pyNSRDB 0.1.1

Python frontend to NREL NSRDB API.

pyNRSDB

Community-created functional Python interface for the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) API from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Simplifies requests to API and automates processing of response data in CSV and Zip file formats.

Getting Started

pyNSRDB can be installed from PyPI for general use.

pip install pyNSRDB

For requests to the NSRDB, you must obtain a personal API key from https://developer.nrel.gov/signup/ before use. The API key must be included with each request submitted through pyNSRDB. You can supply the API key and email with each pyNSRDB request function or set-up an .pyNSRDB credential file that is automatically included with requests.

The credential file should be placed in the user's home directory (e.g. C:\Users\%USERNAME%\\.pyNRSDB for Windows and \home\%USERNAME%\\.pyNSRDB for Linux, Mac) Entries for API_KEY and EMAIL are required, but all entires are encouraged

API_KEY=%YOURAPIKEY%
FULL_NAME=%YOURNAME%
EMAIL=%YOUREMAIL%
AFFILIATION=%AFFILIATION%
REASON=%REASONFORUSE%
MAILING_LIST=true

Examples

The simplest requests can be made for single longitude, latitude points.

>>> from pyNSRDB.requests import PSM_TMY_request
>>> location = (-93.1567288182409, 45.15793882400205)
>>> data = PSM_TMY_request(location)
>>> data.head()
   Year  Month  Day  Hour  Minute  Dew Point  DHI  DNI  GHI  Surface Albedo  Pressure  Temperature  Wind Direction  Wind Speed
0  2004      1    1     0      30      -14.0    0    0    0            0.87       980         -9.0             141         2.5
1  2004      1    1     1      30      -13.0    0    0    0            0.87       980         -9.0             140         2.9
2  2004      1    1     2      30      -13.0    0    0    0            0.87       980         -9.0             135         3.3
3  2004      1    1     3      30      -13.0    0    0    0            0.87       980         -9.0             130         3.7
4  2004      1    1     4      30      -12.0    0    0    0            0.87       980         -8.0             120         4.0

More complicated geographical locations can be constructed using the shapely library to define WKT-compatible geometric shapes.

>>> from shapely.geometry import MultiPoint
>>> location = MultiPoint(((-90, 45), (-88, 43)))
>>> data = PSM_TMY_request(location)
>>> data.head()
   Year  Month  Day  Hour  Minute  Dew Point  DHI  DNI  GHI  Surface Albedo  Pressure  Temperature  Wind Direction  Wind Speed
0  2008      1    1     0      30      -14.0    0    0    0            0.87       960        -13.0             316         4.1
1  2008      1    1     1      30      -16.0    0    0    0            0.87       960        -14.0             316         4.2
2  2008      1    1     2      30      -17.0    0    0    0            0.87       960        -15.0             316         4.3
3  2008      1    1     3      30      -18.0    0    0    0            0.87       960        -16.0             316         4.4
4  2008      1    1     4      30      -19.0    0    0    0            0.87       960        -17.0             316         4.5

Additional information on NSRDB

NSRDB Site: https://nsrdb.nrel.gov/

NSRDB API Documentation: https://nsrdb.nrel.gov/data-sets/api-instructions.html

References:

[1] M. Sengupta, Y. Xie, A. Lopez, A. Habte, G. Maclaurin, and J. Shelby, “The National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB),” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 89, pp. 51–60, Jun. 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2018.03.003.