I am trying to create some international solar PV and wind turbine project models for several countries. Following the DOE/NREL websites, I obtained weather files for these countries from the
EnergyPlus website
. For each country, I downloaded a zip file with a ".ddy", ".epw", and ".stat" files. The .epw files were readable for solar PV projects, but none of the files were readable for wind projects. Is there some way to convert any of the above formats to a ".srw" or any wind weather format that works with SAM (NOTE: I am still using the 2014.1.14 SAM version)?
SAM's wind model can only read weather files in the SRW format.The wind data in the EPW format may not be suitable for wind power analysis because it is measured at 10 m above the ground, and generally not measured at locations suitable for wind development.
If you want to use the wind data from the EPW file, you should be able to create an SRW file using the file format description in Help (Weather Data, Weather File Formats) as a guide. You may also want to use one of the SRW file included with SAM as an example (see
C:\SAM\2014.1.14\weather in Windows). Both the EPW and SRW file formats are comma-separated, so you should be able to do the conversion using a spreadsheet program.
Best regards,
Paul.
