licence it used to be, Solargis starts at EUR 2,400 a year rather than a small per-site fee, and Solargraf starts at US$2,799 a year rather than a low monthly seat. Aurora moved up, because its Basic plan is cheaper than we previously stated.

Top 10 Solar Shading Analysis Software in the Philippines Compared

Every vendor is quoted in the currency it bills in, with an approximate peso figure at PHP 58 per US dollar, PHP 63 per euro and PHP 73 per Swiss franc. Peso figures move with the exchange rate.

#	Tool	Price (vendor currency, approx PHP)	Shading capability	Best for
1	SurgePV	US$1,299/user/yr (~PHP 75,000)	8,760-hr module-level, anisotropic sky, AI obstruction scene	EPCs running shading on every quote
2	PVsyst	CHF 700/user/yr (~PHP 51,000)	Reference near-shading 3D scene and loss diagram	Lender due diligence
3	HelioScope	US$159/mo Basic, US$259 Pro (~PHP 9,200 to 15,000)	Module-level C&I yield with clean loss tree	Consultancies delivering yield reports
4	PV*SOL premium	EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT (~PHP 53,000)	3D shading animation and shade frequency visual	Persuading a client, offline work
5	Aurora Solar	US$135/user/mo Basic billed annually, US$220 Premium (~PHP 7,800 to 12,800)	Irradiance maps; LIDAR and bankable shade reports are Premium	Teams also serving US clients
6	Scanifly	Not publicly listed	Drone photogrammetry as-built capture	Complex or unsafe industrial roofs
7	Solmetric SunEye 210	US$2,195 base, North America (~PHP 127,000)	Measured on-roof skyline, no modelling assumption	Dense urban sites and disputes
8	Solargis	Prospect Basic EUR 2,400/yr (~PHP 151,000); no per-site price published	Satellite irradiance and diffuse fraction data layer	Getting the sky input right
9	SolarEdge Designer	Free	Basic shading tied to SolarEdge optimisers	SolarEdge-only residential jobs
10	Solargraf	Starter US$2,799/yr for 240 projects and 2 users (~PHP 162,000)	Fast sales-grade shading and proposals	Residential sales throughput

Positions 1 to 5 are shading engines. Positions 6 and 7 are capture and measurement instruments feeding an engine. Position 8 is a data layer and is on the list because in a high-diffuse market the irradiance input decides the answer more than the engine does. Positions 9 and 10 are sales-grade tools and should not be presented to a lender. Worth saying plainly: SurgePV is not the cheapest entry here. PVsyst at CHF 700 and PV*SOL premium at EUR 845 both come in below it per seat, and Aurora Basic at US$1,620 a year undercuts a SurgePV Individual licence at US$1,899.

1. SurgePV

What it does best for Philippine shading. SurgePV runs 8,760-hour module-level shading with bypass-diode physics on every paid plan, no add-on tier. Sky-diffuse transposition is anisotropic and the model is stated in the report, which is the single most important thing in this market. The obstruction workflow builds a 3D roof from a satellite address in under 60 seconds and lets you add arbitrary objects, including neighbouring buildings at a specified height, so a permitted 12-storey development next door goes in as its own scenario. Soiling and humidity losses sit on separate editable lines rather than being folded into the shading number, which matters where tropical soiling runs 4 to 8 percent annually. The annual heatmap colours each module by percent irradiance loss and drives MPPT grouping directly. Residential runs finish in under 30 seconds and a 1 MW industrial roof in under 5 minutes.

Pricing. US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, about PHP 75,000, so US$6,495 or roughly PHP 377,000 for five seats. A single Individual seat is US$1,899, about PHP 110,000. Free trial, no credit card. On price alone SurgePV loses to PVsyst, PV*SOL and Aurora Basic, and it is worth checking whether the extra buys anything your projects need.

Who it suits. Philippine EPCs and consultancies who want a shading study on every commercial quote rather than only on financed projects.

Honest limitations. Four concrete ones. It is cloud-only, which is a genuine problem on provincial sites and during the connectivity outages that follow a typhoon, where PV*SOL and PVsyst keep working on a laptop. Utility-scale single-axis tracker shading is still maturing, so a large Luzon ground-mount project should be cross-checked in PVsyst before lender submission. It performs no drone capture, so an unsurveyed industrial roof needs Scanifly or a manual survey upstream. And brand recognition is thin: SurgePV launched in 2025, so a bank that has read PVsyst loss diagrams for a decade will ask an extra question about provenance.

Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real Metro Manila roof with a taller neighbour, so you can judge the adjacent-building handling rather than a clean showcase file.

2. PVsyst

What it does best. PVsyst is the reference. Its near-shading 3D scene editor is the most complete obstruction geometry implementation available, its transposition and shading loss handling is documented well enough to argue from in due diligence, and the loss diagram is the artefact Philippine banks and international lenders ask for by name. On lender-named bankability PVsyst beats SurgePV outright.

Pricing. CHF 700 per user per year for a Professional licence, roughly PHP 51,000. It is an annual subscription, not a perpetual purchase. Education is CHF 420, Training and Research CHF 560, and group discounts run 5 to 20 percent by quantity. That is cheaper per seat than SurgePV.

Honest limitations. Building the near-shading scene is slow, commonly an hour or more for a cluttered urban rooftop. Windows desktop only. No proposal output, no client-facing heatmap, no Philippine regulatory logic. Heaven Designs’ guide to reading a PVsyst loss diagram is the fastest way in.

3. HelioScope

What it does best. Module-level 8,760-hour simulation with a readable loss tree that separates shading from soiling, mismatch and thermal losses. For a 2 MW Calabarzon warehouse roof, a HelioScope report is accepted by Philippine technical reviewers without argument, and the loss tree makes the shading share visible rather than buried.

Pricing. Basic US$159 a month or US$1,620 a year, Pro US$259 a month or US$2,640 a year, each covering one user and 10 projects a month with DC design capped at 1.25 MW and 5 MW. Enterprise is quote only. At PHP 58 to the dollar that is about PHP 9,200 and PHP 15,000 a month, so roughly PHP 470,000 a year for five Basic seats.

Honest limitations. Obstruction modelling is manual with no AI roof build, so a dense Manila site takes real drafting time. No proposal tooling, no local regulatory content, and per-seat monthly pricing scales badly as a Philippine team grows.

4. PV*SOL Premium

What it does best. The 3D shading animation is the best client-facing shading artefact on the market, rendering shadow movement across the array through the day and year plus a per-module shade frequency visual. When a factory owner insists the neighbouring building is not a problem, this settles it in one screen. It also runs entirely offline, which is worth more in the Philippines than in most markets.

Pricing. EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, roughly PHP 53,000, with standard PV*SOL at EUR 585. This is a user-based annual subscription. Perpetual licences bought before 19 November 2024 remain usable indefinitely, but they are no longer sold and maintenance renewals ended on 1 October 2024. Cheaper per seat than SurgePV.

Honest limitations. Windows desktop only, a dated interface, a component library thin on the Chinese and Southeast Asian modules commonly specified here, manual 3D scene building, and support hours that do not align with Philippine working days. The move from a perpetual licence to an annual euro subscription also removes the one-off cost advantage it used to have in a peso budget.

5. Aurora Solar

What it does best. Strong irradiance mapping and a capable shade engine, with excellent LIDAR-backed roof detection where LIDAR exists. For a Philippine team doing design outsourcing for US installers, Aurora fluency is a commercial asset in itself.

Pricing. Basic US$135 per user per month billed annually or US$159 monthly. Premium US$220 billed annually or US$259 monthly. Enterprise custom. Both Basic and Premium cover one user and 50 projects a month. That is roughly PHP 7,800 and PHP 12,800 per seat per month. Plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, and site models start at US$9.99.

Honest limitations. LIDAR coverage in the Philippines is limited outside a few surveyed areas, so the feature that makes Aurora excellent in California contributes little in Cebu. LIDAR modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling are all gated to Premium, and plan sets are billed on top rather than included. On price it is now cheaper than SurgePV per seat on Basic, so the argument for SurgePV here is capability rather than cost.

6. Scanifly

What it does best. Drone photogrammetry that turns a short flight into an accurate as-built 3D model with every obstruction at its real height. On a congested industrial roof or a multi-level building where a physical survey is slow and unsafe, this removes the largest single source of shading error, which is a guessed height.

Pricing. Scanifly does not publish pricing. The per-project and per-seat numbers circulating in software directories are unverified third-party estimates, so a direct quote is the only usable figure.

Honest limitations. It captures, it does not simulate, so you still export into an engine that runs the physics. Philippine drone rules under the Civil Aviation Authority add permission overhead, and much of Metro Manila sits inside controlled airspace where a flight is not readily available.

7. Solmetric SunEye 210

What it does best. A handheld fisheye skyline instrument. You stand at a point on the roof, take one capture, and it returns measured sky obstruction and monthly solar access for that exact position with no modelling assumption in the answer. In dense Metro Manila, where satellite-derived neighbouring building heights are the least reliable input in the model, a measured skyline is the strongest evidence you can hold.

Pricing. US$2,195 base for North America, roughly PHP 127,000 before import duty, as capital equipment, and it includes a lifetime PV Designer licence. The 210 is a current product rather than a discontinued one, though as of 2 August 2026 it is out of stock with a stated 10 to 12 week lead time. Solmetric has been a Fluke company since the acquisition announced on 12 September 2023.

Honest limitations. It measures points, not arrays, so a large roof needs many captures and interpolation. It cannot model a building that has not been built yet, which is exactly the Metro Manila risk. Roof access is required, the current lead time is 10 to 12 weeks, and servicing routes abroad.

8. Solargis

What it does best. Solargis is a satellite-derived irradiance data service rather than a shading tool, and it is on this list deliberately. In a market where the diffuse fraction exceeds 60 percent for months at a time, the quality of the direct and diffuse split feeding your model changes the answer more than the choice of engine does. Solargis time series carry a documented uncertainty band in the format lenders typically ask for.

Pricing. Solargis publishes no per-site price, and any circulating per-site peso figure is not a Solargis rate. Its published plans are annual: Prospect Basic EUR 2,400 a year covering 500 projects and 5 users, Prospect Professional EUR 4,800, and Evaluate EUR 12,000 a year for 60 early-stage projects. Prospect Enterprise and the Time Series API are not publicly listed. At PHP 63 to the euro, entry is roughly PHP 151,000 a year.

Honest limitations. It runs no shading geometry, no module physics and no yield model, so it is a purchase alongside a design tool rather than instead of one. The entry plan is an annual subscription at EUR 2,400, not a small per-site fee, so for residential work and for firms doing a handful of commercial sites a year the cost is very hard to justify against free typical meteorological year data.

9. SolarEdge Designer

What it does best. Free, quick and adequate for a residential SolarEdge job, with shading handled in the context of module-level optimisers that genuinely reduce mismatch losses on a partly shaded roof.

Pricing. Free.

Honest limitations. It is built around SolarEdge systems, so we do not rate it as a general-purpose shading tool. In our testing the simulation is sales-grade rather than lender-grade and obstruction modelling is basic, and we would not put its output forward as the yield study in a financed deal. See the Philippine proposal software guide for the sales-side tooling instead.

10. Solargraf

What it does best. Throughput on residential proposals, turning an address into a shaded layout and a client-ready document quickly. Useful when a sales team is handling volume and the engineering runs behind them.

Pricing. Plan-based rather than per seat, starting at US$2,799 a year for Starter, which covers 240 projects and 2 users, and running to US$12,999 for Enterprise at 1,500 projects. API access is a further US$4,000 a year on every plan except Enterprise. Starter is roughly PHP 162,000 a year. Solargraf is Enphase-owned.

Honest limitations. Shading is a sales output, not an engineering one. Commercial capability is thin, obstruction geometry is coarse, and it will not carry a disputed yield claim. It is also considerably more expensive than a low monthly seat price would suggest, because the entry plan is an annual commitment. Do not put it in front of a bank.

Is a Shading Report Required in the Philippines?

Plainly: no. There is no statutory or regulatory requirement for a shading study on a Philippine solar project. Unlike the UK, where the MCS Standard Estimation Method defines a shading factor inside a regulated calculation, Philippine rules do not name one. The Department of Energy handles renewable energy registration and the Energy Regulatory Commission sets net metering and interconnection rules under RA 9513, and neither requires a shading analysis. We are not going to invent a requirement.

The pressure is commercial, and it is real:

• Lender and investor due diligence. Commercial and utility financing asks for P50, P75 and P90 yield bands from a recognised engine, with shading as an explicit loss line. This is where PVsyst’s name still carries weight.
• Performance guarantees in EPC contracts. If you guarantee generation, the shading assumption is the thing you are underwriting, and a documented study is your defence.
• The 100 kW net metering cap. Because RA 9513 caps net metering at 100 kW and credits exports at the generation charge rather than retail, most larger Philippine systems are designed for self-consumption. That makes the time-of-day shape of shading loss commercially important, since shade during a peak load hour costs full retail value while shade during an export hour costs much less.
• Client disputes. A generation shortfall in month three is the commonest complaint, and a shading heatmap attached to the contract is the difference between a conversation and a credit note.

Market context sits with the IEA and IRENA country trackers.

Mistakes Philippine Designers Make in Shading Analysis

1. 1
   Carrying European row pitch into a 14.6N site. A 4.6 m pitch where 2.8 m is correct costs a Calabarzon warehouse roughly 40 percent of the capacity it could carry.
2. 2
   Accepting an unstated isotropic sky model. Under a 60 percent diffuse fraction, isotropic versus Perez changes the answer by 5 to 9 percent on modules with a restricted sky view, and in a direction that misranks two competing layouts.
3. 3
   Reporting one annual shading percentage. It cannot distinguish shade during clipping hours, which costs nothing, from shade in the morning shoulder, which costs full value. Report the hourly shape.
4. 4
   Trusting satellite building heights in dense Manila. Neighbouring building height is the least reliable input in a Philippine urban model and the one with the largest consequence. Count the storeys on site.
5. 5
   Confusing tropical soiling with shading. Soiling and humidity losses of 4 to 8 percent a year are broadly uniform and reset with heavy rain. Shading is geometric and does not move after rain.
6. 6
   Grouping shaded and unshaded modules on one MPPT. On a roof with both static parapet shade and heavy cloud transients, this is the design error that costs the most and shows up least in a report.

Should a Philippine Team Standardise on SurgePV for Shading?

How Heaven Green Energy Helps

Heaven Green Energy is a solar EPC with more than 200 MW installed, 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 number to a client and a lender in the same week. Every proposal we issue carries a shading heatmap with the sky model stated and soiling on a separate line, because those are the two numbers that get challenged.

• Commercial Solar: 10 to 100 kW with module-level shading analysis suitable for lender submission.
• Industrial Solar EPC: 100 kW+ turnkey projects with performance guarantees underwritten by the shading model.
• Solar EPC services: turnkey delivery with the shading study attached to the contract.
• Solar Calculator: sizing and savings in 60 seconds.

For the engine itself, see the SurgePV shadow analysis module. For the engineering deliverables around it, Heaven Designs’ solar engineering resource centre covers the drawing and calculation side.

Related Solar Software Guides

• Solar Shading Analysis Software: The Global Guide
• Best Solar Design Software in the Philippines
• Best Solar Proposal Software in the Philippines
• Best Solar Software in the Philippines: The Full Stack
• Best Solar Shading Analysis Software in India
• Best Solar Design Software in Malaysia
• Best Solar Design Software in Singapore
• Best Solar Design Software: The Global Ranking

Shading Analysis in Nearby Markets

The Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore all sit close to the equator, where near-object and diffuse shading dominate rather than inter-row losses.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best solar shading analysis software in the Philippines in 2026?

SurgePV ranks first on our 5-point Philippines shading bench with 45 of 50, at US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, about PHP 75,000. It runs 8,760-hour module-level simulation with anisotropic sky transposition stated in the report, builds obstruction geometry from satellite imagery in under a minute, and separates soiling from shading in the loss tree. PVsyst scores 43 and stays the stronger choice where a lender names the tool, and at CHF 700 per user per year it is also cheaper.

How much row spacing does a rooftop array need in Manila?

Much less than European templates assume. Manila sits at 14.6N, so December solar noon elevation is about 52 degrees and one metre of array height casts only 0.78 m of shadow. A 2.28 m module in portrait at 15 degrees tilt needs roughly 2.82 m of pitch to stay clear through a 9 am to 3 pm December window, against about 4.56 m at Berlin latitude. Ground coverage ratios of 0.8 and above are normal here.

Does the sky model matter for shading analysis in the Philippines?

More than in almost any other market. The annual diffuse fraction across Luzon runs around half of global horizontal irradiance and exceeds 60 percent during the southwest monsoon, so most energy arrives from the sky dome rather than the solar disc. In our comparison runs, switching from an isotropic model to Perez changes annual plane-of-array irradiance by 2 to 4 percent on an open array and 5 to 9 percent on modules with a restricted sky view. Insist that the report names the model.

Why do cloud transients matter more than an annual shading factor here?

Because Philippine cloud is broken and fast-moving rather than a smooth overcast. Plane-of-array irradiance on a Metro Manila roof can swing from around 900 to under 200 watts per square metre within tens of seconds. A single annual shading percentage cannot tell you whether the loss falls during midday clipping hours, where it costs nothing, or in the morning shoulder, where it costs full value. Only an hourly simulation gives you that shape.

How should inverter MPPT selection respond to shading in the Philippines?

Design the string layout for the static shadows, such as parapets and neighbouring buildings, and let the inverter handle the moving ones. More independent MPPT inputs means any single shadow or transient affects a smaller share of the array, so on cluttered Metro Manila roofs we specify more trackers than DC capacity alone would justify. Be aware that global maximum power point sweeps under partial shading run at intervals of several minutes and cost energy while they run.

Is a shading report required by Philippine regulation?

No. There is no statutory requirement. The Department of Energy handles renewable energy registration and the Energy Regulatory Commission sets net metering and interconnection rules under RA 9513, and neither mandates a shading study. The requirement is commercial instead: lenders want shading as an explicit line in a P50, P75 and P90 loss tree, and any EPC generation guarantee makes the shading assumption the thing you are underwriting.

How do I separate shading loss from tropical soiling loss?

Look at the spatial pattern, the daily shape and the rain response. Shading is geometric and non-uniform, clusters into a fixed daily window, and does not change after rain. Soiling and humidity losses, which commonly run 4 to 8 percent a year in Metro Manila and worse near coastal and industrial sites, are broadly uniform across the array, flat across the daylight curve, and drop sharply after heavy rain. Re-stringing an array will not fix a soiling problem.

Can satellite imagery alone model shading on a Metro Manila roof?

Not reliably. Roof geometry from satellite is usually good, but the height of adjacent buildings, which is the dominant shading object on most dense Manila commercial sites, is the least reliable input in the model. A 15 m neighbour casts an 11.7 m shadow at December noon and a 36 m neighbour casts 28.1 m, so an error of two storeys changes the array position. Count the storeys on the site visit, or measure the skyline with a fisheye instrument.