Error in Macro: As Built-complete.sam using a PVsyst CSV file

Hi Emiliano,

Would it be possible for you to share a copy of the PVsyst weather file you are trying to convert? It may be that the file format has changed since we wrote that macro.

If you prefer not to post it to the forum, please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Emiliano,

There are several problems with the file you attached (some of these problems are only visible in a text editor):

1. There is only one solar irradiance column for GHI. SAM's photovoltaic models requires any two of GHI, DNI, and DHI.
2. There is no wind speed data. SAM's PV models require wind speed data in m/s.
3. The ambient temperature column for many time steps contains a set of values in quotes like "5,883,333,333,333,330", which is not valid temperature data.
4. The first row of data is for Hour 23 of December 31, 2020. The data should start at Hour 0 of January 1. Note that the last row of data is for Hour 23 of December 31, 2021, which is correct. For hourly data, the file should contain 8760 rows of data (plus header rows).
5. There are rows of commas (empty cells) from Row 8774 to 19452 that may cause problems for the macro.
6. There is a comma at the end of each row that may cause problems.

From the name of the file, it appears that it may be from Solcast. They provide data in the SAM CSV format, so you might try requesting the data in that format so you don't have to run the Weather File Converter macro in SAM.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Emiliano,

Thank you for sharing the PVsyst meteo file.

There are a couple of problems with the file causing SAM's Solar Resource File Converter macro to fail:

• The column delimiters are semicolons. Although the PVsyst format allows for either semicolon or comma delimeters, the SAM macro can only convert files with comma delimiters.
• The column heading for wind data is "Wind". The heading described in the PVsyst documentation and expected by the macro is "WindVel": www.pvsyst.com/help/index.html?meteo_pvsyst_standard_format.htm

The macro should work if you replace semicolons in the file with commas, and change "Wind" in Row 11 to "WindVel".

The macro checks the data in the file after the format conversion. In my tests, the weather file checker found problems with the solar resource data, so I was not able to run a simulation in SAM with the converted file.

We will make some changes to the macro so it provides better feedback about delimiters.

github.com/NREL/SAM/issues/1429

Best regards,
Paul.