How to use utility rate calculator in another project

Hello everybody,

I'm new to SAM and am very impressed with what I see!

I saw that SAM included a utility rate calculator.  Was this developed originally for SAM or did it come from another open source project?

We're developing an open source project (opentaps.org) where I'd like to be able to calculate the actual value of past energy savings and renewable energy generated, based on utility rates.  I'd like to be able to use this utility rate calculator I found in SAM if possible.

Thanks!

HI Si Chen,

SAM's utility rate calculator is in the utilityrate5 compute module of SSC. It was written specifically for SAM, and is not based on a different project.

You could use the SDK (or PySAM) to run the utilityrate5 module as a standalone component, as long as you can set values of all of the input variables correctly.

The instructions on the SDK page should provide resource to help you learn how to do this:

sam.nrel.gov/software-development-kit-sdk.html

If you try that approach and have questions, please feel free to follow up!

Best regards,
Paul.

Thanks!  We'll check that out then.