Weather Input Variables for SWH?

Hi,

We're planning to meter some weather in addition to performance for a handful of SWH sites. We're hoping to use SAM to also do some modeling for those sites. What weather variables does the SWH model use?

Thanks,
Stephan

Dear Stephan,

The data elements required by each of SAM's performance model is listed in the Weather Data Overview topic in the Help system. For the solar water heating model, the data elements are:

Latitude
Longitude
Elevation above sea level
Hour of day
Direct normal radiation (W/m2)
Global horizontal radiation (W/m2)
Dry bulb temperature (W/m2)

To use the data in SAM, you will need to prepare a file in one of the formats that SAM's solar water heating model can read: TMY3, TMY2, or EPW. You can use SAM's TMY3 creator to correctly format your data in the TMY3 format.

Details about the TMY3 format are available in the TMY3 User's Manual from the National Solar Radiation Database .

Best regards,
Paul.