Calculation Payloads

The compute API completes any calculation defined by a Renewables.Architect application definition file. The application definition file is a chunk of JSON information that acts a bit like a recipe for someone baking a cake. It specifies all the calculation ingredients and a method and tools for combining them together. In its simplest form, a call to the API can be made to do one run of a single model. More complex application definitions can run optimisations or probabilistic analyses across models and generate large batchs of calculations that will scale on the compute service, running in parallel.

Tip

For an overview of how RA applications are structured in JSON, see Application Definition File Format.

Example application definition files can be obtained from the Applications Library after login. An application definition can contain a single model or a workflow of models and optimisation or batch generation components.

Caution

At present, all application definition files sent to the compute API must have the python_version key. This is not required for, and may be unfamiliar to desktop RA users.

Applications

The API accepts JSON payloads describing your wind farm configuration and returns detailed engineering calculations. All requests follow a consistent structure:

{
  "application_name": "Application Name",
  "driver": {
    "driver_type": "CSVBatchTable",
    "driver_parameters": {
      /* batch processing options */
    }
  },
  "environment": {
    "environment_type": "Sequential",
    "environment_parameters": {
      /* analysis parameters */
    }
  },
  "shared_inputs": {
    /* shared inputs used by multiple models */
  },
  "assembly": {
    /* key value pairs of model names and configurations, including their connectivity, this may just be a single model */
  },
  "packages": [
    /* A list of package names and versions, specifiying which RA packages need to be imported to access the models, environment and driver specified
    These can be divided into three separate lists: "model_packages", "environment_packages" and "driver_packages" as well as general purpose
    packages in "packages" for improved importing performance and reduced API latency. The list format is the same for each of these.
    e.g.
    "ta_blade==2.0.0",
    "ta_farmyield==1.0.4",
    "ta_powercurve==1.3.1"
    */
  ],
  "python_version": "3.13"    /* The compute API requires the python version to be specified whereas the desktop RA versions do not require this field
}