Hi, Zach (?),
I didn't see this post at first because it was marked as Spam. I was also made aware by Neal of your posts on Unmethours, which explained more what you're trying to do. I'll limit my post here just to answer your question below, and then respond separately on Unmethours to your other questions.
I've actually used WU data only for US locations that are not contained in the Integrated Surface Database (ISD) maintained by the US National Climatic Data Center (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/isd) that contains roughly 8,000-9,000 active weather stations around the world. Since WU stations never report Cloud Cover and only a tiny fraction of them record solar radiation, what I do is to use the Cloud Cover data from the nearest ISD station. This is quite handy for me because I've been processing the entire ISD data base for the past 5 years. I'm not sure whether NCDC has put the ISD in a more acessible format (*.CSV ?), but I'm still working with the raw text files.
However, knowing from Unmethours that you're interested in Cardiff, Wales, I know there are two ISD locations for Cardiff, which opens up the question whether the data from WU is even needed. There's also a high probability that the data might be the same, since WU contains both Personal Weather Stations (PWS), mostly in the US, and official weather station, i.e., the same ones that report to the ISD.
The other thought is that Lukas Rokka in Sweden created a Real-Time Weather Converter that can create a historical weather file combining the ISD (!) with satellite-derived solar from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (STRÅNG) for any place in Northern Europe, including the entire UK. I have never had need to try it, but you might find it useful ( https://sites.google.com/site/weatherconverter/ ). If you do, do me a favor and let me know what you find out.
Joe
Joe Huang White Box Technologies, Inc. 346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A Moraga CA 94556 yjhuang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data (o) (925)388-0265 (c) (510)928-2683 "building energy simulations at your fingertips"
On 6/22/2015 2:27 PM,
zachl1220@xxxxxxxxx [EnergyPlus_Support] wrote:
Hi Joe!
Any suggestions on where to find cloud cover/solar radiation data to supplement the WU data like you mentioned?
Thanks!
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Posted by: Joe Huang <yjhuang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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