ORBIT

Offshore Renewables Balance of system and Installation Tool

Authors

• Jake Nunemaker
• Matt Shields
• Rob Hammond
• Nick Riccobono

Current Maintainers

• Rob Hammond

Documentation

Please visit the documentation site at https://nlrwindsystems.github.io/ORBIT/

Citing ORBIT

Please cite this repository using the following citation, or with proceeding Bibtex.

Nunemaker, Jacob, Shields, Matthew, Hammond, Robert, et al., "ORBIT: Offshore Renewables Balance-of-System and Installation Tool," (2020), https://doi.org/10.2172/1660132

@techreport{orbit_tech_report,
  author={Nunemaker, Jacob and Shields, Matthew and Hammond, Robert and Duffy, Patrick},
  title={ORBIT: Offshore Renewables Balance-of-System and Installation Tool},
  institution={National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)},
  doi={10.2172/1660132},
  url={https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1660132},
  place={United States},
  year={2020},
  month={08}
}

Installation

pip install orbit-nrel

Environment Setup

It is highly recommended to use separate Python environments for all projects, as such we recommend using Anaconda or Miniconda for a lightweight version of Anaconda. Please visit their documentation for installation details. This guide will assume the use of Miniconda throughout.

1. Download the latest version of Miniconda.

2. Create a new environment. Below, we're using the name orbit for the environment, but any name is allowed, just replace "orbit" with whichever name was used throughout the installation instructions. Similarly, any compatible Python version is allowed even though we specify 3.13 below.

   conda create -n orbit python=3.13
   

3. Activate the environment.

   conda activate orbit
   

   To deactivate an environment, simply use conda deactivate.

4. Install ORBIT. See the pip installation directions above, or either of the source or development sections below for further details.

Running Examples

For users wishing to run the examples provided as Jupyter Notebooks, please either install the Jupyter Lab (preferred) or Jupyter Notebook library.

pip install jupyterlab

Source Installation

For users looking to modify ORBIT or build their own models to incorporate, installing from the source code is required.

1. Open a terminal/Anaconda Prompt session and navigate to your desired folder location

   cd /path/to/desired/folder
   

2. Clone the repository (or your fork). If cloning your own fork, replace "NLRWindSystems" with your GitHub username.

   git clone https://github.com/NLRWindSystems/ORBIT.git
   

3. Enter the repository.

   cd ORBIT
   

4. Install ORBIT.

   pip install .
   

   For an editable installation that updates the installed version of ORBIT with any local changes, use the -e flag.

   pip install -e .
   

Development Setup

For more advanced users, such as those interested in building the documentation locally, running tests, or even contributing code back to the library, please use the following instructions.

1. Open a terminal/Anaconda Prompt session and navigate to your desired folder location

   cd /path/to/desired/folder
   

2. If you are going to contribute code back to the library, fork the repository as you will not be able to push your code changes to the library otherwise.

3. Clone the repository (or your fork). If cloning your own fork, replace "NLRWindSystems" with your GitHub username.

   git clone https://github.com/NLRWindSystems/ORBIT.git
   

4. Enter the repository.

   cd ORBIT
   

5. Install an editable version of ORBIT.

   pip install -3 .
   

   For developers install the developer dependencies in addition:

   pip install -e .[dev,docs]
   

   • dev: automated code linting and formatting tools, plus the testing suite.
   • docs: documentation building tools

6. If contributing code back to the library, install the pre-commit hook to enable automated formatting and linting. If this step is skipped, your PR will fail in the CI pipeline, and code will not be reviewed until at least this step passes.

   pre-commit install