[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] Re: Modifying a weather file to reflect "real" weather



Assuming you have global horizontal radiation data from a site within, 
say, 10 km of your test location, you need to separate the direct and 
diffuse components, which can be done with one of many possible methods, 
including Maxwell's. Then you have to calculate the  sky diffuse and 
reflected diffuse components for your walls and other tilted surfaces. 
These two steps currently rely on empirical models, which have two known 
problems: (i) they introduce considerable random hourly errors and 
sometimes significant bias errors, and (ii) you never know where model A 
will perform better than model B, precisely because of their empirical 
nature.

I recently published on this issue in Solar Energy, using high-class 
measured data from Golden (NREL) to test these various combinations. 
There were many surprises in the results, but for Michigan, North 
Carolina or elsewhere, other combinations of models might have to be 
recommended, since the cloud, aerosol and water vapor regimes are different.

In many instances, particularly for prevailing clear-sky conditions, my 
tests also showed that it is more accurate to use meteorological data to 
calculate the direct and diffuse components directly than to separate 
them from measured global radiation.

Chris

>
> In North Carolina, we have a series of EcoNet monitoring stations for 
> agricultural research which capture global horizontal radiation. You 
> can map this into direct beam and diffuse radiation with the 
> correlation developed by Maxwell. See:
>
> http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/pdfs/3087.pdf
>
> I don't know where you can get a ready-made program to do this 
> computation. I wrote one myself. It has given nice results in 
> comparing measured solar thermal yield with modeled predictions under 
> a variety of partly cloudy to full sun conditions using the global 
> horizontal value as the input, so I have come to trust it. My program 
> is proprietary and not validated by external authority, so I'm not in 
> a position to offer it at this point. However, this is one way to 
> accomplish what you want if you have a local source of global 
> horizontal radiation and ability to turn Maxwell's method into a 
> computer program.
>


-- 
Chris A. Gueymard, PhD
Solar Consulting Services
P.O. Box 392
Colebrook, NH 03576, USA
Tel. (603) 237-8550
Fax  (603) 237-5314
http://www.SolarConsultingServices.com



------------------------------------

The primary EnergyPlus web site is found at:
http://www.energyplus.gov

The group web site is:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyPlus_Support/

Attachments are not allowed -- please post any files to the appropriate folder in the Files area of the Support Web Site.

EnergyPlus Documentation is searchable.  Open EPlusMainMenu.pdf under the Documentation link and press the "search" button.
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyPlus_Support/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyPlus_Support/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:EnergyPlus_Support-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    mailto:EnergyPlus_Support-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    EnergyPlus_Support-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/