"Try" weather files

Michael Hurd · Post by **Michael Hurd** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:28 am -1100

I have finally located the weather data I need to add US cities to WUFI. I have taken a year for one city that I want to add to WUFI and used the Excel spreadsheet within the WUFI tools to attempt to create a "try" file. I copied and pasted the information into the spreadsheet from the weather data CD we purchased, but when I hit the "export to .try file" button I get error messages. All fields within the spreadsheet are filled in with either a value or a "0". I have named this particular file "austin.try". Do you have any guidance or suggestion as to what I might be doing wrong? I have tried this with the Description, Name of Station, Longitude, Latitude, Height and dUTC fields populated and unpopulated and either way I get the same errors. I can take the blank spreadsheet in the tools folder add nothing to it and it will create a .try file so I must be doing something wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

Manfred Kehrer · Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:39 pm -1100

Dear Mr. Hurd,

please tell me which error message appears on the screen.

Release of WUFI® 4.1 will be within 3 weeks (free update for WUFI® 4.0 users). We introduced a new Climate format where the users can specify all the channels he would like to use and we also have a new Excel spead sheet.

Michael Hurd · Post by **Michael Hurd** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:57 am -1100

Manfred, I figured it out late yesterday, I didn't realize that the relative humidity range for the spreadsheet is from 0.00 to 1.0. The data I copied from the weather cd we purchased had RH expressed lin terms ike 55%. So, I changed all the numbers and then the spreadsheet worked. I did notice that the calculation times greatly increased when I used the "TRY" file. I also got a lot of convergence failures, one of my calculations produced over 1700 convergence failures. I am concerned that somehow in entering the data into the spreadsheet or setting up the calculation in WUFI I may have done something incorrectly. I am going to go back through and make sure that I set the Long wave emissivity to "0" since the "TRY" file had the counterradiation set to zero. Thanks again, how will we know when the new release is available to us?

Michael Hurd · Post by **Michael Hurd** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:15 am -1100

Manfred, I think I figured out why I received so many convergence failures. I hadn't set the long wave emissivity to zero, I had tried and didn't notice that it wouldn't let me enter zero. I switched the short wave absorpitivity to user defined, placed a number in that field and then placed zero in the long wave field - if you could just confirm that is the correct approach I would appreciate it - thanks! I ran the calcs again with this set up and the convergence failures dropped to zero. The calc also went much faster.

Manfred Kehrer · Wed Jan 17, 2007 5:00 am -1100

Yes, this is correct
To be compatible to earlier calculations we still use a simple off radiation model if the user has selected a TRY file. To deactivate this features you have to set the long wave emissivity (which is also the long wave absorptivity according to the law of kirchhoff) to zero.

Please save all the data of your Excel sheets which produces TRY files to be able to create the new WAC climate files in WUFI® 4.1. Of course you can use the TRY files also, but as you have seen, there are a lot of information in the TRY which you have to take care about only to satisfy the format.

I can send you the new sheet if you like.

Bye,

Manfred

Michael Hurd · Post by **Michael Hurd** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:35 am -1100

Manfred, I'd love to get a copy of the new spreadsheet. Also, I was wondering, does the current version of WUFI have any provisions for analyzing multiple years of weather to create a "cold year" and "warm year"? If not will the new release have this capability? I think ORNL gave us a copy of a weather analyzer that will do this task, I was just wondering if WUFI can/will to simplify matters further.

Manfred Kehrer · Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:44 pm -1100

I will send you the sheet. If you have data of cold and warm years you are able to create a file which contains more than 1 year. WUFI® will always read data from the file until the end of file is reached so you are able to use alternating years.

serenewongsa · Post by **serenewongsa** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:43 am -1100

Michael,
Where did you find the weather data that you used for the spreadsheet? I'm also trying to find data for cities that WUFI does not already have .wac files for.

Michael Hurd · Post by **Michael Hurd** » Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:22 am -1100

I know its been a long time, but I hadn't noticed that you asked where I got my weather data - I purchased a CD from NOAA - I believe they have 3 different CD's with data for different portions of the United States. You want the ones with data from 1961 to 1990 so that you have enough info to create the average warm and cold years.

WUFI