1. Documentation
2. Wind
3. Wind Toolkit Data Downloads
4. Wind Toolkit Data

Wind Toolkit Data (/api/wind-toolkit/wind/wtk_download)

Collect and download, as CSV, a configurable set of data fields from a national collection of wind stations. This API is capabale of creating very large downloadable archives. Unlike a typical API, the response to this provides a request acknowledgement. The real work of creating the requested downloadable archive will continue to run on the server side. When complete, and email will be sent to the email address provided in the initial request with either a link to a file to download, or in the case of a very, very large archive, a link to more detailed instructions for using Globus to complete the download. In addition to this two step workflow, there is also an option for users who wish to download a single CSV file in direct response to an API request. The .csv format may be used to download a CSV directly. This feature is restricted to use with only a single POINT, for a single YEAR at a time.

Request URL

GET /api/wind-toolkit/wind/wtk_download.format?parameters

Request Parameters

Parameter	Required	Value	Description
api_key	Yes	Type: string Default: None	Your developer API key. See API keys for more information.
wkt	Yes	Type: well-known text point string Default: None	A well-known text (WKT) representation of the geometry for which to extract data. May be a point or polygon geometry.
attributes	Yes	Type: comma delimited string array Default: None Options: wind_speed, wind_direction, power, pressure, temperature, density	Each specified attribute will be returned as a column in the resultant CSV download.
names	Yes	Type: comma delimited integer array Default: None	The year(s) for which data should be extracted.
full_name	No	Type: string Default: None	The full name of the user requesting data.
email	Yes	Type: email string Default: None	An active email for the user requesting data. This email will be used to deliver the extracted data.
affiliation	No	Type: string Default: None	The organization with which the user requesting the data is affiliated.
reason	No	Type: string Default: None	The reason that the user is requesting the data.

Response Fields

The response is composed of service-related informational fields and the results of the data query.

Field	Value	Description
errors	Type: string array	A list of error messages
warnings	Type: string array	A list of warning messages
inputs	Type: Object Hash	Key: Value pairs representing all input parameters
outputs	Type: Object Hash	Upon successful completion a message will be returned informing the user that file generation is in progress and an email will be sent to the address provided in the email input field when the download is ready

Examples

SiteID	12
Longitude	-97.483215
Latitude	25.104233
Year	Month	Day	Hour	Minute	density at hub height (kg/m^3)	power (MW)	surface air pressure (Pa)	air temperature at 2m (K)	wind direction at 100m (deg)	wind speed at 100m (m/s)
2009	1	1	0	0	1.043	0.589	84508.176	270.81	201.457	4.065
2009	1	1	0	5	1.042	0.657	84501.776	270.847	201.094	4.165
2009	1	1	0	10	1.04	0.722	84494.456	270.853	201.797	4.263
2009	1	1	0	15	1.039	0.719	84490.792	270.832	202.039	4.26
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...

Rate Limits

Rate limits for this application are significantly less than the standard rate limits for developer.nrel.gov. This decrease in the limit is required as the data provided through this service is significantly more computationally intensive to generate and provide. These rate limits are carefully calculated to allow all users the maximum throughput that our servers can sustain.

There are two levels of rate limiting for this service. The first limit determines how many requests a given user can make per 24 hour period. For requests utilizing the .csv format this rate limit is set at 2000 a day at a frequency of no more than 1 per second. For all other requests this limit is set at 300 requests per day at a frequency of no more than 1 every 2 seconds.

In addition to this limit, the service has a secondary fail-safe mechanism to prevent significant performance decreases that can be caused by unexpectedly high usage of the service. This limit will cause the service to stop accepting requests when the queue reaches a point where additional requests will significantly lower server performance. When this limit is hit, the service will error with a message describing that the request queue is full.

For some tips and tricks to maximize data downloads please read the guide here.

Errors

Standard errors may be returned. In addition, the following service-specific errors may be returned:

HTTP Status Code	Description
400	Bad Request: When required parameters are missing.