pingswept / pysolar

Pysolar is a collection of Python libraries for simulating the irradiation of any point on earth by the sun. It includes code for extremely precise ephemeris calculations.

This URL has Read+Write access

pysolar / README.markdown
100644 26 lines (21 sloc) 0.995 kb
raw blame history

Pysolar performs calculations useful for the development of photovoltaic systems. Rough steps for use, until either forever or I have time to write more documentation:

  1. Install python.
  2. Get to a prompt that looks like: >>>

  3. import solar

  4. import datetime

  5. d = datetime.datetime.utcnow()

  6. lat = 42.0

  7. long = -71.0

  8. solar.GetAltitude(lat, long, d)

  9. solar.GetAzimuth(lat, long, d)

For better examples of usage, check http://pysolar.sourceforge.net/#examples

At this point, Pysolar has basic functionality, but it is relatively untested. I did validate it against the data in a paper by Reda and Andreas; it agrees to 4 significant figures, but that's just one data point.

If you use Pysolar, please let me know how accurate it is. It's difficult to measure sun location with great precision, but I'd love to hear reports of "Yeah, it worked to within a degree over the course of an afternoon in Spain."

Brandon Stafford first_name @ pingswept org