Introduction

This page is dedicated to The National Renewable Energy Lab's (NREL) System Advisor Model (SAM).

Further description and preliminary information can be reviewed on NREL's website.

Weather Data Resources and Databases

SAM will work with TTY2, TTY3, EPW and SolarAnywhere file extensions. All four (4) of these file formats are similar, however, there is a significant variance in how the data is delimited. For example, TTY2 is non-delimited while TTY3 is comma delimited.

Weather data files are obtainable, for multiple geographic locations, through the following sources:

1. OpenEI - Utility Rate Database
2. NREL - National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB)
3. NREL - Wind Integration Database
4. NREL - The Biofuels Database
5. Department of Energy (DOE) - EnergyPlus Weather Database

Importing Data

• SAM cannot process TTY2, TTY3, EPW and SolarAnywhere files unless they have been covered to a .csv. SAM has a built in macro utility to perform this conversion for you. Navigate to this macro by selected the Macro button near the bottom left of the SAM GUI. This will bring up a list; one of the items listed is read Solar Resource File Converter'. Follow the prompts and steps displayed in the SAM GUI for proper file conversion. Take note to the file directory all weather data files are saved. In the Location and Resource menu there is a Tools section. In this section you are allow to assign file path locations for SAM to look for weather data files.

Equipment or Bill of Materials

Calibration & Tolerances

Operation & Procedure

Shutdown

References