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Weather years module

How does it work?​

The ETM allows for the uploading of weather demand and capacity profiles. This includes 12 heat demand profiles for households, as well as a heat demand profile for buildings and a heat demand profile for agriculture. This weather years tool (previously named: heat module) can generate these profiles based on weather data. The heat_demand column in the scenario_list file determines where the base input data or profiles for that scenario can be found. This can be customised per scenario, so you can update multiple scenarios with different profiles at the same time.

Setting up the input files​

A custom subfolder with name as specified in the heat_demand column should be provided in the input/curves folder. There is the possibility to either generate heat demand profiles by supplying required input data to this folder, or to provide heat demand profiles that only need to be uploaded.

Generate heat demand profiles​

To generate custom weather demand profiles and upload them directly, there are five csv files that can be provided in the subfolder:

  • temperature: the outside temperature in degrees C for all 8760 hours of the year.
  • irradiation: the irradiation in J/cm2 for all 8760 hours of the year.
  • thermostat: a file with three columns (low, medium, high), with thermostat settings for 24 hours.
  • G2A_parameters: a file containing paramaters to dertermine the demand profile (G2A profile) for the buildings/services sector. The csv contains three columns (reference, slope, constant) and values for all 8760 hours of the year.
  • wind_speed: wind speed values in m/s for all 8760 hours of the year.

Based on the provided input data, the profiles listed below will be generated. Note that temperature, irradiation and thermostat are required to generate the weather/insulation_xxx profiles. To generate the weather/buildings_heating and weather/agriculture_heating profiles, the temperature, G2A_parameters and wind_speed are required.

Generated curves:

  - weather/insulation_terraced_houses_high
  - weather/insulation_terraced_houses_medium
  - weather/insulation_terraced_houses_low
  - weather/insulation_apartments_high
  - weather/insulation_apartments_medium
  - weather/insulation_apartments_low
  - weather/insulation_semi_detached_houses_high
  - weather/insulation_semi_detached_houses_medium
  - weather/insulation_semi_detached_houses_low
  - weather/insulation_detached_houses_high
  - weather/insulation_detached_houses_medium
  - weather/insulation_detached_houses_low
  - weather/buildings_heating
  - weather/agriculture_heating

The generated curves will automatically uploaded to the ETM scenario. Additionally, the generated curves will be exported to the output folder with structure output/curves/scenario_short_name, where short_name refers to the short scenario name as provided in the short_name column of your scenario list file.

Provide heat demand profiles​

Instead of generating the above-mentioned profiles it is possible to provide these directly. The profiles should then be provided in the created subfolder in the input/curves folder. The name of the provided csv files should be as listed above without weather/, for instance insulation_terraced_houses_high.csv, buildings_heating.csv.

Either all 12 insulation_xxx profiles need to be provided, otherwise the tool will try to calculate the profiles from the required input data. Similarly, both the buildings_heating and agriculture_heating need to be provided and will otherwise be generated.

Runnning the script​

Note that the weather years functionality can be run as part of the scenario_from_csv tool or as a separate tool. Consult the documentation of the scenario_from_csv tool if you want to run the weather years functionality as part of this tool.

If you want to run the weather years tool separately, please note that an existing scenario ID needs to be provided in the scenario_id column of the scenario_list file.

To run the weather years tool separately in pipenv, run:

pipenv run weather_years

Running the script with basic Python instead:

python weather_years.py