scripting with TMY or TMY2

Hello,

I have been using the following script borrowed from a SAM example file.

localfile = targetdir + "/weather_" + grid + ".tm2.gz"
url = " mercator.nrel.gov/perez_tdy/ " + dir + "/radwx_" + grid + "_9805.tm2.gz"

Is the weather data from mercator.nrel.gov TMY or TMY2 data? I would like to have my scripting results in SAM be comparable to results from using the PV Watts version 1.

Thank you.
Mary

Hi Mary,

PVWatts Version 1 uses TMY2 files from the National Solar Radiation Database for U.S. locations. When you install SAM, it copies a complete set of of the TMY2 files to \exelib\climate_files in the SAM installation folder (C:\SAM\2013.1.15 by default for the Windows version of SAM 2013.1.15).

You can write your script to read those files instead of downloading files from the mercator.nrel.gov server if you want to use the same weather files as PVWatts Version 1.

Best regards,
Paul.