[Equest-users] Test your knowledge of simulation weather file formats Part 1: the DOE-2 *.BIN/*.BINM format

[Joe Huang]

This is the first of several posts regarding the nitty-gritty of commonly-used weather 
file formats.  Just to add some excitement to this rather dry topic, I thought I'd post 
them as little contests of your familiarity with weather files or at least your visual 
acumen.

The first weather file format I'm putting under the microscope is the DOE-2 *.bin format.  
Since the *.bin is a packed binary format, the files are not readily observable, and 
consequently there's been more than a little confusion in what they contain.

I've attached a zip file that contains a weather file for Barrow Alaska 2012 along with a 
DOE-2 hourly file listing the contents of this weather file. See if you can detect  the 
three things in this hourly dump of the weather data that's unusual or different. Hint: 
the hourly file was produced with a slightly modified version of the DOE-2.1E program. If 
you ran the weather file with the standard DOE-2.1E it will probably crash, and even with 
DOE-2.2 you will not see all the differences.

You can either post your answers on the mail server or send them to me via e-mail. The 
first five persons to get the right answers will get a free historical year weather file 
of your choice from the White Box Technologies web site.  I will announce the results on 
Thursday, as well as explain what these three differences indicate about the DOE-2 *.bin 
weather format.

Joe

Attachment: contest_AK_BARROW-W-POST-W-ROGERS-AP_700260_12.zip (212 KB)

-- 
Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"

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