photovoltaic

photovoltaic is a library of python functions used in photovoltaics. Its preferrable to install the library but the functions are simple enough to include in your code.

Help Index: http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/pvedu/photovoltaic/blob/master/html/photovoltaic.html
Code is at: https://github.com/pvedu/photovoltaic/tree/master/photovoltaic

Examples

The best place to start is with the examples at:
https://github.com/pvedu/pvon

There are instructions on how to run the examples completely within the browser and without installing anything.

Typical usage

import photovoltaic as pv
irradiance = pv.sun.blackbody_spectrum(800)
print(irradiance)

This would print the blackbody irradiance at 800 nm with the default temperature of 6000 K in W/m2/nm.

Installation

Installation is via pip from the pypi repositry. From a command propmpt:

pip install photovoltaic

Inside a Jupter notebook use:

!pip install photovoltaic

Some systems use pip3 instead of pip. People recommend using a virtual environment, but I don't find its necessary on MS Windows.

Tha above command should also install the latest scipy and numpy packages. They can also be installed directly with:

pip install numpy

pip install scipy

Requirements

Known to work under plain vanilla Python 3.6 using the standard IDLE editor with Numpy and Scipy installed. The examples also make use of matplotlib. It should also work with the various Python systems such as Anaconda Jupyter etc.

Anaconda includes a wealth of scientific packagkes and is available at: https://www.anaconda.com/download/

Standard Python is at https://www.python.org/downloads/

For the graphs, Matplotlib is needed in addition to the above numpy and scipy packages:

pip install matplotlib

Other

f means from in some of the function names. For example:

nmfeV() converts the energy of a photon from electron volts to a nm.

This follows the conventions of other python functions such as strfdatetime.

The library is designed to be as simple as possible and an "algorithm that runs". While it is easier to install the whole library, it is also straighforward to cut/paste parts of the code.

There are other python libraries that cover sections of the photovoltaic library in much more detail.

• [pvlib] (https://github.com/pvlib/pvlib-python) covers insolation and systems modeling.
• Semiconductors relating to solar.