Hello, can someone explain why does Solar Analysis package expire by the end of each year? Can this be avoided? Will there be an update for 2025?
@solamour @emrullah.yildiz @achintya_bhat we need someone to update this again.
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I believe that the reason is that weather data isn’t static - climate change is a thing after all. So updates are a must. Couple that with the fact that making 100,000,000 web request for a generative study is not a good use, and so the data needs to be re-distributed periodically and an ‘annual’ update made sense as you would only add to the data set once a year.
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@stevanpfc2 Thanks for bringing this to our attention! This was a miss from the team, we will update the package and also explore alternative approaches to avoid similar situations in the future where the package expires.
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It may be worth considering parseing epw files vs baking limited data to give the package a longer maintenance window in future.
Grasshopper has done this for a while and many firms will understand how to procure/point to these types of files given sufficient node design to lead them.
I believe their code is open (albeit in python) and epw is a widely recognized format. It contains both direct sun information as well as wind and radiation values for sky matrices. Food for thought in case it is useful.
This is generally the website people get epw files from currently in context of ladybug:
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Ladybug and Honeybee tools for Dynamo were amazing, and you could get A LOT of information from the EPW file, too bad that support ended a long time ago. It was working like a charm even with the 1x versions of Dynamo.
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My experience with ‘download the file you need’ results in a slew of ‘where do I get…’ questions which hinder adoption. See the problems which users have with getting packages installed, or finding the standard Autodesk families for a given language pack.
I think when it comes to ESD there has to be an assumed degree of ability to upskill - it’s a dangerous thing to let laypeople undertake such litigous analysis’ in my xp.
No worries if it doesn’t suit, just food for thought, and works well for the arguable competitors to this package.
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Same with Revit… and yet: revit families missing site:forums.autodesk.com - Google Search
I agree with the ‘we should’ revisit how this is done’ though. Perhaps a way to update via view extension?
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I saw that the package is updated today. Thank you very much! Did you find the permanent solution, or will it work until the end of the year?
The team did take the feedback and explore options and we have changed the approach. So, good news - there is no expiration date anymore! 
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Amazing, thank you very much!