Installation guide

www.weidmueller.com
1. Introduction
1.1 General description
The key to efficient energy production and consequently maximised return (and minimum payback time on
plant investment) is effective monitoring of plant production and the quick diagnosis of underperforming pan-
els. A single panel in a string can reduce the output of the entire string and any strings connected in parallel
with that string. Softclinic PV plant provides constant monitoring of string performance and other critical plant
variables and provides instant notification to maintenance staff via email or SMS.
Weidmuller has developed Softclinic PV Plant specifically for monitoring photovoltaic plants. Softclinic PV
Plant is a professional and complete software package that complements the product range Transclinic XI
and Solar Clinics. The software manages the information generated by Weidmuller PV string monitoring
products but it has also been designed to interface directly with existing products from other manufacturers,
so it offers a global and unique solution for PV plant monitoring.
Softclinic PV Plant is divided into three programs with individual security settings for access to each program
and individual group and user security settings within each program:
• PV-Clinic editor allows you to configure the monitoring system at installation time and to update the
information for changes to the system design. It lets you enter all the equipment to monitor (string
boxes, invertors, meters, weather stations, digital surge protection devices, actuators, etc.) so that
you can setup alarms and determine which groups of users will receive emails or SMSs instantly
when required. It also allows you to select which users will be able to monitor and analyse the data
that is collected as the plant operates.
• PV-Clinic runtime runs on the control room computer. It collects all the data throughout the plant
according to the configuration; operates alarms and notifies users according to the setup require-
ments; and stores the information collected (in the popular MySQL database format) for later analy-
sis.
• PV-Clinic monitor allows secure access via the internet to information at one or more PV plants and
provides easy-to-use graphical analysis of current and historical data; clearing of incidents by service
technicians once inefficiencies have been investigated; and export of the data (in .xls format) and
graphs (in .pdf format for easy emailing).
Besides these powerful management features, the software has been designed with the user in mind which
is why Softclinic PV Plant is extremely intuitive and easy to use.