wrolpi/scripts/build_solar_climatology.py
lrnselfreliance cc8afa5370
Add a Solar calculator (#778)
* Add a Solar calculator with offline NASA POWER data

Estimates a solar array's typical-year production from a location and the
panels; everything else has defaults under an optional "Fine-tune" section.

The model works from 12 monthly averages: Klein's average day per month, the
Erbs monthly diffuse fraction, Collares-Pereira & Rabl / Liu & Jordan hourly
split, HDKR transposition for fixed, single-axis and dual-axis arrays, then
PVWatts' ASHRAE incidence loss, SAPM cell temperature, DC power, system
losses and optional inverter.  "Best for the year" and "Best for winter" sweep
the tilt.

Sunlight, diffuse, albedo and temperature come from NASA POWER's 2001-2020
climatology on a 1 degree grid, packed into app/public/data (3.1 MB, ~1 MB
gzipped) by scripts/build_solar_climatology.py and fetched only when the
calculator opens.  Users can replace it with their own monthly values.

Every setting lives in the URL, with defaults left out, so the Share button
shares the whole configuration.

Against PVWatts v8 for a 1 kW fixed array: Phoenix +0.6%, Seattle +8.8%,
Anchorage +8.0% annually; these are recorded as tests.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Open the Solar calculator from the map, pins and current location

The map's right-click (or long-press) menu gains "Calculate Solar
Performance", and each saved pin a sun button; both open the calculator at
that location.  A button beside Latitude fills in the browser's current
location.  Locations are rounded to 4 decimals, and longitudes from a map
panned around the world are wrapped back to -180..180.

The map removed lat/lon/z from the URL when it closed, even after navigating
to another page, which stripped the calculator's location from its URL (and
from links shared with the Share button).  It now only cleans up while the
URL is still a map page.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Add off-grid sizing to the Solar calculator

A new "Off-grid sizing" tab sizes a battery system for the darkest month
from a list of devices (watts x hours per day):

- Battery bank for a number of days without sun, for LiFePO4 or lead-acid,
  at 12, 24 or 48 V.  Outdoor lead-acid is enlarged for the cold; outdoor
  lithium warns against charging below 0 C.
- Panels needed, from the worst month's DC production per kW at the chosen
  angle, with a button to apply the count.  A PWM controller's loss (battery
  voltage over the panel's Vmp) raises the count.
- Charge controller current, and the string voltage on the coldest morning
  against the controller's limit, since cold panels exceed their rated Voc.
  The coldest morning defaults to 25 C below the coldest monthly average.

All inputs live in the URL like the rest of the calculator.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Bump wrolpi-help for the Solar calculator help page

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Credit NASA POWER as it asks, and say how the data was changed

- The calculator gains a "Data attribution" link under the location with
  NASA POWER's requested acknowledgment, the data reference (Climatology API
  v2.10.0, downloaded 2026/10/04), the CC BY 4.0 license, and how WROLPi
  modified the data (rounded to one byte per value, temperature averaged
  into 1 degree cells, interpolated between cells), which CC BY 4.0 requires.
- The build script writes the same text to solar-climatology.LICENSE.txt
  beside the data, with the API version taken from NASA's responses and the
  date the tiles were downloaded.  A test keeps the page and file in step.
- Bumps wrolpi-help for the updated attribution in the help page.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Solar: fix PWM sizing, Voc sign, unit switching and loading on review

- PWM usable power now uses the string's voltage (Vmp x panels in series),
  delivers nothing when the charging voltage is at or above the string's Voc,
  and falls off between Vmp and Voc.  The "too little voltage" warning covers
  PWM as well as MPPT.  Previously two panels in series counted double, and a
  panel that could not charge a 48 V bank counted as fully usable.
- A Voc temperature coefficient entered without its minus sign is treated as
  negative, in the math, the URL and the input, so the cold-morning check
  cannot be made too generous.
- Switching Fahrenheit on or off converts the entered temperatures instead
  of reinterpreting them.
- While the sunlight data downloads, the off-grid tab shows a loader rather
  than asking for a location, and holds the cold-morning verdict until the
  site's temperatures are known or one has been entered.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Solar: move the data attribution to the bottom of the page

The full NASA POWER acknowledgment, license and changes now sit in a small
"Data attribution" section at the end of the calculator, always visible,
instead of behind a link under the location.  The source line under the
location points to it.  Bumps wrolpi-help to match.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Solar: drop the data source line under the location

The attribution at the bottom of the page is enough.  The line under the
location now only appears to report the data's state: loading, failed to
load, or replaced by the user's own values.  Bumps wrolpi-help for the
refreshed screenshot.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-04 18:36:45 -06:00

216 lines
9.5 KiB
Python

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Build the offline solar climatology used by the Solar calculator.
Downloads NASA POWER's 2001-2020 monthly climatology for the whole globe and packs it into
app/public/data/solar-climatology.bin, which the React app fetches when the Solar calculator opens.
This needs the Internet and is run by a developer; WROLPi never runs it. The output only changes
when NASA publishes a new climatology period, so regenerating it should be rare.
python3 scripts/build_solar_climatology.py
Downloaded tiles are cached (see --cache), so an interrupted run resumes where it stopped.
NASA POWER data is licensed CC BY 4.0. The build also writes solar-climatology.LICENSE.txt beside the
data, crediting NASA as it asks (https://power.larc.nasa.gov/docs/referencing/), with the API version,
the date the data was downloaded, and how WROLPi changed it.
File format (all integers little-endian), decoded by app/src/components/calculators/solarData.js:
bytes 0-3 b"WSOL"
byte 4 format version (1)
byte 5 number of parameters (4)
bytes 6-7 reserved (0)
then uint8 values, [parameter][month][row][column]
Rows are 1° latitude bands centered on -89.5 ... 89.5 (south to north), columns are 1° longitude
bands centered on -179.5 ... 179.5 (west to east). 255 means no data. Each parameter is stored as
round((value + offset) / step); see PARAMETERS.
"""
import argparse
import datetime
import json
import math
import pathlib
import struct
import sys
import time
import urllib.error
import urllib.parse
import urllib.request
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed
REPO = pathlib.Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent
DEFAULT_OUTPUT = REPO / 'app/public/data/solar-climatology.bin'
DEFAULT_CACHE = REPO / 'scripts/.solar_climatology_cache'
API = 'https://power.larc.nasa.gov/api/temporal/climatology/regional'
# The regional endpoint accepts at most a 10° x 10° box and one parameter per request.
TILE = 10
MONTHS = ['JAN', 'FEB', 'MAR', 'APR', 'MAY', 'JUN', 'JUL', 'AUG', 'SEP', 'OCT', 'NOV', 'DEC']
ROWS, COLUMNS = 180, 360
MISSING = 255
VERSION = 1
# NASA's requested acknowledgment. Must match CLIMATOLOGY_ACKNOWLEDGMENT in solarData.js.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT = ('The data was obtained from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley '
'Research Center\'s Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project funded through the '
'NASA Earth Science Division.')
LICENSE = 'Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/'
# CC BY 4.0 requires saying what was changed. Must match CLIMATOLOGY_CHANGES in solarData.js.
CHANGES = ('WROLPi modified the data: values are rounded to fit one byte each (0.04 kWh/m²/day for irradiance, '
'0.004 for albedo, 0.5 °C for temperature), temperatures are averaged from NASA\'s 0.5° x 0.625° grid '
'into 1° cells, and the calculator interpolates between cells.')
# (NASA parameter, offset, step). Must match PARAMETERS in solarData.js, in the same order.
PARAMETERS = [
('ALLSKY_SFC_SW_DWN', 0, 0.04), # global horizontal, kWh/m²/day, 0-10.16
('ALLSKY_SFC_SW_DIFF', 0, 0.04), # diffuse horizontal, kWh/m²/day
('ALLSKY_SRF_ALB', 0, 0.004), # surface albedo, 0-1.016
('T2M', 70, 0.5), # air temperature at 2 m, °C, -70 to +57
]
def tile_url(parameter, lat_min, lon_min):
query = urllib.parse.urlencode({
'parameters': parameter,
'community': 'RE',
'latitude-min': lat_min,
'latitude-max': lat_min + TILE,
'longitude-min': lon_min,
'longitude-max': lon_min + TILE,
'format': 'JSON',
})
return f'{API}?{query}'
def tile_path(cache, parameter, lat_min, lon_min):
return cache / f'{parameter}_{lat_min}_{lon_min}.json'
def fetch_tile(parameter, lat_min, lon_min, cache, pause, retries=8):
"""Return the tile's GeoJSON, from the cache when possible.
NASA rate limits the API (HTTP 429); back off for up to 10 minutes rather than give up, since a
full build is about 2,600 requests.
"""
path = tile_path(cache, parameter, lat_min, lon_min)
if path.is_file():
return json.loads(path.read_text())
delay = 30
for attempt in range(retries):
try:
time.sleep(pause)
with urllib.request.urlopen(tile_url(parameter, lat_min, lon_min), timeout=180) as response:
data = json.loads(response.read())
if 'features' not in data:
raise ValueError(f'No features: {data.get("messages")}')
path.write_text(json.dumps(data))
return data
except (urllib.error.URLError, TimeoutError, ValueError) as e:
if attempt == retries - 1:
raise
print(f' retrying {parameter} {lat_min},{lon_min} in {delay}s: {e}', file=sys.stderr, flush=True)
time.sleep(delay)
delay = min(delay * 2, 600)
def bin_points(points):
"""Average points into 1° cells. `points` maps (lon, lat) to 12 monthly values.
Solar parameters are already on the 1° grid (one point per cell). Temperature comes on a finer
0.5° x 0.625° grid, so several points average into each cell.
"""
sums = {}
for (lon, lat), values in points.items():
row = min(ROWS - 1, max(0, math.floor(lat + 90)))
column = math.floor(lon + 180) % COLUMNS
cell = sums.setdefault((row, column), [[0.0, 0] for _ in MONTHS])
for month, value in enumerate(values):
if value is not None:
cell[month][0] += value
cell[month][1] += 1
return {cell: [s / n if n else None for s, n in months] for cell, months in sums.items()}
def notice(api, accessed):
"""The attribution written beside the data. `api` is like "POWER Climatology API v2.10.0"."""
parameters = ', '.join(p for p, _, _ in PARAMETERS)
return (
'Solar climatology for the WROLPi Solar calculator\n'
'\n'
'Source: NASA POWER, https://power.larc.nasa.gov/\n'
f'Data: 2001-2020 monthly climatology of {parameters}, on a 1° grid.\n'
f'The data was obtained from the POWER Project\'s {api} version on {accessed:%Y/%m/%d}.\n'
'\n'
f'{ACKNOWLEDGMENT}\n'
'\n'
f'License: {LICENSE}\n'
'\n'
f'Changes: {CHANGES}\n'
)
def quantize(value, offset, step):
if value is None:
return MISSING
return max(0, min(MISSING - 1, round((value + offset) / step)))
def main():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__, formatter_class=argparse.RawDescriptionHelpFormatter)
parser.add_argument('--output', type=pathlib.Path, default=DEFAULT_OUTPUT)
parser.add_argument('--cache', type=pathlib.Path, default=DEFAULT_CACHE)
parser.add_argument('--workers', type=int, default=1, help='Concurrent requests; NASA rate limits the API.')
parser.add_argument('--pause', type=float, default=1.0, help='Seconds to wait before each request.')
args = parser.parse_args()
args.cache.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
tiles = [(lat, lon) for lat in range(-90, 90, TILE) for lon in range(-180, 180, TILE)]
out = bytearray(b'WSOL' + struct.pack('<BBH', VERSION, len(PARAMETERS), 0))
apis = set()
for parameter, offset, step in PARAMETERS:
print(f'{parameter}: {len(tiles)} tiles', flush=True)
points = {}
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=args.workers) as pool:
futures = [pool.submit(fetch_tile, parameter, lat, lon, args.cache, args.pause) for lat, lon in tiles]
for done, future in enumerate(as_completed(futures), 1):
data = future.result()
header = data.get('header')
fill = header.get('fill_value', -999) if isinstance(header, dict) else -999
if isinstance(header, dict) and 'api' in header:
apis.add(f'{header["api"]["name"]} {header["api"]["version"]}')
for feature in data['features']:
lon, lat = feature['geometry']['coordinates'][:2]
monthly = feature['properties']['parameter'][parameter]
# Tiles share edges; a point on an edge arrives twice with the same value.
points[(lon, lat)] = [None if monthly[m] == fill else monthly[m] for m in MONTHS]
if done % 50 == 0:
print(f' {done}/{len(tiles)}', flush=True)
cells = bin_points(points)
grid = bytearray([MISSING]) * (12 * ROWS * COLUMNS)
for (row, column), months in cells.items():
for month, value in enumerate(months):
grid[(month * ROWS + row) * COLUMNS + column] = quantize(value, offset, step)
missing = grid.count(MISSING)
print(f' {len(points)} points into {len(cells)} cells; {missing} missing values')
out += grid
args.output.parent.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
args.output.write_bytes(out)
print(f'Wrote {args.output} ({len(out):,} bytes)')
# The access date is when the newest tile was downloaded, which a resumed build keeps honest.
newest = max(tile_path(args.cache, p, lat, lon).stat().st_mtime
for p, _, _ in PARAMETERS for lat, lon in tiles)
accessed = datetime.date.fromtimestamp(newest)
license_path = args.output.with_name(args.output.stem + '.LICENSE.txt')
license_path.write_text(notice(' / '.join(sorted(apis)), accessed), encoding='utf-8')
print(f'Wrote {license_path}')
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()