## 4 Classification and Features of Smartphone Apps for Solar PV Energy
### Monitoring and Control of PV Systems
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Name of App**} & **Developer/Company** & **Platform** & **Price \({}^{*}\)** & \multirow{2}{*}{**Function**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Assessment**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**For**} \\ \cline{5-10}  & & & & & **Power** & **Environment** & **Economy** & **Root/Root/Rootop** & **Reference** \\ \hline PV Optimizer \& Solar Compass & [PERSON] & iOS & Free & Measurement & \(\bullet\) & & \(\bullet\) & & [74] \\ Solar Kuznara & Solar Kumbara & Both & Free & + & \(\bullet\) & & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & [75] \\ My Solar Panel & NSR Labs & Android & 56.68 & Analysis \& & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & & [76] \\ SolarCalc Proß–Solar PV \& Electrical Calc & SolarElectroCalc & Android & S11.00 & Simulation & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & [77] \\ Electrical Calculator & & & & & & & & & [78] \\ \hline Payback Solar & WEG & Both & Free & & & & & & [79] \\ Sunny Solar Panel Calculator & Mample & Android & Free & & & & \(\bullet\) & & [79] \\ PV Profit Calculator & Mal-eum & Android & 53.00 & & & & \(\bullet\) & & [80] \\  & Proviol & & & & & & & & [81] \\ PEA Solar Hero & Electricity & Both & Free & & & & & & [81] \\  & Authority & & & & Analysis \& & & & & \\  & ELECTRON & & & & & & & & [82] \\  & & GRAPHICS SML & Android & Free & & & & \(\bullet\) & & [83] \\ Solar Power Evaluator & Evaluate Solar LLC & iOS & Free & & & \(\bullet\) & & [83] \\  & AHAI Röoftop & Android & Free & & & & \(\bullet\) & & [84] \\  & Solar Helper & & & & & & & [84] \\ Photovoltaic Estimation \& IR & Energy S.L. & Android & Free & & & \(\bullet\) & & [85] \\ Solar Application & Juan Arias & iOS & Free & & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & & [86] \\ My Solar Panel Line & NRG Labs & Android & Free & & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & [87] \\  & Morphological Solar & Myorborbell LLC & Both & 54.99 & & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & [88] \\ PV Forecast: Solar Power & NRG Labs & Android & Free & & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & & [89] \\ Generation Forecasts & & Changzhou Tina & & & & & & [99] \\  & & & & & & & & \\ SolarCalculator & Solar Energy Co., Ltd. & iOS & Free & & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & \(\bullet\) & [90] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* * Prior in USD  
\end{table} 
Table 7: Summary of smartphone applications for environmental and economic assessments of PV systems. Many apps can compare the electricity generated and consumed (load) through monitoring and logging of PV system components, such as modules, inverters, and batteries [103; 104; 105; 106; 107; 108; 109; 110]. Although some design functions, such as layout and configuration of PV arrays are also included, this study determined that monitoring and logging are the main functions of those apps. Most of them summarize hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly power generation and consumption over the years for the entire system or each module, and provide visualization of an intuitive dashboard including comparison table, graphs, diagrams, or charts (Figure 6a). Several apps also provide an energy flow diagram including the PV system, battery, grid, and home [105; 106; 107; 108; 110]. The intuitive energy flow of the PV system allows users to further understand potential savings, battery storage, and electricity import and export in a micro-grid system (Figure 6b). Users can remotely monitor all the energy flows and the performance of their own solar plants, with and without an energy storage installed. From these results, the user is able to control the components connected with the PV system while away from the PV sites. There was only one paid app that allows users to check the current status and history of PV inverters [111]. Figure 6: Representative smartphone applications for monitoring and control of PV systems: (**a**) PV system monitoring and logging (SolarEdge Monitoring app), and (**b**) energy flow (Solar-Log WEB Enerest(tm) app).