1 - Introductory Example: Fixed-Tilt simple setup

This jupyter journal will walk us through the creation of the most basic fixed-tilt simulation possible with bifacialvf. We will simulate a 1-up landscape system over a white rooftop.

Steps include:

  1. Create a folder for your simulation, and Load bifacialvf
  2. Download Weather File and Read
  3. Set all your Parameters
  4. Run simulation
  5. Read Results
  6. Plot Results

1. Create a folder for your simulation, and load bifacial_radiance

First let's set the folder where the simulation will be saved. By default, this is the TEMP folder in the bifacialvf distribution.

The lines below find the location of the folder relative to this Jupyter Journal. You can alternatively point to an empty directory (it will open a load GUI Visual Interface) or specify any other directory in your computer, for example:

testfolder = r'C:\Users\sayala\Documents\bifacialVFResults'

This will load bifacial_radiance and other libraries from python that will be useful for this Jupyter Journal:

2. Download and Load Weather Files

There are various options provided in bifacialVF to load weatherfiles. getEPW is useful because you just set the latitude and longitude of the location and it donwloads the meteorologicla data for any location.

We can also specify if data is right labeled (like TMY3 files), or left labeled (like SAM input files) to calculate teh sun position. By default, 'TMY3' format is selected

3. Set Parameters

4. Run Simulation

5. Load the results from the resultfile

6. Plot some results