Dear Pythonistas and Solar Energy enthusiasts, I am very happy to announce a new, major release of pvlib python, for simulating the performance of photovoltaic solar energy systems. *See what's new for v0.8.0:* * https://pvlib-python.readthedocs.io/en/stable/whatsnew.html *Releases are available from the CheeseShop and the conda-forge channel:* * https://pypi.org/project/pvlib/ * https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/pvlib-python *Read the Documentation:* * https://pvlib-python.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html *Report issues & contribute:* * https://github.com/pvlib/pvlib-python *Highlights:* * Because this is a major release, there are many breaking changes so please read through the release notes carefully before updating * Python-3.5 is no longer supported, SciPy-1.2.0 is now a required dependency, and the Pandas minimum version is now v0.22.0 * New functions for calculation of sky-diffuse irradiance, fitting PV module IV-curve traces to single-diode model coefficients, and accommodating terrain slope when backtracking. * Many new contributors, bug fixes, and improvements in the documentation. * Also coming soon, AirSpeed Velocity benchmarks. Stay tuned! *The development team thanks you for using pvlib python!* -- Mark Mikofski, PhD (2005) *Fiat Lux*