I can’t help you with Honeybee.
I am sure Anton will also give you quite good answer on Honeybee generation components.
As for Ladybug Photovoltaics components:
They are based on PVWatts model, where “annual shading” accounts for direct irradiance only. Here is result example from “Sunpath shading” component which calculates it. It basically tries to replicate the annual shading calculation of measurement tools as SunEye.
“_albedo” input affects the ground reflected irradiance.
It represent an average hourly albedo (fraction of reflected irradiance in comparison to received one) that your “_PVsurface” can ‘see’ around itself. For example if there is some water area behind the “_PVsurface”, it will not be ‘seen’ - not receive the reflected irradiance from it.
Most photovoltaics softwares just set the albedo value to same average annual value, as 0.2, as this is somewhat an average annual albedo of the materials in urban conditions (grass 0.25, concrete 0.4, asphalt 0.05…). As reflected irradiance affects the final AC power output quite ‘weakly’, this assumption is justifiable.
However, in higher latitude areas (where optimal tilt angles are larger) plus/or higher altitude areas (where there is presence of snow on the ground during the year), the impact of albedo can be ‘stronger’.
If you do not add anything to the “_albedo” input, it will generate an hourly values corrected for the presence of snow.
If you can generate albedo of the surfaces that surround your _PVsurface input through Honeybee, you can add them into the same “_albedo” input, to account for some other affects (water body, or metal roof…).
Sorry if this was not the reply that you have been asking for.