Typical meteorological year

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A typical meteorological year (TMY) is a collation of selected weather data for a specific location, generated from a data bank much longer than a year in duration. It is specially selected so that it 'showcases' the range of weather phenomena for the location in question: the coldest typical conditions, the hottest typical conditions, the strongest rainfall, etc, while still giving annual averages that are consistent with the long-term averages for the location in question.

TMY data is frequently used in building simulation, in order to assess the expected heating and cooling costs for the design of the building. It is also used by designers of solar energy systems including solar domestic hot water systems and large scale solar thermal power plants.

The first TMY collection was based on 229 locations in the US and was collected between 1948 and 1980. The second edition of the TMY is called "TMY 2". It is based on 237 stations collecting data between 1961 and 1990. The TMY2 data include Precipitable water column (precipitable moisture), which is important in predicting radiative cooling.

The commercial software TRNSYS supports simulations using TMY data. Currently, it provides a limited set of TMY data for free with its demonstration version. TMY data specific for your location will usually need to be paid for, however.

See also:

• http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/tmy2/ - contains TMY2 data for 239 locations in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

• Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment - Contains TMY data for Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya) Asia and Pacific (Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka) & Latin America and Caribbean (Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua)