File Formats |

Solar Advisor uses the following types of files to store and transfer data. The file formats are listed below by file extension in alphabetical order. Contact solar.advisor.support@nrel.gov for more information.
• | BAS is a text file containing VBA code for use with Excel.
• | BMP is a graphics file format used to export graph images.
• | C is a text file containing ANSI C code for use in a C program.
• | CSV is a text file containing a table comma-delimited columns that the model uses to export results data from graphs and tables. Weather files in TMY3 format also use the CSV extension.
• | DVIEW is a file format used by Solar Advisor's time series data viewer, DView.
• | EPW is a weather file format that Solar Advisor can read directly.
• | M is a text file containing MATLAB code.
• | OUT is a text file format generated by Solar Advisor's simulation engine (TRNSYS) to store hourly performance data.
• | SAMLIB is a text file used to store data for a Solar Advisor library.
• | SCIF (SAM compressed inputs file) is an obsolete compressed file format used in Solar Advisor Model versions 2.5 through 3.0. The current version of Solar Advisor can open SCIF files created by older versions of the model.
• | SUL is a text file containing SamUL script for automating Solar Advisor analyses.
• | TM2 and TM3 are weather file formats that Solar Advisor can read directly.
• | XLS are Excel files used to export data from Solar Advisor and to exchange data between the model and Excel. Note that Excel files must be in Excel 2003-2007 XLS format, and not in the newer XLSX format.
• | ZSAM files store project data, which includes inputs and results for one or more cases.