New format of NOAA Data for AMY generation

grasshopper dragonfly
1

Hello Everyone,
After a good time gap i tried to generate an AMY file for a city. I accessed the NOAA website (https://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/maps/ncei/cdo/hourly) to generate the required txt files as the modified AMY component requires .txt file as input.
But the NOAA format has again changed the way we used to download by clicking on access button (now add to cart option popping out).

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On second note there is no .txt file we can genearte now. Data is accessed through a csv format. But the AMY component requires a text input file.

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@chris @mostapha Can you address this how can the AMY file can be generated using existing hydra example file or is there a walk around to this.

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Hope i made my self clear here
thank you

2

Does anyone can help how to move forward with this format

3

hello @Asisnath
You know this plugin for creating AMY file has bug
even old data type of NOAA couldnā€™t work !!!
me and my friends try in different versions and systems.
but it didnā€™t work.
i hope @chris fix this issue soon.
we really need this ability of dragonfly

4

Hi @Asisnath,

Not a solution for the new format, but, you can still access the legacy format here:

https://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/cdo

Hope that helps you until support for the new format is implemented.

Best,
Hamza

1 Like
5

Perfect, Thanks its the same page we were accessing earlier. I will try the existing method to generate amy file.
Thanks @MohammadHamza

6

I tried just now creating the files again, works like a charm :slight_smile:

7

Yes i tried too, its working. Thank you.

8

Hello All,

Iā€™m sorry for such a late response here but Iā€™m very glad that you found a temporary solution. Iā€™ll try to add methods to handle the new NOAA format soon but, if anyone is feeling brave enough, you should be able to get it to work with < 100 lines of Python code using the ladybug-core Python library that is already being used in the current AMY component.

Hereā€™s the full SDK documentation for the ladybug-core library, which lists all of the available modules and classes (probably the most important one here is the datacollection module):
https://www.ladybug.tools/ladybug/docs/ladybug.html

And you can work with the ladybug library either with native python (installing it with ladybug-core) or you can simply type import ladybug in a GHPython component if you already have honeybee[+] installed.

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9

@chris hi, Any update on this?

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10

I havenā€™t changed the AMY-data-importing component yet and I probably wonā€™t be able to get to it for another couple of weeks. So the opportunity is open if anyone wants to tackle it. Itā€™s a good task if anyoneā€™s looking to learn how to use the ladybug Python SDK.

11

Ok @chris. Will keep an eye on this update. Thanks

12

Hi @MohammadHamza,

I tried to find a way to download the data from this website but didnā€™t find the txt file. It would be grateful if you can provide some instructions of downloading the NOAA data.

Best,
HC

13

I am happy to say that the AMY components have finally been updated to the new NOAA .csv file format:

I also updated the sample file on Hydra:

So you should be all set to create EPWs using the NCDC data again. Hopefully, we have several years before NOAA changes the file format on us again :smile:

2 Likes
14

Awsome @Chris. Always an inspiration for many. Will try it out and revert back. Thanks

15

Hello @chris. I tested the file but an error popped up with DF_Creat_EPW_Component. I have attached the screenshot and the updated file with latest LBT components to keep files similar for testing. Please have a look.

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Create_Actual_Meteorologic_Year_EPW.rar (258.3 KB)

16

Thanks for catching the bug, @Asisnath . Those pesky SI/IP unit conversions. Glad that NOAA moved to officially using SI with this recent update. I just pushed a bug fix:

ā€¦ and updated the Hydra sample. Thanks again.

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17

Now working seamlessly. Thank you @chris :grinning:

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18

Hey @Asisnath ,
As I was falling asleep last night, I realized that thereā€™s a bug in how I was interpreting the new AMY data. Iā€™m 99% sure that all of the datetimes in the csv file are in GMT now instead of the time zone of the location recording the data. Iā€™ll push a fix this morning (that is, morning in EDT and not GMT) and verify that itā€™s correct. Glad that I caught this one before the release.

19

Hi @chris, yes your right. A great catch by you. Datetimes are in GMT. Need to address that.

20

Fix has been pushed and hydra sample file has been updated. We are good to go for the release.

1 Like