Why is the year always 2002 in the hourly weather data file supplied by DesignBuilder?

All of the data supplied by DesignBuilder comes from the EnergyPlus hourly weather database and is mostly made up of real weather data compiled to create representative years. Each file typically has months from more than one year. DesignBuilder has set the year for every record to 2002 to ensure that daily, hourly and sub-hourly data generated by EnergyPlus is correctly synchronised with the DesignBuilder graphics display.

If you are using your own weather data where the year is not set to 2002 in the weather file, you will probably find that DesignBuilder reports the day of week incorrectly on hourly and daily graphs of data. However this is just a reporting issue and the simulation results will be correct, it's just that the day of the week on the graph will not be labelled correctly (e.g. Monday might be labelled as Sunday etc).

One workaround to get the days of the week to match is to change the year data for each record in the weather file to 2002 using the 'Hourly weather data' dialog which is accessed from the Tools menu.

Another workaround is to enter the day of the week in 2002 for the 1st day of your simulation, regardless of the year that the simulation weather file actually refers to. For example, if you are running a simulation that starts on 1st January then the day of the week can be set to Tuesday, or if it starts on the 7th June the day of the week is Friday.

The Day of week for start day can be set on the Location tab at Site level.