Importing non-TMY3 format weather data for use in pvlib simulation

Question

So I'm busy working on a project where i need to implement a PV system in Python. The best resource for this seems to be the pvlib module but I am a bit stuck on getting the appropriate weather data for this.

I need a whole year worth off information for a specific location, in this case Cape Town South Africa.

I am trying to get a TMY3 file for this, because pvlib accommodates this nicely, but the only data I am able to find is only American locations from NREL ( https://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1991-2005/tmy3/by_state_and_city.html ). I can't find a TMY for other locations.

Here is the Jupyter notebook tutorial I'm using: https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/pvlib/pvlib-python/blob/master/docs/tutorials/tmy_to_power.ipynb

I found weather data for this location on other sites but they aren't in the format pvlib is looking for. Does pvlib just accommodate for USA? What options do I have?

Answer 1

pvlib does not care where you get your weather data from or where you want to do your modeling. You've selected an example where pvlib uses TMY data available in the US, but other examples use different data sources and locations. See, for example, the Intro Tutorial documentation that uses simulated clear sky data (including a Berlin location). Or the forecast documentation that uses data from weather forecast models (some US only, but one global). If you can get your data into python, pvlib can use it.