Weather data in SAM

Hello DM,

SAM's solar models require a complete weather file (one year's worth of hourly or subhourly data), except for the pvwattsv5_1ts SSC module, which simulates a PV system for one time step.

We are working on a version of pvsamv1 that works on a single time step, but it is not yet available.

Otherwise, to run a simulation with weather data for part of a year, you could put the data for the time of interest into the correct rows of an existing weather file and ignore the results for the other time steps. For example, if you have weather data for June 6 through June 25, you could replace the data in the rows for those days, and then ignore results for the other times.

Best regards,
Paul.

Thank you Matan!

Just one clarification: SAM only supports weather files that contain one year's worth of data, assuming 8,760 hours per year (so no leap day). While this requirement did originate from the convention used for NREL's original TMY weather files, the data in the file is not required to be typical meteorological year (TMY) data.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Matan,

We are working to make it possible to run pvsamv1 for single time steps which will make it easier to do the kind of analysis you describe. This will be available with the next version of SAM, which we plan to release later this fall:

github.com/NREL/ssc/issues/288

Best regards,
Paul.