Inputs and outputs from large parametric analysis

I would like to use SAM to run a large parametric analysis. Specifically, I want to model similar PV arrays at roughly 550 individual sites and obtain time series outputs of the DC and AC energy production for input to other simulations.

I know I can implement this sort of study via the SDK (likely the way I will do it), but I am also wondering if it is possible to do efficiently from within the SAM GUI. The relevant questions seem to be:

1. Can I import (or copy/paste) a list of which TMY3 files I want to run in the parametric analysis, to avoid needing to manually select all ~550 of them?

2. For time series output, I see that if I save a CSV I can get time series as CSV string entries that are semicolon ; delimited. However, this makes a really giant CSV file when I run 550 simulations, each with DC and AC power as time series output. Is there a way to instead automatically pipe the time series output to individual results files for every simulation that I can later parse?

Incidentally, when I run so many parametric simulations within SAM and include time series as outputs, the plots it automatically generates (in the beta version) take a very long time to display. I don't really need the plots to auto-display and would like to turn them off to save time, if possible. Is there an option for that?

Thanks. I will check out the scripting features.

Hi Paul,

I'm making good progress but stuck on efficiently extracting time series outputs from each simulation. Can you provide an example of how to generate a multi-column CSV using the new LK script?

Here's what I have so far:
// Get time series output
output = [
get('dc_gross'),
get('dc_net'),
get('ac_gross'),
get('ac_net')
];

// Write time series output
csvwrite(cases + '_' + locs[j], output);

The downside is that (a) there are no headers, and (b) the outputs are transposed from the usual layout (timestamps are by column but should be by row).

EDIT: Never mind! It was as simple as switching to a table structure...

// Get time series output
output = {
'dc_gross' = get('dc_gross'),
'dc_net' = get('dc_net'),
'ac_gross' = get('ac_gross'),
'ac_net' = get('ac_net')
};

// Write time series output
csvwrite(cases + '_' + locs[j], output);

Output looks like...
dc_gross,dc_net,ac_gross,ac_net
0,0,-0.0012,-0.001188
0,0,-0.0012,-0.001188
...