Weather Data Type

For hourly energy simulations, the type of data used in the hourly weather data. This information is generally found in the name of the weather data file, as well as in the header of the data file. In the United States, the normal type of data is Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), which represent a year of typical climatic conditions for a location. The data set is composed of 12 months of typical meteorological data concatenated to form a single year with a complete data set for primary measurements. The monthly data sets contain actual meteorological measurements and modeled solar values.

Data Type: 
Constrained List
Category: 
Premises
Unit of Measure: 
None
Sector: 
Commercial, Residential, Multifamily
List Options Option Definition Unit of Measure
CWEC Canadian Weather for Energy Calculations (CWEC); 80 files containing hourly weather observations representing an artificial one-year period specifically designed for building energy calculations; developed by Numerical Logic in collaboration with Environment Canada and the National Research Council of Canada. None
CZRV2 California weather data for the 16 California climate zones used to demonstrate compliance with Title 24 with approved building energy simulation programs. None
IWEC The International Weather for Energy Calculation (IWEC), developed by ASHRAE to represent typical weather data for building energy analysis for 227 locations outside the United States and Canada. This weather data is derived from up to 18 years of DATSAV3 hourly weather data originally archived at the National Climatic Data Center. The weather data is supplemented by solar radiations estimated on an hourly basis from earth-sun geometry and hourly weather elements, particularly cloud amount information. None
None None None
Not applicable Not applicable None
On site measurement Weather data accumulated from on site measurement None
Other Other None
TMY The original Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data was developed at Sandia National Laboratory in 1978 and represents data from 1948 - 1980. None
TMY2 TMY2 was completed in March 1994 by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), contains data for 239 locations, and represents weather data from 1961-1990. None
TMY3 TMY3 was developed by NREL, contains data for 1020 locations, and represents weather data from 1992-2005. None
Unknown Unknown None
Weather station Weather data directly from weather station None
Term ID: fc5a3265-cea2-4b9c-b594-7f55f3b2bbe5

CSV or XML files containing information such as definition, unique ID, and URL for each BEDES Term or List Option can be downloaded by clicking the appropriate orange button. The downloaded file can then be processed offline. Note that the XML documents are simply a "flat file" of terms, not a structured schema.

CSVXML