A. Review the External Workbook |  |  |  |

| This topic describes SAM 3.0 and has not been revised for SAM 2009 Beta. You may find useful information, especially if you are new to SAM, but some of the information may be inconsistent with the new version.

To review the external workbook:

1. | Close Solar Advisor if it is running. In Excel, open the workbook User Guide Workbook Example.xls. The workbook is located in Solar Advisor's Workbooks folder (C:\SAM\Workbooks by default).

Cells D8, D9, and D10 are Sent To variables, or variables whose values Solar Advisor will export to the spreadsheet. Cell D13 is a Captured From variable, whose value Solar Advisor will import from the spreadsheet.

Note that the four cells have named ranges. For example, Cell D9 is named Array_Power.

This simple spreadsheet uses the formula in Cell D13 to convert an O&M cost expressed as a percentage of the total installed cost to the fixed O&M cost expressed in dollars per kilowatt-year that Solar Advisor requires. To make the conversion, the spreadsheet formula requires the O&M as a percentage of total cost, which is not an input variable in Solar Advisor. In the next steps, we will create a user-defined variable to store that value. The other two values required by the formula, array power and total installed costs, are Solar Advisor input variables.

2. | Close Microsoft Excel. If you made any changes to the workbook, do not save the changes.