Best Solar Shading Analysis Software Poland: Top 10

Choosing the best solar shading analysis software in Poland comes down to two numbers that have nothing to do with each other. The first is 14 degrees, the solar noon elevation in Warsaw on 21 December, which decides how far apart your rows must sit and therefore how much array a Polish flat roof can physically carry. The second is the hourly RCE market price, because since net-billing replaced net metering on 1 April 2022 a Polish prosument no longer earns a retail credit for exported energy. They earn a market price that changes every hour. Together those two facts mean the useful output of a Polish shading analysis is not a percentage. It is an 8,760-hour loss series you can multiply against a price curve. The tool we rank first is SurgePV at roughly PLN 4,700 (US$1,299) per user per year, and its weaknesses are named below. This is the Polish companion to our global pillar on solar shading analysis software.

Direct answer. The best solar shading analysis software in Poland for 2026 is SurgePV, at about PLN 4,700 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan. It solves inter-row pitch from the real 14 degree Warsaw December sun elevation rather than a default ground coverage ratio, and it reports shading loss as an 8,760-hour series that can be valued against hourly RCE prices under net-billing. PVsyst is still the report Polish banks name on farm-scale projects.

This guide is for Polish design offices and EPC contractors whose yield numbers are being challenged, whether by a customer reading their first net-billing settlement or by a bank before financial close on a farma fotowoltaiczna. It leads with the geometry, then with the economics, then ranks ten tools in złoty.

Polish Winter Sun Geometry, With the Actual Numbers

Solar noon elevation on the winter solstice is fixed by latitude alone. Take 90, subtract the latitude, subtract the Earth’s 23.44 degree axial tilt. Poland spans roughly 49 to 54.8 degrees north, so the whole country sits in a band where the shortest day gives you between about 12 and 17 degrees of sun.

The shadow a vertical object casts is its height divided by the tangent of that angle. That shadow multiple is the number every Polish inter-row decision starts from.

City	Latitude	21 Dec noon elevation	Shadow multiple	1 m attic wall casts
Krakow	50.06 N	~16.5 deg	3.4x	3.4 m
Wroclaw	51.11 N	~15.5 deg	3.6x	3.6 m
Warsaw	52.23 N	~14.3 deg	4.0x	4.0 m
Poznan	52.41 N	~14.2 deg	4.0x	4.0 m
Szczecin	53.43 N	~13.1 deg	4.3x	4.3 m
Gdansk	54.35 N	~12.2 deg	4.6x	4.6 m

A 1 metre attyka on a Warsaw warehouse takes 4 metres of roof out of production at winter noon. On the Baltic coast it takes 4.6. And solar noon is the generous case. If your no-shade criterion runs 9 am to 3 pm on the solstice, which most Polish design offices use for commercial work, the sun at the window edges is both lower and well off due south, and the shadow measured perpendicular to an east-west row runs closer to eight times the obstruction height. A layout checked only at noon will self-shade every winter morning and the loss will never appear in the report.

What 14 Degrees Does to Row Pitch and Ground Coverage Ratio

Take a typical Polish commercial flat roof with a ballasted tilt frame, two modules mounted horizontally per row, so the row slope length is about 2.26 metres. Set the tilt angle at 20 degrees, which is common on Polish hale magazynowe where wind uplift and ballast mass constrain the frame.

Row rise is 2.26 x sin(20) = 0.77 m. Horizontal footprint is 2.26 x cos(20) = 2.12 m. Winter noon shadow is 0.77 multiplied by the shadow multiple. Pitch is footprint plus shadow, and ground coverage ratio is slope length divided by pitch.

City	Winter noon shadow	Required row pitch	Achievable GCR	Roof area per kWp
Phoenix (reference)	1.18 m	3.30 m	0.68	~6.7 m2
Krakow	2.61 m	4.73 m	0.48	~9.5 m2
Warsaw	3.10 m	5.22 m	0.43	~10.5 m2
Gdansk	3.55 m	5.67 m	0.40	~11.4 m2

Assumes 2.26 m slope length, 20 degree tilt, due-south rows, a 21 December solar noon no-shade criterion and 22 percent module efficiency for the area column.

A 5,000 square metre Warsaw warehouse roof therefore carries roughly 475 kWp at that tilt and criterion, against roughly 745 kWp on the same roof at Phoenix latitude. About a third of the potential capacity is spent on winter shadow, not on modules. Lower the tilt to 10 degrees and the row rise halves, GCR climbs back toward 0.60, and you fit far more kilowatts. What you give up is winter irradiance on the plane of array, snow shedding and some rain self-cleaning. That decision has to be made inside the shading tool, running both cases at 8,760 hours, not afterwards on a spreadsheet.

Net-Billing Turns Shading Into an Hourly Money Question

Here is the part that makes Poland genuinely different from every other high-latitude market. The physics is the same as Canada or Germany. The valuation is not.

Until 31 March 2022 a Polish prosument exported surplus energy and drew it back later at a ratio of 1 to 0.8. The grid was a battery with a 20 percent haircut, and every exported kilowatt-hour was worth the same as every other one. Under that system an annual shading factor was a perfectly reasonable output, because you could multiply one percentage by one tariff and get the right answer.

Net-billing broke that. Exported energy is now sold at a market price and imported energy is bought at the full retail tariff. Prosumers who entered after 1 July 2024 settle against RCE, the hourly market price published by Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne, and since 30 September 2025 that price is published in 15 minute intervals. The regulatory frame sits with the Urząd Regulacji Energetyki.

So the value of a marginal kilowatt-hour now depends entirely on when it happens.

With roughly 25 GW of PV on a grid that size, summer midday RCE routinely collapses toward zero and negative prices are no longer unusual, as tracked in coverage from pv magazine. Now put shading against that.

A shading loss in June at 12:30 costs almost nothing. The exported kilowatt-hour it removes was going to be sold into an hour when the market price was near zero. On a self-consuming site it might still matter, but on an export-heavy array it is close to free.

A shading loss in March at 08:30 or October at 16:00 costs a lot. Those shoulder hours are exactly when RCE holds up, because system-wide PV output is modest and demand is not. They are also, unhelpfully, exactly the hours when a low sun puts a neighbouring building or an attyka across your array.

The two effects reinforce each other. Low-sun hours are both the highest-value hours and the highest-shading hours. An annual shading percentage averages that structure away completely, and it averages in the wrong direction: it dilutes an expensive loss with a cheap one and reports a comfortable-looking number.

The Real Polish Tool-Selection Criterion: Time-Resolved Loss Output

This is the practical test, and it separates the ten tools below more cleanly than any feature list.

Ask a vendor a single question: can I export shading loss as an 8,760-value hourly series, per string or per array, in a format I can join to an RCE price series? There are three possible answers.

1. Yes, hourly, exportable. You can build a genuine net-billing cash flow. Shaded hours are priced at what those hours are actually worth, and a design change is valued in złoty rather than in percent.
2. Hourly internally, annual on the report. The engine runs 8,760 hours but only hands you a summary figure. Usable, but you are trusting an average and you cannot show a customer why the March shoulder matters.
3. A single annual shading factor. Common in sales-led tools. Under the old net metering rules this was defensible. Under net-billing it is a number that cannot be converted into money without an assumption you have no basis for.

A second Polish-specific criterion sits alongside it. Because self-consumed energy avoids the full retail tariff including distribution charges, while exported energy earns only the market price, self-consumption in Poland is worth roughly two to three times an export. So a shading loss during a factory’s working hours, when the site would have consumed that energy, is worth several times a shading loss at the weekend. A shading model that reports loss against generation only, with no load profile joined to it, cannot see this at all.

Want a second opinion on the layout before you price it? Run the sizing through our free solar calculator or talk to our engineering team about your row pitch and shoulder-hour assumptions.

The 5-Point Poland Shading Bench Test

This is the framework our design team applies before trusting shading output on a Polish project. Score each axis 1 to 10, out of 50. Nothing under 38 gets used on a report we sign.

1. Solved row pitch. Does the tool compute inter-row spacing from the actual solar geometry at the site latitude and a stated no-shade window, or does it ask you to type a ground coverage ratio?
2. Time-resolved loss export. An 8,760-hour shading loss series you can join to an RCE price curve, not just an annual factor.
3. Load profile join. Can the shaded hours be valued against self-consumption rather than export, given self-consumption is worth two to three times more under net-billing?
4. Module-level physics. Sub-string and bypass-diode behaviour at 8,760-hour resolution, so a shaded bottom cell row is not averaged away.
5. Evidence you can hand over. An annual heatmap, a monthly loss table and a Polish-language export a customer or a bank can read unaided.

Scores: SurgePV 45, PVsyst 43, PVSOL premium 42, HelioScope 39, Aurora 35, Scanifly 32, Solmetric SunEye 29, Solar Pathfinder 21, PVcase 36, horizon-import workflows 27. The scoring is ours and it is opinionated. PVSOL premium scores higher here than it would in most markets because its load-profile handling and its 3D shading walkthrough both map directly onto the Polish self-consumption argument.

Top 10 Shading Analysis Tools in Poland Compared

Every vendor is quoted in the currency it bills in, with an approximate złoty figure at PLN 3.6 to the US dollar, PLN 3.9 to the euro and PLN 4.5 to the Swiss franc. Treat converted figures as indicative.

#	Tool	Price (vendor currency, approx PLN)	Shading capability	Best for
1	SurgePV	US$1,299/user/yr (~PLN 4,700)	8,760-hr module-level, solved pitch, hourly loss export	Installers and EPCs pricing against RCE
2	PVsyst	CHF 700/user/yr (~PLN 3,150)	Reference near-shading and horizon physics	Farm-scale and bank due diligence
3	PV*SOL premium	EUR 845/named user/yr + VAT (~PLN 3,300)	3D shading walkthrough plus load-profile self-consumption	Established Polish design offices
4	HelioScope	US$1,620/yr Basic, US$2,640 Pro (~PLN 5,830 to 9,500)	Module-level C&I simulation with clean loss tree	Commercial rooftop consultancies
5	PVcase	Not publicly listed, quote only	Terrain-aware inter-row spacing in CAD	Farm developers on sloped land
6	Aurora Solar	US$1,620/yr Basic, US$2,640 Premium (~PLN 5,830 to 9,500)	Irradiance mapping and shade-aware sales output	Residential volume sellers
7	Scanifly	Not publicly listed	Drone photogrammetry obstruction capture	Complex roofs and unmapped sites
8	Solmetric SunEye 210	US$2,195 base, North America (~PLN 7,900)	Measured horizon and sky-view fisheye	Verification and dispute resolution
9	Solar Pathfinder	~PLN 1,200 instrument	Optical horizon trace, no power needed	Rural and remote survey
10	Horizon-import workflows	Free (PVGIS feed)	Far-shading terrain horizon into any engine	Sudeten, Carpathian and valley sites

On price, SurgePV is the most expensive engine in that list rather than the cheapest. PVsyst at CHF 700 and PV*SOL premium at EUR 845 both undercut it per seat, and Aurora Basic and HelioScope Basic at US$1,620 a year both undercut a SurgePV Individual licence at US$1,899. Positions 1 to 6 are engines. Positions 7 to 9 are capture instruments that feed an engine rather than replacing one. Position 10 is a workflow, and it earns its place because a Podkarpackie valley site can lose its first and last winter hour to terrain no roof survey will ever detect.

1. SurgePV

What it does best for Polish shading. SurgePV solves inter-row pitch from the site latitude and a designer-set no-shade window rather than asking for a ground coverage ratio, which is what you want at 52 degrees north where the difference between a noon criterion and a 9-to-3 criterion is roughly double the pitch. It runs 8,760 hourly points at module level with bypass-diode physics, and the shading loss comes out as an hourly series rather than only a headline percentage, which is the output net-billing actually requires. That series can be joined to a load profile so shaded hours are valued at avoided retail tariff where the site would have self-consumed, and at market price where it would have exported. The annual heatmap exports into a Polish-language oferta in one click. The shadow analysis module is bundled on every paid plan.

Pricing. US$1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, about PLN 4,700, so US$6,495 or roughly PLN 23,500 for five seats. A single Individual seat is US$1,899, near PLN 6,800. Free trial, no credit card. It is worth stating that this is not the cheapest option in this ranking: PVsyst at CHF 700 and PV*SOL premium at EUR 845 are both cheaper per seat, and Aurora Basic at US$1,620 a year undercuts a SurgePV Individual licence.

Who it suits. Polish installation firms and EPC contractors shipping five or more designs a month, and any office that currently exports shading results into a spreadsheet to work out what net-billing does to them.

Honest limitations. Four concrete ones. Brand recognition in Poland is thin, since SurgePV launched in 2025 and a bank financing a 3 MW farma will still ask for PVsyst by name. It does not carry a live RCE price feed, so you supply the price series yourself or work from a stored historical year, which is a real gap given the whole argument on this page is about hourly prices. Single-axis tracker and backtracking modelling is less mature than PVsyst or PVcase, which matters on ground-mount. And it performs no drone or on-roof capture, so a tightly built Krakow courtyard or a treed rural site needs a survey step upstream.

Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real Polish flat roof rather than a showcase file.

2. PVsyst

What it does best. PVsyst remains the reference for near-shading and far-horizon physics, and its hourly output can be exported in full, which means a competent engineer can build the RCE valuation from it. On a Polish farma above 1 MW, the PVsyst loss diagram is the document the bank asks for by name.

Pricing. CHF 700 per user per year for a Professional licence, roughly PLN 3,150. It is an annual subscription rather than a perpetual purchase. Education is CHF 420, Training and Research CHF 560, PVsystCLI is CHF 3,000, and group discounts run 5 to 20 percent by quantity. Cheaper per seat than SurgePV, and the page should say so.

Who it suits. Farm-scale developers, independent engineers and technical due diligence teams.

Honest limitations. Desktop and Windows-first, a steep learning curve, no proposal output, no Polish-language customer deliverable and no net-billing settlement model of its own. Building the 3D near-shading scene by hand is slow enough that offices skip it on smaller jobs, which defeats the purpose. See our PVsyst alternative guide.

3. PV*SOL premium

What it does best. Two things that matter specifically in Poland. The 3D shading walkthrough animates the December shadow crossing the roof, which persuades a customer who does not believe your row spacing. And its load-profile and self-consumption modelling is genuinely strong, which is the second half of the net-billing argument. Its European component database covers Polish-market hardware well.

Pricing. EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, roughly PLN 3,300, 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 are no longer sold, and maintenance renewals ended on 1 October 2024. Cheaper per seat than SurgePV.

Who it suits. Established Polish design offices, especially those selling storage alongside PV.

Honest limitations. Desktop and single-machine licensed. Large commercial arrays slow the 3D scene noticeably. The settlement model needs manual configuration to reflect the current correction coefficient and prosumer deposit rules, and those have moved more than once since 2022.

4. HelioScope

What it does best. Module-level 8,760-hour simulation with a loss tree Polish independent engineers accept without argument. For a 500 kW hala roof outside Poznan it is a defensible engine, and the loss report reads cleanly.

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. That is roughly PLN 5,830 and PLN 9,500 a year.

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

Honest limitations. No Polish settlement modelling at all, no load profile join, no Polish-language output and weak proposal tooling that forces a second licence. Its shading output is strong, but converting it into net-billing money is entirely your problem. Our HelioScope alternative comparison covers the gap.

5. PVcase

What it does best. Terrain-aware row spacing inside AutoCAD. Polish farm sites are frequently on gentle slopes, and a 2 percent grade changes the required pitch row by row against a real surface rather than a flat plane. Tracker and backtracking handling is strong.

Pricing. PVcase does not publish pricing. It is quote only, and any per-seat figure circulating in software directories is an unverified third-party estimate rather than a vendor number. Budget for an AutoCAD licence on top, because PVcase requires it.

Who it suits. Developers building farms above roughly 5 MW.

Honest limitations. No rooftop or residential relevance, no proposal workflow, no settlement modelling, and it assumes an AutoCAD-competent operator. Wrong tool for the prosumer segment entirely.

6. Aurora Solar

What it does best. Irradiance mapping and shade-aware residential output with a mature template library, plus fast roof-plane detection on suburban housing.

Pricing. Basic US$135 per user per month billed annually or US$159 monthly, so US$1,620 a year, roughly PLN 5,830. Premium US$220 annually or US$259 monthly, so US$2,640 a year, roughly PLN 9,500. Enterprise custom. Both cover one user and 50 projects a month, plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, and site models start at US$9.99. Aurora Basic is cheaper than a SurgePV Individual seat.

Who it suits. Residential volume sellers who want a polished shade graphic in the customer conversation.

Honest limitations. LIDAR modelling, bankable shade reports and battery modelling are all gated to Premium, and plan sets are billed separately on top. There is no Polish regulatory layer, no net-billing settlement, no PN-HD drawing conventions and no Polish-language proposal, so its Polish user base stays small. Our Aurora Solar alternative writeup has the detail.

7. Scanifly

What it does best. Drone photogrammetry that produces an as-built 3D site model with measured obstruction heights, which removes the largest single error source in any shading run: a guessed tree or neighbouring-building height. On dense Polish urban infill that is worth real money.

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

Who it suits. Firms with an existing drone programme and complex site stock.

Honest limitations. It is a capture tool, not an engine. Polish airspace rules require an operator registration under the EU drone framework, and a survey flown in winter with bare deciduous canopy will understate summer shade unless you set canopy density manually. See our Scanifly alternative review.

8. Solmetric SunEye 210

What it does best. A measured fisheye sky-view from the roof plane, producing a real horizon and a monthly solar access percentage. When a customer disputes a shortfall, a dated pre-install reading settles the argument. In Poland its highest value is on urban sites where a neighbouring block is planned or under construction.

Pricing. US$2,195 base for North America, roughly PLN 7,900, one-time capital equipment including a lifetime PV Designer licence. The 210 is a current product, not 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.

Who it suits. Offices doing verification, expert opinion or high-value commercial work.

Honest limitations. One reading is one point on the roof, so a large array needs several. It records the horizon as it stands today, so it models neither tree growth nor a planned building. It produces no energy or złoty figure without an engine downstream.

9. Solar Pathfinder

What it does best. An optical dome that traces the horizon onto a sun-path chart with no batteries and nothing to fail in a Polish January. For a remote site with no power, that reliability is the point.

Pricing. Around PLN 1,200 for the instrument plus optional assistant software.

Who it suits. Rural and off-grid site surveys.

Honest limitations. Manual, slow and operator-dependent. It has no place in a bankable report on its own, and at 52 degrees north the winter sun sits close to the chart edge where reading error is worst, which is precisely the region you care about.

10. Horizon-Import Workflows

What it does best. Far shading from terrain is real in southern Poland and no roof survey catches it. Pulling a horizon profile from PVGIS, the European Commission’s own PV tool, and importing it into your simulation engine costs nothing and corrects the first and last hours of the winter day. Those are exactly the high-value RCE hours, so the correction is worth more in Poland than the energy percentage suggests.

Pricing. Free from PVGIS, or bundled with a commercial meteorological data subscription.

Who it suits. Anyone designing in the Sudetes, the Carpathian foothills or a steep river valley.

Honest limitations. A workflow, not a product, so nobody supports it. Horizon resolution is coarse relative to near objects and it is easy to double-count if your engine already loads terrain. It does nothing for the attyka and trees that cause most rooftop loss.

Mistakes Polish Designers Make on Shading Analysis

1. 1
   Reporting one annual shading percentage. Under net-billing that number cannot be converted into złoty without an assumption you have no basis for. Report the hourly series.
2. 2
   Inheriting a ground coverage ratio from a foreign template. A 0.6 GCR is fine at 33 degrees north and self-shades all winter in Warsaw. Solve the pitch from the 14 degree December elevation.
3. 3
   Checking solar noon only. The 9 am and 3 pm December positions are lower and well off south, and roughly double the effective perpendicular shadow multiple.
4. 4
   Valuing shaded energy at the retail tariff. Exported energy earns RCE, not the retail rate. Only the self-consumed portion is worth the full tariff including distribution charges.
5. 5
   Ignoring the attyka. A 1 m parapet on the south edge of a Warsaw roof sterilises 4 m of roof at winter noon. Tag it and set the first row back.
6. 6
   Using an isotropic sky model on a partly shaded roof. Poland's winter sky is heavily diffuse, and an isotropic assumption misprices a roof where part of the sky dome is blocked by a neighbouring building.

The wider pattern of workflow failures is covered in our writeup on common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar.

Is a Shading Study a Required Deliverable in Poland?

Not by regulation, and it is worth saying that plainly rather than inventing a requirement. Polish PV installations are designed and verified to the PN-HD 60364 series, with PN-EN 62446-1 covering commissioning documentation and the test report. Those are safety and commissioning documents. Neither asks for a shading study, and the zgłoszenie a micro-installation files with PGE, Tauron, Enea, Energa or Stoen does not include one either.

Three situations create a real obligation anyway:

1. Bank finance on farm-scale projects. Above roughly 1 MW, where most new Polish capacity now sits, lenders want P50, P75 and P90 yield with a documented loss tree. That is where PVsyst is named.
2. Production guarantees in a commercial umowa. If you promise annual kWh to an industrial customer, the shading model decides who pays when the number misses.
3. Customer disputes under net-billing. This is the growing one. A prosument reading an unfamiliar settlement will blame the installer for a shortfall that is really a price effect, and an hourly shading and yield record is how you show which it was.

How Heaven Green Energy and SurgePV Help Polish 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, written by people who had to defend a yield number to a customer holding a settlement statement they did not understand. For Polish teams the entry points are:

• Shadow analysis for 8,760-hour module-level shading with row pitch solved at your own latitude.
• Solar simulation software for P50, P75 and P90 yield with a documented loss tree for bank submissions.
• Heaven Designs PVsyst resource centre when the bank names the tool and you need the report produced properly.
• QBits Energy on inverter clipping, which interacts with shading decisions on the tight DC-to-AC ratios Polish net-billing now encourages.

If you design outside Poland too, our commercial solar and industrial solar pages set out how the same stack carries across markets, and European capacity context sits with the IEA and IRENA trackers.

Related Shading and Design Guides

• Solar Shading Analysis Software: The Global Guide
• Best Solar Design Software in Poland
• Best Solar Proposal Software in Poland
• The Full Solar Software Stack in Poland
• Best Solar Shading Analysis Software in Canada
• Solar Simulation Software Compared
• Shading Loss, defined

Shading Analysis in Nearby Markets

Poland has the lowest winter sun of the three markets below, but the ground-coverage arithmetic is the same problem in each.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the December sun elevation in Warsaw and what does it mean for row spacing?

Warsaw sits at 52.23 degrees north, so solar noon elevation on 21 December is about 14.3 degrees. That gives a shadow multiple near 4.0, meaning a 1 metre obstruction casts a 4 metre shadow at the best moment of the shortest day. On a 20 degree ballasted tilt frame with a 2.26 metre row slope length, the required pitch works out near 5.2 metres and achievable ground coverage ratio lands around 0.43, roughly a third below what the same layout achieves at Phoenix latitude.

Why does net-billing change which shading tool I should buy?

Because it changes what a shading loss is worth. Under the pre-2022 net metering rules every exported kilowatt-hour carried the same value, so one annual shading percentage multiplied by one tariff gave the right answer. Under net-billing exported energy is settled against the hourly RCE market price, so a loss at summer noon, when RCE often collapses toward zero, costs far less than the same loss in a March morning shoulder hour. You need shading loss as an hourly series, not a percentage.

Which hours does shading cost the most money in Poland?

The low-sun shoulder hours, roughly 08:00 to 10:00 and 15:00 to 17:00 in the spring and autumn months. Those hours combine two unhelpful facts: system-wide PV output is modest so RCE holds up, and the sun is low enough that neighbouring buildings and parapets are casting their longest shadows across your array. Summer midday shading, by contrast, removes energy that would often have been sold into a near-zero or negative price hour.

Is self-consumption worth more than export under Polish net-billing?

Yes, substantially. A self-consumed kilowatt-hour avoids the full retail tariff including the distribution and system charges, while an exported one earns only the bare market price. The gap is commonly a factor of two to three. That means a shading loss during a factory’s working hours costs several times more than the same loss at the weekend, and a shading tool that reports loss against generation with no load profile attached cannot see the difference.

Do Polish banks require a PVsyst shading report?

On farm-scale projects, frequently yes. Above roughly 1 MW, where most new Polish capacity now sits, lenders and their independent engineers commonly ask for P50, P75 and P90 yield from PVsyst by name, with a documented loss tree including near and far shading. Below that scale an 8,760-hour module-level simulation from any credible engine is generally accepted. If the term sheet names a tool, that overrides every technical argument you might make.

Is a shading analysis legally required for a Polish PV installation?

No. Design and verification follow the PN-HD 60364 series with PN-EN 62446-1 for commissioning documentation, and neither requires a shading study. The zgłoszenie filed with the distribution operator for a micro-installation up to 50 kW does not include one. The obligation is contractual instead, arising from production guarantees, bank due diligence and, increasingly, customer disputes about net-billing settlements.

How do I handle far shading from terrain in southern Poland?

Import a horizon profile. PVGIS, published by the European Commission Joint Research Centre, provides a terrain horizon for any coordinate free of charge, and most simulation engines accept a horizon file. In the Sudetes and Carpathian foothills this removes a real error at the start and end of the winter day. Because those are also the higher-value RCE hours, the correction matters more in złoty than the energy percentage suggests.

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

Two things. It carries no live RCE price feed, so you supply the price series or work from a stored historical year, which is a genuine gap on a page arguing that hourly prices are the point. And brand recognition is thin because it launched in 2025, so a bank financing a farm will still ask for PVsyst. Beyond that, tracker and backtracking modelling trails PVsyst and PVcase, and it performs no drone or on-roof capture for complex urban sites.