Hybrid Solar thermal and Wind turbine system

Hello! I want to use SAM to model the best combination of solar thermal energy and wind energy to heat a water tank. Can the model do this? I was able to get a combined case of solar+wind but the results don't show what energy percentage is solar and what percentage is wind, just the cost reduction when they are both functioning. What am I doing wrong?

Dear Michael,

SAM is not well suited for that application. You could use the results of a wind power case and solar water heating case to estimate the energy output of each system, and then model the water tank outside of SAM. If you are comfortable writing computer programs or scripts, you could use SAM's LK scripting language to make those calculations.

SAM is designed to model electric power applications, which is why the solar water heating model represents the value of solar energy as a savings in the annual electricity bill.

Best regards,
Paul.

I see, thank you for your response, the model is quite good but I have a very specific need that no model can accuratly portray so far. Thank you for the advice, I think I will do the rest of the calculations outside of SAM, using the values for the wind and solar energy generation.

Have a nice day