Solar Plant Digital Twin Demo — 5 MW PV Plant

What is in the demo?

• True-to-scale site: 10,400 PV modules, 200 tables, 20 string inverters, 2 transformer stations, a distribution centre, fence, gate, cameras and lighting, all at their real dimensions.
• Live data: 788 data tags (inverter DC/AC values, string currents, transformer temperatures, weather, security) updated continuously by the built-in simulation.
• Equipment panel: live values, active alarms, description, specifications and remote commands (reset, open/close gate, lighting, PTZ) for every piece of equipment you click.
• SCADA panel: live output, daily curve, inverter power, alarm management, camera list, lighting zones and security status on one screen.
• Camera wall: 12 security cameras, 1- to 24-up layouts, PTZ presets and connection status.
• Heat map and cable routes: modules coloured by string current or temperature; AC and MV underground routes shown with a single key.
• Day cycle and time: sun and moon position tied to real time, sunrise and sunset colours; a time slider and acceleration up to 1024×.
• Lighting and security: 5 lighting zones (automatic/manual) with 43 LED luminaires; vibration sensors on 4 fence zones, camera motion detection, gate open/close and a guard house.
• Notification centre: critical / high / warning / info levels; critical alarms stay on screen until acknowledged; event log, filters and go-to-equipment.

Weather and environment simulation

The site reproduces seven weather conditions: clear, partly cloudy, cloudy, rain, storm, fog and snow. The weather changes on its own with realistic transition probabilities, and any condition can be applied instantly from the Weather selector on the SCADA panel. Every condition has both a visual and an electrical effect:

• Clouds: a cloud layer drifting with the wind; as cover increases, GHI/POA irradiance and output fall, ambient temperature drops and humidity rises.
• Rain: wind-blown rain particles and wet, reflective surfaces; rain washes down the soiling loss on the modules, and precipitation is tracked in mm/h.
• Storm: 15–24 m/s wind, darkened sky and lightning flashes; a storm warning alarm is raised on site.
• Fog: visibility drops to 250 m, irradiance is halved and wind dies down; depth fog hides distances on site.
• Snow: snowfall accumulates in centimetres on modules and ground, cutting output by up to 95%; it melts once the temperature exceeds 1 °C.
• Wind: speed and direction read from the anemometer; it drives the clouds, the precipitation and module cooling.
• Module temperature: an NOCT-based model — heated by irradiance, cooled by wind; the temperature loss (Δ) is shown on the SCADA panel.

All of these quantities are exposed as live tags of the on-site weather station (GHI and POA pyranometers, anemometer, temperature-humidity sensor); performance ratio (PR), capacity factor, availability, soiling loss and daily CO₂ savings are calculated from them.

Controls

On desktop, walk with WASD, look with the mouse and click equipment to inspect it; F opens the action menu for the targeted equipment, Tab the SCADA panel, C the camera wall, N the notification centre, K the cable routes, H the heat map; 1–4 jump to the distribution centre, transformer stations and gate, F1–F4 switch between third person, first person, free camera and VR, F8 settings, F10 help, F11 quality. On touch devices, move with the virtual joystick in the lower left, drag on empty space to look around and pinch to zoom; SCADA, notifications and settings sit on the buttons in the lower right.

Technology

The application runs in the browser on WebGL 2 and WebAssembly, and natively on desktop (Vulkan, with optional VR through OpenXR). Thousands of pieces of equipment are drawn through chunked multi-mesh batches with distance-based levels of detail; four quality presets are available (Ultra: full detail across the site, 700 m shadows, shadow-casting luminaires) and the web version steps down automatically when the frame rate drops, with a performance overlay showing FPS, frame time and draw calls. The settings panel keeps language, 3D labels, notification level, touch controls and mouse sensitivity. On a real plant, data is collected from SCADA/PLC systems (Modbus, IEC 60870-5-104, OPC UA) and streamed to the same interface over WebSocket; the data schema and a test server are delivered with the project, and if the connection drops the interface falls back to the built-in simulation and says so on the panel.

This application is a demonstration: the site is a sample and the data is simulated. We build one-to-one digital twins for real plants.