Synthesis of Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data for optimal design of air-conditioning systems in Burkina Faso

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Résumé

The correct selection of a typical meteorological year is an important factor for the accurate design and
optimization of air-conditioning equipment. In this study, a simplified method has been applied to
prepare Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) datasets for three cities (Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso,
and Dori) in Burkina Faso with the view of facilitating the optimal design of air-conditioning systems.
The method consists, for each month, of calculating the absolute difference between the quartiles of
each year and those of all the years of the study period, the latter being taken as the reference, and then
selecting the year for which this difference is smallest. This year is then taken as the typical year for
the month in question. The procedure is repeated for all the other months, and the months of the
selected years are concatenated to form the TMY. The comparison of the monthly mean of the TMY
data with that of the long-term (LT) data confirms that they are representative, and can replace validly
the long-term data in air-conditioning systems design and optimization.

Mots-clés

Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), least absolute difference of quartiles, NASA Power database, Burkina Faso.