Dear Paul,
As you said, since that SAM simulations are always for 1 year, the only way to achieve single day simulations is extracting the results for that day from the annual results.
In my case, based on your suggestions, what I did to achieve my particular "1-day simulation" was to modify a standard 365 days meteo file for my location (TM3-CSV format) with the input meteo data of my simulation under the following constraints:
1- It is important to change the input meteo data of the day to be simulated in its corresponding date inside the standard meteo file, e.g. a simulation of the 1st of July gives different results depending where you update the meteo data on the file. I guess this is due to some filtering of values falling outside sunrise/set hours according to SPA algorithm. So that 1st of july data have to be updated on the same date in the meteo file.
2- It is also important to change the meteo data of the previous day. The previous day data is important in order to get the most possible accurate initial conditions for the turbine, HTF temperatures etc. This makes difficult to simulate the 1st of January, since it is the first day of the meteo file.
3-Since HTF Solar Field initial temperature seems to be applied always to beginning of the annual simulation, changing its value does not have any impact on the 1-day simualtion unless for your are simulating the 1st of January.
Once the meteo file is changed, after running the case with SAM, you just need to extract from the annual results, the values of the date being simulated.
Thanks for your help.
Best regards,
Bosco Olabarri
PS: I am using SAM 2009.10.13 due to contractual issues on a CSP PT case without TES