EPCS16 is an eeprom, you don't say what kind of FPGA device you are using.
That being said, the .sof file is the program image of the FPGA itself, not the eeprom.
You should be able to load the .sof file to the FPGA directly using the Quartus programmer tool.
But it will be transient, and lose its contents on a power cycle.
Normally the .sof would be embedded into a .jic which can be used to program the EPCS eeprom device via the programmer.
The Quartus tools can be used to build the .jic from the generated .sof file.