Configuration

Most of VG’s configuration is done at initialization of the VG object. But to ease usage , some defaults can be defined and stored in a configuration file.

A template for a configuration file is included in the distribution (config_template.py). VG requires that at least an input file (met_file) is specified. Edit the configuration file, rename it to config.py and put it somewhere in your PYTHONPATH.

The settings in the configuration template file allows to test the weather generator. The met_file variable points to a sample input file sample.met.

The configuration file config.py

The configuration file is a python module.

to be extended

Input data (met_file) requirements

The format of the met_file is ascii. The first line defines the variable names.

  • Data should be evenly-spaced without gaps. - Hourly or daily values (hourly spacing allows Disaggregation later)

  • Date/time information can be given in various ways:

    • time: ISO formatted timestring %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f or %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S. Example: 1990-01-01T00:00:00

    • date: %d.%m.%Y %H:%M:%S. Example: 01.01.1990 00:00:00

    • Julian: julian decimal day %y%j. Example: 1990001.00

    • chron: (%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S) Example: (01.01.90 00:00:00)

    • and more…

    See Python’s time formatting specifiers <http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html?highlight=time#strftime-and-strptime-behavior>

  • Naming of non-time variables in the input file (met_file):

    • air temperature: theta

    • short-wave radiation: Qsw

    • wind direction: wdir

    • wind speed: U

    The other variables can be named as preferred, but must stay consistent with other configurations made in the config.py file.