[Bldg-sim] Binned weather data for US (not the equest weather file)

Joe Huang yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
Thu Jan 10 16:15:08 PST 2013


I don't understand the concern about needing to do binning of multiple number of years, and why that would affect the accuracy of a bin program any more than saying we should do hourly simulations with a dozen historical years instead of with a single typical year file. The loss in accuracy must be around a percent or so.

I feel that typical year weather files have been unfairly characterized as bland, misses the extremes, etc. That would be true if the typical months were picked based only on their averages. However, the TMY methodology developed by NREL is much better than that. It picks the month with a frequency distribution closest to the long-term FD. So, it doesn't throw out extremes at all; it just tries to replicate the long-term distribution with the best that can be done using a single-year of record.  

If you compare the 0.4% condition between the historical record and a typical year weather file, you'll find statistical scatter rather than bias.  

In summary, the only conclusion one can make about typical year files is that their frequency distribution is more coarse because they've only got 8760 observations. From the analysis that I've done, I found the biggest effect and concern is with the period of record chosen in their creation. All the other perceived defects, weighting scheme, are quite secondary.

Sent from my iPhone 
Joe Huang
White Box Technologies
346 Rheem Blvd Suite 108D
Moraga CA 94556
(o) 1(925)388-0265
(c) 1(510)928-2683
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com

On Jan 10, 2013, at 1:14 PM, "Wyman, Kevin L            CCS" <Kevin.Wyman at carrier.utc.com> wrote:

> True they are 30 years worth of data (a tad longer than 10 years) points with the extremes thrown out but you are using binned data. How accurate of a calculation are you really getting anyway? If one were using bin data I would suggest that throughing out the extremes would be warranted. 
> 
> Kevin
> 
> Kevin L. Wyman, P.E.
> LEED AP
> Applications Manager
> Carrier Corporation
> One Carrier Place
> Farmington, CT 06032
> (860) 284-3922 (V)
> (860) 660-0723 (F)
> (860) 882-9595 (M)
> kevin.wyman at carrier.utc.com
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bradley, Brian [mailto:Brian.Bradley at NRCan-RNCan.gc.ca]
> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 04:09 PM
> To: Wyman, Kevin L            CCS; 'jglazer at gard.com' <jglazer at gard.com>; 'bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org' <bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org>
> Subject: RE: [Bldg-sim] Binned weather data for US (not the equest weather file)
> 
> 
> The problem with TMY files is that they only have 8760 observations. You should use at least 10 years of actual hourly air temperatures to get a good sample, particularly the extremes.
> 
> Brian Bradley
> NRCAN
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Wyman, Kevin L CCS
> Sent: January 10, 2013 15:04
> To: 'jglazer at gard.com'; 'bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org'
> Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] Binned weather data for US (not the equest weather file)
> 
> Or you can easily make your own bin data using TMY3 data files and MS Excel's Histogram function. Works like a charm and the cost is right :) and you can set the bins to match whatever bin size you want. Use some Pivot Table functionality and you can cut those bins down to only occuppied hours etc. 
> 
> 
> Kevin L. Wyman, P.E.
> LEED AP
> Applications Manager
> Carrier Corporation
> One Carrier Place
> Farmington, CT 06032
> (860) 284-3922 (V)
> (860) 660-0723 (F)
> (860) 882-9595 (M)
> kevin.wyman at carrier.utc.com
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jason Glazer [mailto:jglazer at gard.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 03:50 PM
> To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org <bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org>
> Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] Binned weather data for US (not the equest weather file)
> 
> The updated Engineering Weather Data to cover 1973-1996 and put it on a CD
> 
> http://ols.nndc.noaa.gov/plolstore/plsql/olstore.prodspecific?prodnum=5005
> 
> It is only $17 now.
> 
> Jason
> 
> 
> On 1/10/2013 2:42 PM, Joe Huang wrote:
>> What do you mean by binned weather data?  Like what was in the Air 
>> Force Engineering Weather Data manual from 1978?
>> You might check ASHRAE's Weather Data Viewer that can produce binned 
>> temperature data for over 5,000 locations around the world.  It's not 
>> free, though, costs $119.
>> 
>> Joe
>> 
>> Joe Huang
>> White Box Technologies, Inc.
>> 346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 108D
>> Moraga CA 94556
>> yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
>> www.whiteboxtechnologies.com
>> (o) (925)388-0265
>> (c) (510)928-2683
>> "building energy simulations at your fingertips"
>> 
>> 
>> On 1/10/2013 11:48 AM, R B wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>> Is there a way to get binned weather data for different locations - 
>>> preferably free. A quick google search did not come up with anything 
>>> concrete.
>>> Thanks
>>> -Rohini
>>> 
>>> 
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> 
> --
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