T.M. Kayode

The next stage of my work was data collection, the story is in two parts.

Here is Part 1.

The first set of data I required, was hourly weather and solar insolation parameters. Getting weather data is a bit easy enough, the problem is getting historical hourly readings for several years at a time.

There are websites where you can get different weather parameters but without the option to download a CSV or excel file you have to copy and paste line by line. Imagine doing this for every hour of every day for 5 years. To put this in better context, this means performing the copy and paste process  43,200 times.

Ain’t nobody going to do that!

So I started looking for other options.

I tried the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) – well, sort of!
The process was not straightforward, plus I would have to pay a lot of money for the data. I wasn’t ready to do that as well. Plus, they would most likely have a little of the kind of data I needed.

Then I tried researchgate to see the conversation around data collection for weather parameters. There were a bunch of helpful repositories but many didn’t have for the African region talk less of Nigeria.

Then, I saw solcast!

It had everything- I mean EVERYTHING I needed in the format I needed it. I was so happy. I started to check off the dataset I needed in the interface provided.
The next thing, I saw that the cost to access that data was $4400. I simply reversed and started looking for other options.

I saw some other data repositories hosted by the European Commission, it was just okay. The repository had only 2 years of data, they also had some parameters. So I was a good place to start my analysis.

Just as I was about to settle for this dataset. I got a mail from Solcast. Precisely Nick from Solcast.
The mail was the breakthrough I needed. In the mail, he was emphatic about the plight of researchers and data availability and promised to help me access the data I needed. He asked me to send a detailed mail about the data I wanted.

I had an undergraduate student whose work also required a bit of the data, so we were both super excited.
I sent in the mail with the details and waited for a response.
Day 1, no response
Day 2, no response
Day 5, no response
Day 10, no response

My student was like – Ma, I didn’t really think they were going to respond. For that comment alone, I wanted a positive response. Just so this young chap would have a better outlook about life in general.

I made a mental note to send a reminder mail, which I did on one of my Ph.D. work vigils.

Ladies and gentlemen, by the morning of Day 19, I got a mail from Nick of Solcast stating that he had credited my account with $5000 and I could access the data.

See me dancing!

The next thing I did, was to crack open my laptop, download all the data first to ensure that there were no additional issues, and then sent a thank you mail to Nick from Solcast.

#relief

Lesson Takeaways
1. Even when it seems that an opportunity has been closed, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you asking again or finding out what happened. Politely, of course! The people at the other end may just have simply forgotten about your request or worst case they may tell you about the reason for their decision. Don’t just conclude that nothing works and start getting angry at the world.
2. When you get to a position where you can be of help to people. Please do that. Remember the struggles you may have gone through and try to alleviate that for someone else. Pay it forward.

If you can think of any other lessons, please let me know in the comments section below.

See you in the next blog.