DesignBuilder uses EnergyPlus format hourly weather data to define external conditions during simulations. Each location has a separate file describing the external temperature, solar radiation, atmospheric conditions etc. for every hour of the year at that location. These hourly weather data sets are often "Typical Year" data derived from hourly observations at a specific location by National weather services. Examples of these Typical Year data sources include TMY2 and WYEC2 in the United States and Canada and TRY (CEC 1985) in Europe. See Sources of EnergyPlus Hourly Weather Data for more information on the hourly weather data itself and how to obtain it.
Because hourly weather data is not always available for every location, it may be necessary to use weather data for a nearby location which represents the weather of the actual site. Alternatively, with a licence for Climate Analytics it is possible to create hourly weather files for custom locations by interpolating between up to 4 existing stations.
The hourly weather data supplied with DesignBuilder has been obtained from the Weather section of the EnergyPlus website and processed using the DesignBuilder weather data translator, but you can use any weather data provided it is in the correct EnergyPlus epw file format.
See also the Site level data and weather files and Hourly weather data tutorials
DesignBuilder comes with a database of hourly weather data but the EnergyPlus epw files are not loaded onto your computer until you actually need them. The first time you require an hourly weather data file it is automatically downloaded from the DesignBuilder Website into the Weather data folder on your computer where it can be accessed by EnergyPlus for any subsequent simulations. You must be connected to the Internet to download weather data in this way.
When you select an hourly weather data set on the Location tab at Site level, you do not select the file directly, but rather an hourly weather data component, which in turn references the actual file. It works this way to allow us to supply a database of hourly weather data locations without needing to include hundreds of large hourly weather files.
When editing an hourly weather data component there are two tabs on the Hourly Weather Data dialog:
See also:
Template data can be accessed: