Introduction
Tensor Cloud was built to speed up investment in renewable energy. Lenders and equity investors commit capital when they trust the numbers, so they need simulations that are accurate, easy to follow, and standardized. On Tensor Cloud you create a simulation in a few clicks, and the calculation usually finishes within a few minutes, even for hundreds of assets.
You can use simulations internally to understand how a portfolio performs, or share them with external stakeholders when you look for investment in one or more assets.
What are simulations?
A simulation on Tensor Cloud projects the long-term financial and technical performance of one or more assets. The simulation engine combines everything you have entered about the assets, their PPAs, and their scenarios, and calculates asset performance at 30-minute resolution over up to 40 years.
Simulation types
Tensor Cloud has two types of simulations: asset simulations and custom simulations.
Asset simulations cover a single asset and run automatically. Whenever you change the asset, its PPA, or its scenario, Tensor Cloud starts a new simulation run in the background. Each run is stored as a version, a frozen snapshot of that run's inputs and results. On the Simulation tab of the asset view, you can switch between versions, name them, and compare their configuration with the current state of the asset. See asset simulations for details.
You create custom simulations yourself, and they can include multiple assets and scenarios. Create them on the Simulations page under Tasks in the main side navigation. A custom simulation does not change when you later edit the assets, PPAs, or scenarios it is based on: it is a snapshot of their performance at the time you created it. You cannot update a custom simulation, but you can create a new one with the same assets and scenarios at any time.
Relationship with other building blocks
As the chart below shows, a custom simulation can contain any number of assets, and each asset is associated with one scenario and one PPA. Simulations are also the only building block you can share with external stakeholders without them creating a Tensor Cloud user account. This lets you share results even with organizations that do not allow their staff to create accounts on external platforms.