Weather files for energy simulation
Building thermoenergetic simulation is an essential tool for assessing energy performance, thermal comfort, and energy consumption under different climatic conditions. To ensure realistic and comparable results, it is essential to use climate data files representative of the location under study.
What are weather files?
Weather files are sets of meteorological data organized for use in simulation software such as EnergyPlus, DesignBuilder, OpenStudio, and others. These files contain hourly information on variables such as:
- Air temperature
- Relative humidity
- Solar radiation
- Wind speed and direction
- Cloud cover
- Precipitation (in some formats)
This data allows you to simulate the thermal and energy behavior of a building over the course of a typical year.
Tipes of weather files:
In the Brazilian and international context, the main types of climate files used for simulation are:
- TMY - Typical Meteorological Year - is a synthetic year. It is constructed using a standardized methodology (ISO 15927-4) that selects representative months within the analysis period (10, 15, 20 years, etc.) to form a representative year. In other words, a hypothetical TMY using data from 2007-2021 might have data from January 2009, February 2011, March 2007, and so on.
- TRY - Test Reference Year - is a synthetic year. Similar to TMY, it also uses representative months, but with different (smoother) criteria. The goal is to represent typical average conditions for standardized testing and technical comparison of a representative typical year.
- AMY - Actual Meteorological Year - is formed using real, continuous data from one year.
Weather file sources:
We recommed the use of the following sources:
🔽ClimateOneBuilding (recommended!)
Cite as:
Lawrie, Linda K, Drury B Crawley. 2022. Development of Global Typical Meteorological Years (TMYx). https://climate.onebuilding.org
🔽TRY e SWERA (not recommended)
🔽INMET 2016 (not recommended)
🔽INMET 2018 (not recommended)