Dear all,
We are a group of students working on an academic project, regarding energy
simulation for design, and the site is in EI Yunque national forest in
Puerto Rico. Since it is a rain forest the weather data from San Juan is of
no use. Does anyone happen to have the weather data from the site, or from
a site with a similar weather?
Thank you,
Liuwei, Irene, and Blanca
Try Weather Analytics ... http://www.weatheranalytics.com/
You should be able to get a weather file for the rain forest.
I think you're much better off getting the weather data for the nearest location in Puerto
Rico, than some generic site with similar weather (how would you know that it's similar,
anyway?). There are 6-7 weather stations in Puerto Rico in the TMY3 weather data set, of
which the closest to El Yunque is Roosevelt-Roads 16 km to the east, but on the coast.
The other alternative is a station called Palmer 16 kilometer to the north, for which
Weather Underground seems to have data (search www.wunderground.com). However, converting
Weather Underground weather data to usable files for EnergyPlus simulations would take
some effort. I've done that twice, and it could easily take a day or two of work.
I assume that you're concerned with the microclimate differences between the rain forest
and the nearby locations. I think you can only get those if there is a weather station
within the rain forest. I frankly don't think you can reliably get such the microclimatic
differences using modeled weather data, except for possibly adiabatic expansion
(temperature depression) due to differences in elevation. Having said that, it's also easy
to do the same adiabatic correction using measured data. Unless you find hourly measured
data from the rain forest itself, my recommendation would be to use Roosevelt-Roads TMY3
and correct for the elevation if you're so interested.
Joe Huang