Flat Plate PV model - user entered hourly data for electric load

Need help with entering 15 min data.

I have created a single column with 8760 x 4 rows of data in excel spread sheet.

In the Edit data option, I changed the time step to 15.

copied and pasted the column containing 8760 x 4 rows and Ok

For some reason, I am not getting the total kWh from the load data

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

Joe Judge

Dear Joe,
Please open the file with a text editor and make sure there are no commas at the end of rows.
Also, be sure that your data starts in Row 2 (Row 1 is for header information). The file should have a total of 8760 x 4 + 1 rows.
If your file still does not work, please attach a copy of it to your original post, and I will try to help troubleshoot it.
Best regards,
Paul.

Thanks Paul.

While reviewing the manual:

Under the Time Step and Convention - For sub-hourly data, SAM requires a column of 8,760 ÷ Number of Times Steps per Hour rows, with kilowatt values representing the average electric power over the period of a single time step.

I noticed that for the sub-hourly data, the code is dividing 8760 hours by the number of steps and not multiply .

Am I missing something here?

Thanks for your help.

Joe

Hi Joe,
That is a typo. The electric load data file should have 1 header row + 8760 x number of time steps per hour data rows. The header row is is the first row. An hourly data file would have a total of 8761 rows. A 15-minute data file would have 1 + 8760 x 4 = 35,041 rows.
The best way to check the file format is to export a test file from the Edit Data window, which you open from the Electric Load page by clicking User entered hourly data and then Edit Data.
I will fix the description in Help.
Best regards,

Paul.