NYSERDA Solar Farms and Weather API - Complete Documentation

A REST API that joins New York solar farm generation data (from NYSERDA: https://der.nyserda.ny.gov/search/) with weather conditions (from Open-Meteo: https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/historical-weather-api). The API supports both JSON responses and CSV file downloads.

Verion 1.0.0: Currently only downloads CSV to server side.
Requires firefox browser for Selenium webscraping.
Base URL: http://localhost:5000/ or http://your-server-ip:5000/

API Endpoints:

1. Root Endpoint (GET/)

Returns this documentation in HTML.

Example:

import requests, json
response = requests.get('http://localhost:5000/')

2. Search Farms (GET/)

Search for solar farms within a geographic radius and/or capacity range. Only retrieves farms from 1MW o 10MW capacity.
Parameters:

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
latitude	float	Yes	Latitude coordinate (e.g., 42.6526).
longitude	float	Yes	Longitude coordinate (e.g., -73.7562).
radius_km	float	Yes	Search radius in kilometers.
capacity_min	float	No	Minimum capacity in kW (default: 0).
capacity_max	float	No	Maximum capacity in kW (default: unlimited).

Example:

import requests, json
response = requests.get('http://localhost:5000/searchFarms?longitude=-73.7562&latitude=42.6526&radius_km=10')

3. Get Farm (GET/)

Gets complete historical electricity generation records for a specified solar farm by its name, optionally with weather data.
Parameters:

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
farm_name	string	Yes	Solar farm name on NYSERDA website.
include_weather	bool	Yes	Include weather data at specified farm (true/false).

Example:

import requests, json
response = requests.get('http://localhost:5000/getFarm?farm_name=103 Sparling Road, LLC&include_weather=true')

4. Get Farms (GET/)

Get and merge data for multiple solar farms, optionally with weather data. Uses the geographic centroid of all farms for weather data retrieval.
Parameters:

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
farm_name	string	Yes	Solar farm name (in a semi-colon seperated list) from NYSERDA website (e.g., 03 Sparling Road, LLC;132 Pattersonville Rynex Corners Rd).
include_weather	bool	Yes	Include weather data at specified farm (true/false).

Example:

import requests, json
response = requests.get('http://localhost:5000/getFarms?farm_name=103 Sparling Road, LLC;132 Pattersonville Rynex Corners Rd&include_weather=false')

5. Download files

Currently not availible. A future feature that allows clients to download the files that they get from endpoint /getFarm and /getFarms.

Weather Parameters

Weather parameters pulled alongside solar farms information from OpenMeteo.

Parameter Name	Description
temperature_2m	Air temperature measured at 2 meters above ground level
relative_humidity_2m	Relative humidity percentage measured at 2 meters above ground
precipitation	Total liquid-equivalent precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, etc.)
cloud_cover	Total percentage of sky covered by clouds
cloud_cover_low	Percentage of sky covered by low-level clouds
cloud_cover_mid	Percentage of sky covered by mid-level clouds
cloud_cover_high	Percentage of sky covered by high-level clouds
wind_speed_10m	Wind speed measured at 10 meters above ground level
shortwave_radiation	Incoming shortwave solar radiation (sunlight) reaching the surface
direct_radiation	Direct beam solar radiation from the sun's disc
diffuse_radiation	Scattered solar radiation from the sky
direct_normal_irradiance	Direct solar radiation perpendicular to the sun's rays
global_tilted_irradiance	Total solar radiation on a surface tilted at a specific angle

Additional Files:

requirements.txt: A list of package requirements for running this script.
preProcessing.py: A script that uses Selenium to scrape the NYSERDA solar farm's coordinates.
solarFarmNyserda.csv: A file containing the name of the solar farm, their coordinates, capacity, and town for searchFarms endpoint. Originally, this file did not have coordinates and only had solar farm names, capacity, and town. Updated using preProcessing.py to obtain the coordinates for each farm.
testClient.py: A test client file for unit testing.