Updating CWEEDS Weather Files

Updating CWEEDS Weather Files

Introduction:

The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) of Environment Canada (EC) is conducting a PERD (Federal Panel on Energy R&D)-funded project to update Canadian Weather Energy and Engineering Data Set (CWEEDS) and Canadian Weather year for Energy Calculation (CWEC) hourly weather files. CWEC files are the length of one calendar year and represent a “typical” year by providing the most typical month from the long-term CWEEDS files. Each typical month is selected by the TMY (typical meteorological year) method. These files are specifically formatted for use in designing and planning building and solar energy systems. They provide location-specific hourly weather data as input for industry design tools such as Energy Plus for building energy simulation and SAM for solar energy system simulation.

This project concerns updating and expanding this set of files. In addition to updating these files with the most recent data, the following changes will be implemented:

• The CWEEDS file locations corresponding to the 2005 legacy locations will be updated with the following enhancements:
  • GOES satellite-derived solar radiation data from the State University of NY (SUNY) available from 1998-2014 at a 10 km grid for all points in Canada south of 58N will be incorporated into the files for locations and periods for which observed in-situ solar radiation data is not available

Note: The successful bidder will have to sign a non-disclosure agreement with supplier of the satellite-derived solar radiation data.

• Gaps due to missing surface observations (solar radiation, temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction, surface pressure and daily snow on the ground) will be filled so that the files are serially complete for the period 1998-2014

• New CWEEDS files will also be generated based on hourly data availability (at least 10 complete years) for the period 1998-2014
• Distribution of CWEEDS files will only done by EC.
• For each updated CWEEDS file, in addition to CWEC files used for building energy simulation, TMY files selected on direct normal solar radiation (TDY files) will be generated for concentrating solar energy applications
• The TMY files (CWEC, TDY) will be provided in EPW format (the native weather file format of Energy Plus)
• A new data set will be generated by modifying the hourly SUNY data for each grid point over Canada by calculating the solar radiation amounts corresponding to a south-facing surface tilted at the angle of the latitude of the grid point
• A new data set will be generated by merging the SUNY irradiance data at each grid point with surface data for selected elements from the closest NARR reanalysis data at 32-km grid point spacing to greatly increase the spatial coverage of the files

Deliverables (due March 31, 2016):

1. Updated and new CWEEDS files for locations with at least 10 years of data for the period 1998-2014 incorporating SUNY solar radiation data and with gaps due to missing data filled in solar radiation, temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction, station pressure and snow on ground fields for the period 1998-2014
2. CWEC and TDY files for each CWEEDS location generated from the period 1998-2014
3. Hourly, monthly average, and yearly average files with solar radiation on a south-facing surface tilted at the angle of the latitude of the SUNY grid point for each grid point in Canada
4. Hourly files for each SUNY grid point in Canada in EPW format incorporating temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction, surface pressure and snow on ground data from the nearest NARR grid point; individual hourly files will be provided for each year from 1998-2014 and for the CWEC and TDY file selected from 1998-2014.
5. Final report documenting the work done, procedures used and the organization of the data files provided.