User:JoseZapata

Subversion branch: jose:

Detailed Plan

Support for cubic spline interpolation in data reader (general purpose)
Add support for CSV file reading in ASCEND data reader
Support for solar-aware interpolation in data reader (for TMY files etc)
Improve support for models involving two-phase flow boiling, as required for solar thermal energy modelling

See Data reader for up to date information on the above.

I will be working on improving the weather data reader module for Energy Systems. Based on the existing work I will be looking at:

Improving the interpolation algorithm between data points in a dataset. Some simulations use time steps that are smaller than the data provided in a data set (e.g. hourly data for weather stations). I'll be looking at perhaps implementing a spline interpolation for some variables such as atmoshpheric pressure, temperature and humidity.
Based on above, other variables such as sun intensity will require additional refining, since there will be times where the change between sampling intervals will be discrete (e.g. sunrise, sunset). For the sun position I plan to do this by checking with an algorithm (see R. Grena / Solar Energy 82 (2008) 462-470) whether the interpolated data is reliable or use the algorithm to produce a more accurate value for Sun intensity.
Providing more extensive support for weather data files. At the moment weather data is decoded ad-hoc and therefore there is no flexibility in accessing the values for ascend, unless you are willing to tinker with c code. I plan to look at investigating a way to import variables from a datareader so that the user can have more control over what variables are calculated/imported at each simulation step. This goal is less clear to me, as at the moment I dont know which is the best way to proceed.

Then

Possibly