Did you know that it is possible to automate WAsP to run through a series of different options, or to re-perform some calculations from time to time with different or modified inputs?
There are three ways to achieve this:
1. Internal scripting
You can write a script which runs inside the WAsP program and acts on the things in the currently open workspace. You can do anything that the mouse can do, so you can set up a loop to do calculations with a selection of different WTGs, or create resource grids with different heights. These scripts can write output to MS Excel or MS Word or HTML or text.
The disadvantage of this is that you need to open the workspaces and invoke the scripts manually. So, if you have many different projects and need to run these scripts, then you’ll still be busy with the mouse and GUI to get the job done.
2. Command line scripting
Another little-known capability of WAsP is that you can launch it from the command line, passing a workspace file name and a script file name too. If you do this, then WAsP will start, and then open the workspace and then run the script before closing again: You should be able to write a simple batch file which performs the work automatically.
- Options 1 and 2 are available with your normal WAsP 11 license. It’s possible to look at existing scripts and modify them slightly. If you have someone in your organisation who wants to invest time in learning about it, then they could probably work out how to make completely new scripts.
DTU Wind Energy can normally help with doing custom scripting. Such work would be charged at our hourly rate for commissioned work and would need to be agreed by prior written agreement. Another possibility is that if a script you need is going to be widely useful to other WAsP users, then we might decide to develop it for free and release it to all users.
3. Full automation
If automating WAsP is a serious requirement for your organisation, and you’re spending a lot of time manually performing various calculations, then it’s worth considering a “developer” WAsP licence. This allows you to do WAsP calculations without the user interface, by calling the same objects that the user interface uses. In this case, you can write code inside a MS Excel workbook, for instance, which loops over different projects, updates files, performs calculations and collates the results in the spreadsheet. It’s extremely flexible, and not much more complicated than writing a script to run inside the program.
Option 3 requires a “developer” WAsP license.
DTU Wind Energy can help with doing some custom programming work to get you started. Such work would also be charged at our hourly rate for commissioned work and would also need to be agreed by prior written agreement. The number of hours would depend on exactly what you wanted to achieve, but usually 10 or 20 hours is enough for most needs.