#pywind

This pywind python module retrieves historic data on wind energy and other electricity generation in the UK.

##Background

The primary user of the original module is the Variable Pitch website which uses it to record data for wind farm stations in the UK. It has been released as an open source module in the hope that it can help others.

This module uses data from the BM Reports, DECC, Elexon, eRoc, and Ofgem websites. You must comply with their respective terms and conditions when using this module (or any other means) to access their data. The use of their names here does not indicate their endorsement of this software in any way.

####This fork

This particular fork is designed to work with Python 2.7 and Python 3.4. I (EnergyNumbers) have removed the imports of urllib, urllib2, and replaced them with the requests package. All of the sample scripts work; however, these do not form a comprehensive set of test scripts, so it's entirely possible that things work in the original version on Python 2.7, that don't work in this fork on any version of Python. If you have used the original version of this library, please do some testing before switching to this fork. If you find incompatibilities, please raise an issue here, and let me know what the problem is. Ideally, include a small program that reproduces the problem.

##Ofgem Station & Certificate Data

The ofgem module retrieves data from Ofgem's Renewables & CHP database, without the user having to negotiate their webform which breaks in modern browsers.

The module provides the StationSearch and CertificateSearch classes that can be used to search the Ofgem database.

Example 1: sample script onestation.py gives an example of retrieving information on stations with "Novar" in their name

Example 2: Getting all certificates issued to Off-Shore wind farms during Jan 2012: see the sample script offwind.py

Examples 3,4: Sample scripts are included to search for certificates and stations

More information about the information available can be found at http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/OfgemHome.aspx

##ROC Prices

These are obtained from the eROC auction site using the EROCPrices class within the roc module. The prices for the various periods listed are then available by using the object as a dict. See, for example, the ROC price sample script.

The format for the period is yyyymm where yyyy is the 4 digit year and mm is the 2 digit month. If there is more than one auction in a given period the average of the results is calculated.

##DECC Planning Monthly Report

DECC has a report showing the renewable electricity planning applications it knows about with their current status. It includes the capacity, address and geographic information as well, together with various planning dates and flags. See the decc.py sample script for a simple example.

Each record is a DeccRecord object (defined in the decc module) with a large number of attributes set. The records have native python types set for dates and boolean types but additionally have a lat & lon attribute set from the OS grid reference supplied in the DECC data for each site.

As far as I can tell it is not possible to filter the data for a particular date range, so the entire dataset is returned each time the get_data() function is called. Filtering is left to the user.

##BM Reports on system prices and generation quantities

###First, a caveat on the use of BMReports data The data provided by the BMReports website is owned by Elexon UK and permission needs to be sought before reproducing it. The following functions in the bmreports module should only be used with this restriction in mind when accessing the site and downloading data.

###Electricity Prices To get the System Sell Price (SSP) and the System Buy Price (SBP) for a given date the SystemPrices class can be used. See, for example, the bmdata.py sample script

###Derived Unit Data The UnitData class allows the BMReports reports to be accessed. Presently this class defaults to querying the Derived Data to extract information on Constraint Payments made. See for example the sample script derived_unit_data.py

###Balancing Mechanism Units The list of units (with their fuel types) is available as an Excel spreadsheet from the BMReports website. The UnitList class can be used to get and parse the current list. See for example the bm_unit_list.py sample script

###Power Pack Unit Data Most smaller Onshore Wind stations do not supply their output directly to the grid via High Voltage connections and as such are considered to be "embedded" stations. The impact of this on the capacity data released is discussed in some detail in a PDF document by James Hemingway (available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65923/6487-nat-grid-metering-data-et-article-sep12.pdf)

To obtain a list of the wind stations that are connected to the grid via HV and as such have their output considered the PowerPackUnits class should be used. The class downloads the Power Pack Modules spreadsheet and extracts its contents.

See powerpack.py for a simple example.

NB the date_added will be either a datetime.date object or None.

###Electricity Usage

The BM Reports website provides historic and realtime data about electricity usage within the UK and can be accessed via the bmreports module.

To get the data, see e.g. the gendata.py sample script

This will create a GenerationData object that will contain summary generation data covering the previous 24 hours, 30 minutes, and instantaneous observations.

Each period is available as a dict object containing the resultant values and time periods, e.g.

'24hours': {'start': datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 3, 10, 30),
			'finish': datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 4, 10, 30)
			'total': 945844,
			'data': [
	{'code': 'CCGT', 'percent': '24.2', 'name': 'Combined Cycle Gas Turbine', 'value': '229014'},
	{'code': 'OCGT', 'percent': '0.0', 'name': 'Open Cycle Gas Turbine', 'value': '0'},
	{'code': 'OIL', 'percent': '0.0', 'name': 'Oil', 'value': '0'},
	{'code': 'COAL', 'percent': '48.7', 'name': 'Coal', 'value': '460899'},
	{'code': 'NUCLEAR', 'percent': '18.0', 'name': 'Nuclear', 'value': '170693'},
	{'code': 'WIND', 'percent': '1.6', 'name': 'Wind', 'value': '15062'},
	{'code': 'PS', 'percent': '1.2', 'name': 'Pumped Storage', 'value': '11260'},
	{'code': 'NPSHYD', 'percent': '0.6', 'name': 'Non Pumped Storage Hydro', 'value': '5744'},
	{'code': 'OTHER', 'percent': '1.9', 'name': 'Other', 'value': '18442'},
	{'code': 'INTFR', 'percent': '1.4', 'name': 'Import from France', 'value': '13314'},
	{'code': 'INTIRL', 'percent': '0.0', 'name': 'Import from Ireland', 'value': '163'},
	{'code': 'INTNED', 'percent': '2.2', 'name': 'Import from the Netherlands', 'value': '21252'},
	{'code': 'INTEW', 'percent': '0.0', 'name': 'East/West Interconnector', 'value': '0'}
	]
	}

More information can be found at http://www.bmreports.com/