Our office is modeling a particular project in Castlegar BC using eQuest.
Unfortunately Castlegar is not one of the few Canadian built-in regions, nor is it really effectively represented by one of the built-in regions.
Where can one obtain bin data for the various "other" regions?
Or, how can one create bin data for a particular region?
Does anyone have any references for what the structure of a bin file is or what the process is for encoding the data?
As a minor aside,
I had a look in EE4 and Castlegar BC is a built-in region, however a more in-depth look shows that when Castlegar is selected EE4 refers to the Summerland BC bin data.
In this instance does EE4 make any changes to the Summerland data to better reflect Castlegar?
It was my hope that if I could find a bin file for Castlegar in EE4 I could use that file in eQuest.
Would the files be interchangeable?
Your input is greatly appreciated,
Justin C. Allaire, EIT
To answer your aside, yes the EE4 .bin files are interchangeable with
eQUEST .bin files. However, EE4 does not modify the Summerland data
when running it for Castlegar -- it is just the closest weather set in
the 43 Canadian CWEC sites.
If you can obtain hourly weather data for Castlegar, there is a weather
processor which will convert it from a pre-formated text file (a .FT
file) into a binary .bin weather file. The trick is getting the data
for Castlegar. I am not aware of any data closer than Summerland.
Attached is the weather processor manual which describes the formate of
the text file and the data you will need to obtain.
Good luck.
Brian