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I have seen how easy pvlib-python can obtain weather forecasts, as it is presented in this link: https://pvlib-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/forecasts.html In this link, the example is just for illustration, the retrieved weather data seem to be limited in length (not more than a month from the past). So, I wonder whether the archived weather forecasts retrieved by pvlib for a practical implementation can be longer.

Can pvlib-python retrieve archived GFS weather forecasts for a year? For example, I am looking for the temperature and solar irradiance (GHI) for the entire 2018. Can pvlib-python do that, and if so how?

mhdella
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2 Answers2

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I wrote a small client for the CAMS radiation service: https://github.com/GiorgioBalestrieri/cams_radiation_python.

It contains a notebook showing how to combine this with pvlib.

From the website:

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) radiation service provides time series of Global, Direct, and Diffuse Irradiations on horizontal surface, and Direct Irradiation on normal plane (DNI) for the actual weather conditions as well as for clear-sky conditions. The geographical coverage is the field-of-view of the Meteosat satellite, roughly speaking Europe, Africa, Atlantic Ocean, Middle East (-66° to 66° in both latitudes and longitudes). Time coverage is 2004-02-01 up to 2 days ago. Data are available with a time step ranging from 1 min to 1 month. The number of automatic or manual requests is limited to 40 per day.

See the repo readme file for more information.

Giorgio Balestrieri
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This is not possible with pvlib-python. I think it's out-of-scope and I don't anticipate adding this feature in the future.

However, I wrote a python script to download some archived point forecast data from the NOAA NOMADS server: https://github.com/wholmgren/get_nomads/ It's efficient in that in only downloads the data that you need, but it's still fairly slow and error prone.

Will Holmgren
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  • Thanks Will Holmgren for you response and suggestion – mhdella Feb 25 '19 at 23:53
  • I've tried get_normads.py written by you @Will Holmgren, but due to the lack of any templates, I had some difficulty to figure out how to use its input arguments properly! Let’s say that I’d like to download the related point forecasts over a month from the archived data of GFS with initialization time at 18:00UTC for Tucson, AZ. Could you please provide a small script uses get_nomads.py with its input args to retrieve the archived forecasts? – mhdella Feb 27 '19 at 10:04
  • Sorry, I don't provide support for this. Good luck! – Will Holmgren Feb 27 '19 at 15:06
  • Yeah @Will Holmgren, I got luck! and figured out that get-nomads.py works with pydap 3.2.1 instead of the upgraded version, pydap 3.2.2. So, Its not an issue of input arguments "as I was thinking" – mhdella Feb 28 '19 at 15:10
  • unfortunately there has not been a new pydap release since this issue was fixed https://github.com/pydap/pydap/issues/121 – Will Holmgren Feb 28 '19 at 16:49
  • Thanks @Will Holmgren for sharing this package. – mhdella Mar 01 '19 at 04:09