Working with EPCs — End-to-End Renewable Energy Engineering Learn More
Custom automation software ensures speed and accuracy for Blymyer projects

Proprietary automation software, customized by Blymyer and working in conjunction with auto-CAD, helps to streamline various job functions and calculations for our engineers, designers and drafters. Handling the massive volume of data our firm needs to process—to monitor equipment, track and manage costs, make design adjustments, develop schedules, etc.—is time-consuming and labor-intensive. The use of automation technology helps to reduce time-consuming manual processes and errors.
One area where this is particularly beneficial is in optimizing equipment selection to meet project requirements. Many projects’ specifications have limits on criteria that affect energy losses, such as mismatch losses and ohmic losses in the wiring. For example, it is not uncommon for utility scale PV facilities to have thousands of feeders, and the ability to quickly adjust sizes for the automation software allows selection of the smallest conductor size that still meets the requirements of the project. Code requirements are also taken into consideration to ensure the conductor sizes are not undersized. The automation software is also extremely helpful for our clients’ estimating and procurement teams, so they can provide an itemized bill of material with quantities of all required major equipment.
Customized, commercially available software tools add new functionality
Blymyer has experimented with many commercially available solar design tools that are an excellent resource for developers and owners in the preliminary stages of the project to see how they can be used in the engineering stage. Some of our PV designers have been utilizing such software to rapidly create large layouts over sites with difficult terrain or heavily broken-up project boundaries.
“PVCAD Mega by pvcomplete.com has an Autocad plugin that allows our PV designers to create layouts significantly faster than using Autocad’s native tools. Since it is within the Autocad environment our software can build on its capabilities,” explains Jak Kuehn, Blymyer Senior Electrical Engineer, who developed the Blymyer automation software. “The geographic constraints of the land where the photovoltaic installations are to be constructed may require different GCRs (ground cover ratios) to optimize the equipment loading. We can draw the geographic boundaries of the sites we’re designing for, and the software can help us quickly determine the GCR that would allow the required number of panels. Data from PV-CAD is fed into auto-CAD, which enables our designers to develop preliminary layouts faster. We have the plan drawing, electrical schematic, and count calculator functions all linked together to streamline the process,” he adds.
Staying on the leading edge
Blymyer makes it a point to use the latest technology if we believe it will improve processes and efficiencies. With our firm managing so many projects at once and so many variables to consider, digital tools like those cited above ensure quality control and allow us to stay on top of any issues that may arise throughout a project lifecycle. The EPCs we partner with depend on our accuracy and attention to detail. These are attributes we take seriously.