Additional Challenges and Opportunities

Here we discuss miscellaneous additional challenges and opportunities for open source PV modeling. Some would-be contributors are deterred by unfamiliarity with open source tools such as version control and the GitHub website. Contributors may also be deterred by a feeling that their code is not of sufficient quality, and by a projects lack of support for helping potential contributors improve their code. The PVPMC has previously invited talks on open source tooling, and this may be an area to further develop. Inspiration may be found by looking at related fields. For example, the American Meteorological Society’s annual conference includes a Symposium on Advances in Modeling and Analysis Using Python. A similar software-focused session could be added to the PVSC or other PV-related conferences. The 2018 AMS Python Symposium included a “Show me your stack!” panel session in which the community could learn how four different developers approach problems.