ecotect weather data files

[Anonymous]

Hi everybody.

I need weather data files of Antalya, Turkiye, or anyone knows how to convert my weather data files (*.txt, excell) -which i measured for my phd thesis individually- to *.wea file?

[Pennetier1]

Hi Arzuozlem, 

I checked the EnergyPlus Weather Data website and did not see Antalya as available; typically, I use these EPW files and convert them into .WEA file using the Weather Manager.

It is possible to convert your excell data into .WEA as well, although there can be quite a bit of gymnastic; first of all you must be sure you have all the data that is required for .wea files:

Hourly data of exterior temperature, solar radiation, humidity, wind speed.  It is important you have hourly data, so you should have 8,760 rows of data.

Within the File menu of the Weather Manager, you can open fixed format weather files or Separated Value weather data, created from your .xls file.

Make sure you use the correct row/columns format when importing.

Another more manual work around:

Use the Hourly Data tab > Edit Hourly Data button.  Now you can actually enter all the actual data in the table for each day of the year.

This IS VERY tedious work, but it works too.

Let me know if you have more question son this topic, otherwise please accept as a solution so that others can benefit from this information.

Cheers,

[cspdse]

Hello,

I have tried to follow your instructions but I regret that I am unable to convert from .xls to epw.

Could you please help me. I will actually use the data files to do a simulation on SAM model.

i have obtained the weather data on an excel sheet.

Thank you.

[Pennetier1]

Hello cspdse, 

You cannot directly convert a .xls file to .wea.

You have to first save your .xls in a Separated Value file; I save my .xls into a .prn file (Formatted Text (Space Delimited)) format.

Once that is done, you can open the Weather Tool > Open > Separated Value Files > look for your .prn file.

Doing so will open the Separated Data window where you can assign the different types of weather data to your file for each column. Make sure you select the correct units per your data file.

I hope that helps.

Let me know if you have more questions on this topic, otherwise please accept as a solution so that others can benefit from this information.

Cheers,

[cspdse]

Hello Olivier,

Thank you for your help.

I have started to work a per your instructions. I have converted the file .xls to .prn and then opened it on ecotect and checked the associated units. 

I do not know what to do next?? how to convert to .epw??

I tried by saving the file to .epw. But I am not sure if it has been properly done.

I am also trying to see the the .prn file data on ecotect, for example relative humidity, wind speed etc, but all the graphs are blank! is this normal?

I am sorry but I am a bit weak on simulation software! 

Thanks for your advise.

Regards,

[Pennetier1]

Hello cspdse, 

Once you have created your .prn or .csv file, you can open it in the Weather Tool under File menu > Open > Separated Value File.

The following window will appear:

What you have to do is to match the Data from the left table to the column of your .csv file as shown at the top of that window.  This allows you to edit your .csv file as you wish - the one I am showing here is a very bear-bone one where I deleted all the columns that the Weather Tool will not use so it is simple.

So I hve 13 columns of data in my .csv file.  I should have 13 row of data header in the right of my import window, each corresponding to the columns of my .csv file.  Watch out for the units.  Make sure it matches what you have in your .csv file.  Even then, sometimes the Weather Tool does not convert correctly, but you have the option to input your own conversion factor.

Once that is imported and you check that your data looks good in the Weather Tool, you can safe the file as a .wea to be used in Ecotect.

You also have the option of saving back as a .epw, but be aware that there are some glitches with the export.  For example, the day of the month becomes Julian Date (1-365), Rainfall data is totally wrong, wind Direction is in km/h instead of m/s (because Weather Tool shows wind speed in km/h and E+ shows in m/s), the wind direction and cloudiness units are also wrong.  So I would be careful.  I assume you need a .epw file to use with Energy Plus?  If the Weather Tool does not work for exporting .epw, i would simply do all my editing in the spreadsheet, matching the correct .epw file format (you can easily open a .epw file in a spreadsheet to check the correct format), and save back as a .epw. Changing the extension .prn or .csv to .epw might just work.

Also, you can always get more info about importing / exporting from this Weater Tool Wiki.

Let me know if you have more questions on this topic, otherwise please accept as a solution so that others can benefit from this information.

Cheers,