DC Design Tools
↓ About this tool
Visualiser
Data
Filter
Drop an EPW file to see its hourly data here.
Drop an EPW file to use the Filter tab.
Drop an EPW file to see its typical-year chart here.
Real Weather (Meteostat)
Fetch real weather, or drop a previously-downloaded real_weather_*.csv on the upload zone, to see it here.

What this tool does

The EPW Weather Converter reads an EnergyPlus Weather (.epw) file — the standard hourly typical-year weather format used by EnergyPlus, OpenStudio, IES-VE, and most building energy simulation software — and turns it into something you can actually look at and work with: a shared-axis temperature chart with daily min/max bands, a searchable hourly data table, and a rolling-window filter for finding extreme periods. It can also fetch real, observed historical weather for a station from Meteostat, so you can compare a "typical year" EPW file against what actually happened in a given year.

What's inside an EPW file

An EPW file starts with 8 header lines (location, design conditions, typical/extreme periods, ground temperatures, holidays, two comment lines, and a data-period declaration), followed by one comma-separated row per hour of the year — 8,760 rows in total. Each row carries 35 fields: dry-bulb and dew-point temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, solar radiation and illuminance components, sky cover, precipitation, and more. This tool parses every field, but focuses its charts and exports on the ones most design workflows actually use — dry-bulb, dew-point, wet-bulb (calculated), and relative humidity.

Typical-year EPW vs. real observed weather

An EPW file is usually a typical meteorological year (TMY) — a synthetic year stitched together from the statistically "most typical" months across a multi-year record, built for consistent simulation, not for representing any single real year. The Meteostat option in the sidebar instead fetches actual recorded hourly observations for a real station and year, pulled from the same open weather-station network Meteostat aggregates from. Switching between the two lets you sanity-check whether a design's typical-year assumptions held up against a specific real year, or investigate an unusually hot, cold, humid, or dry period that an EPW file's averaging would smooth away.

Visualiser, Data, and Filter tabs explained

Step-by-step: using the converter

  1. Drag and drop an .epw file onto the upload zone, or download one for your region from the links in the sidebar, or switch to Meteostat and fetch a station/year directly.
  2. Review the parsed year on the Visualiser tab — the chart and daily bands render immediately.
  3. Open Data to browse the raw hourly rows, pick which columns matter to you, and export them to Excel.
  4. Open Filter to build a rolling-window query (e.g. "dry-bulb above 32°C for 3+ consecutive hours") and read off the matching periods, longest streak, and peak/trough values.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I get an EPW file for my site?

The sidebar links to EPW files organized by WMO region, sourced from the standard public EnergyPlus weather file repositories — pick the region closest to your project location.

Why does the Meteostat year look different from my EPW file?

That's expected — an EPW file is a synthetic typical year built from long-term averages, while Meteostat gives you one specific real year's actual observations. Differences between them are the whole point of comparing the two.

Does this tool modify or upload my weather file anywhere?

No — EPW parsing, charting, filtering, and Excel export all happen locally in your browser. The only network request is the Meteostat fetch itself, if you choose to use it, which goes directly to the Meteostat API.

Is this free to use?

Yes, completely free, with no account and no usage limit.