Website that generates heating and cooling degree days for locations worldwide. Degree days are commonly used in calculations relating to building
energy consumption.
Once you have chosen a weather station (of which there are thousands available) and specified the degree days you want (e.g. what base temperature, do you want them broken down in daily, weekly or monthly format), Degree Days.net will calculate your degree days, and give them to you as a CSV
file that you can open directly in a spreadsheet.
Screen Shots
Keywords
degree days, HDD, CDD
Validation/Testing
A comprehensive suite of automated tests have been written
to test the software.
Expertise Required
Degree Days.net makes it very easy to specify and generate degree days, so no specific expertise are required to use the tool itself. However, expertise are required to use the generated degree days effectively. The website does
link to information on how to use degree days, but it is assumed that the user is already familiar with degree days and what to do with them.
Users
Over a thousand people generated and downloaded data from
Degree Days.net in its first few weeks of operation. The
total number of regular users is growing rapidly with time.
Audience
Energy professionals that use degree days for calculations relating to the heating and cooling energy consumption of buildings.
Input
Users choose a weather station for the degree days that they wish to generate. There are also a number of options that can either be left as default or modified to control the type and format of degree days that are
generated (heating or cooling, Celsius or Fahrenheit, base temperature, daily, weekly, monthly or average breakdown).
Output
The generated degree days are presented to the user as a CSV file that can be opened directly in spreadsheet software such as Excel.
Computer Platform
Internet Explorer (version 6 and above), Firefox, Opera, and Safari (version 2 and above).
Programming Language
Java, Javascript
Strengths
Degree Days.net offers advanced options for generating degree days with different base temperatures and timescales (daily, weekly, monthly).
Weaknesses
Many of the weather stations that are accessible through Degree Days.net have missing or erroneous data. The tool does alert the user when it comes across such problem data, but this does mean that finding a good weather station to
use as a source of degree days can be more time consuming than would be ideal. Fortunately there are thousands of weather stations on offer, so it's rare for it to be impossible to find a good weather station near any
particular location.
Contact
Availability
Degree days.net is a free web tool available here.
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