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An issue tracker for NREL's APIs available at https://developer.nrel.gov
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Solar resource files used for Australia stations #174

Closed emrebayramc closed 3 years ago

emrebayramc commented 4 years ago

Hi, I am trying to understand PVWatts API results better. One part the underlying library uses is a black box for me. the Solar resource file (solar_resource_file). When I made a request the API returns to me and tells it is using for example ""solar_resource_file": "947670.tm3"". But is it possible to know what is the content of 947670.tm3 ? The reason I am asking when I am manually using SAM or PySAM and if I use energyplus.net data OR this one I am getting very different AC results (upto 10%) although all the other parameters are same. It would be great if you can provide the source of that data so I can understand why my analysis very different from PVWatts results.

Thanks in advance!

emrebayramc commented 4 years ago

In addition to above question(but very related) if we are using years 1998-2009 for example; is there a reason we choose this range? Maybe solar cycles(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_23)? (Then it should be 1996-2008 tho). Sorry for all noob questions in advance.

reger commented 3 years ago

@kazanture there is no access to the files via the pvwatts API, but you can read about the weather data files used by SAM and where to get them here: https://sam.nrel.gov/weather-data.html. The pvwatts API (v6) uses the NSRDB dataset by default, but you can choose to use TMY2, TMY3, or an international stations dataset (see the dataset param in the API docs). The Help doc for the PVWatts Calculator (https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/) has a good description as well. You can also reach out to the pvwatts team directly via pvwatts@nrel.gov.