Month Albedo - by used edit

Paul,

I was wondering if there is a code that I can input into SAM or a way to enter Albedo values in smaller increments than monthly value? When I run a parametric sweep for max current, I use the whether file albedo to start out. If I see a large number of Albedo/snow events occurring I will then go in and adjust all high Albedo month to 0.9 and the other months to 0.3 to add a little more uniformity and conservancy to my maximum current analysis.

However, what I've noticed time and again is that both April and November only have high albedos for about half of the month, I would like to be able to adjust November and April so that SAM applies different Albedos for the first and second half of the month. The only way that I've found to get around this is to take the non-adjusted albedo and merge it with the adjusted albedo output in order to create a more accurate ampacity run.

Thanks,

Bill Warnock

Hi Bill,

It is only possible to specify albedo values either as monthly values or times series values (hourly or subhourly over one year). To do what you want to accomplish, you would have to add the albedo data to the weather file and set the "Use albedo value in weather file if it exists" (use_wf_albedo ) to 1.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Paul, 

Thanks for the quick reply, any chance there will be an update to SAM in the future that will include a similar option to the User edited Albedo settings? Unfortunately, we use all-weather files on record when we do a parametric sweep so going in and adjusting each one of them would not be a timely solution compared to what we are currently doing.

Thanks, 

Bill Warnock

Hi Bill,

We do not have any immediate plans to modify the way albedo is modeled in SAM.

A good place to see what we are working on is the SAM GitHub Issues list, where you can also make feature requests:

github.com/NREL/SAM/issues

Best regards,
Paul.