What are weather years for energy simulations and how do they differ from other types of weather or climate data?
Short answer Weather years for energy calculations, such as IWEC, WYEC2, CWEC, TRY_ROW (see Abbreviations), TMY, TMY2, and TMY3 are single years for specific locations comprising of 8760 hourly records of various climatic parameters such as temperature, atmospheric moisture, and insolation. The files are complete with no entries flagged as missing. These single year files do not represent a single year of contiguous measured data but rather are composite years comprising months from different years, selected using statistical criteria (usually the F-S statistic), and modified at the end and beginning of the months to ensure a smooth transition between the non-sequential data. Entries flagged as missing are interpolated. Hourly weather observations, such as those from the NSRDB, represent continuous sequences of measured (or modeled) archived data over a period of record that may contain missing elements. Weather years for energy calculations are derived from such archives. Long answer
