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Solar Radiation Data

Energy Partners produces publications and software:

  • Australian Solar Radiation Data Handbook (ASRDH) - 46 Tables for each of 28 Locations, 55 Maps (7 in Full Colour) ;
     
  • Australian SOLar RADiation software (AUSOLRAD) - Any orientation (including sun-tracking), Any tilt (including facing down), Any overhang, Any ground albedo (reflectance).

Preview the ASRDH here

 

Energy Partners is developing the Exemplary Australian Solar Energy Atlas (Exemplary ASEA):

  • Climatic averages and other statistics for defined areas including the whole of Australia
     
  • Global irradiation or direct beam values on a horizontal or sun-tracking plane
     

Energy Partners produces targeted data sets extracted from the Exemplary ASEA database:

  • Engineering averages and other statistics as for the ASRDH and AUSOLRAD
     
  • Hourly time series for any location (as geographically focused as 5 x 5 km)
     

 

International Conference on Energy and Meteorology (ICEM)

Energy Partners supported the first ICEM in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia from 8 to 11 November 2011 and made two presentations at that event: on "Solar and Coincident Weather Data" and on "Climate Data for Building Optimisation"

 

Specialised Climate Data and Applications

Typical Meteorological Years prepared with non-standard weighting of the weather elements for specific applications:

  • Focused on wind speed and temperature for wind farm evaluation;
     
  • Focused on irradiation and temperature for solar farm evaluation;
     
  • Focused on wet bulb and dry bulb temperature for deep plan building evaluation;
     
  • Focused on temperature and irradiation for day-lit and passive solar building evaluation.

Typical Meteorological Years prepared for new locations.

Extreme Meteorological Years prepared for any location.

Predicted Future Typical Meteorological Year (ersatz data) prepared for any location with a forecast future climate.

Typical Meteorological Years prepared for any location but based on, say, the last decade's weather only.

Immediate Past Meteorological Years prepared for any location on a real time basis for building and/or system performance evaluation against its design expectation.

Some examples of this work appear below.

CHANGING CLIMATE: ERSATZ FUTURE WEATHER DATA FOR LIFELONG SYSTEM EVALUATION

Trevor Lee

ABSTRACT

Buildings and their renewable energy systems typically operate for a lifecycle of well over 20 years. Due to this the climate that a new building or renewable energy system will experience, will change over their effective functional lifetime. It is therefore crucial that these buildings and systems are designed with due consideration of a changing climate (BRANZ, 2005).

This paper discusses how Ersatz Future Metrological Year (EFMY) climate files are created and used to more reliably predict future system responses in changed climates.

Using simulation software, comparison is made between the EFMY files representing a future climate and the current weather files to ascertain any costs and benefits that they present.

Download Lee - Paper 1294 - Changing Climate - Ersatz Weather Data for IBPSA 2011.pdf (PDF - 312k)

 

CLIMATE DATA FOR BUILDING OPTIMISATION IN DESIGN AND OPERATION IN AUSTRALIA

Trevor Lee

ABSTRACT

In many simulations of energy systems, climate is represented as Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data. The approach derives hourly meteorological variables from historic records to represent annual climate for a given location. While meeting the need for comparability and indicativeness, the technique suffers from incapacity to provide information on extreme weather events, like heat waves or passing tropical cyclones, for projected future weather patterns in a changed climate, for building types (e.g. deep plan or envelope dominated) or for specific actual periods of concern.

This paper describes a modified approach whereby representative data may be selected for a targeted purpose and applied to the respective simulation models.

Download Lee - Paper 1298 - Climate Data For Building Optimisation for IBPSA 2011.pdf (PDF - 228k)