Note that climate data for all 16 California Climate Zones are built into HEED. You can access them via the Initial Design screen, by typing into the Location field a zipcode (if your local utility is covered by HEED), or by simply typing in your climate zone number 1 to 16. You can click on the Advanced icon, then on Climate to confirm that it is your own data.
We have now changed HEED to read only EnergyPlus climate data files directly. Our main web site points to the EnergyPlus site that lists hundreds of stations from around the world.
These same .EPW files are used in the new version of Climate Consultant
You can download the .EPW file for any station you like directly onto your desktop or into any folder you wish (you do not need to convert it). Inside HEED go to the Library and select Install EPW File which will automatically load the .EPW data into the correct folder inside HEED (C:\heed\solar5\tmy on Windows, or ~/Library/Application Support/HEED/tmy on Mac OS X). Then on HEED's Basic Initial Design screen just click on the down arrow in the Location text input field, and a dropdown list will appear with your new station name, which you can simply click on. To confirm that it is your own data, click on the Advanced icon, then on Climate. If there is a problem, check to be sure the climate data file you downloaded is a full .EPW file that is about 1,500 kb in size.
Otherwise, if have experimentally recorded hourly dry bulb temperatures or other data from experimental tests or from actual buildings, or if you want to create the old short form .TMY files used in SOLAR-2, than read the file called READ-TMY.TXT
If you have any questions email: energy.design.tools@ucla.edu
mam 10/16/07