We have released version 0.14.0 of our energy system simulation engine ReSiE. This release focuses on implementing the calculation of economic and emissions-related results of a simulation. New input parameters and profiles allow for customizing the simulation to capture relevant parameters, such as investment costs, fuel or electricity costs, emission factors relating to grid usage, and many more. The economic results are calculated by a method derived from the German standard VDI 2067.

Emissions are calculated including embodied emissions, if related input parameters are given. This makes the simulation suitable for optimisation and parameter variations with costs and emissions in the objective function. The results are output in plots showing i.e. the yearly cashflows, and optionally CSV output and a summary of results in text form.

The latest release can be found here and details are available on the documentation of the QuaSi-Projekt.

Major feature: Costs and emissions

• Add optional economic and GHG emissions calculations
  • Includes component-specific investment costs, operating costs, energy prices, subsidies, embodied emissions, emission factors, emissions credits and unmet-energy costs
  • Add CSV and plot outputs for economic and GHG emissions results
  • Add different repetition methods of price and emission profiles using the parameter repeat_method

Breaking changes

• Rework IO settings for CSV output, output plots and Sankey plots by splitting output mode and custom output specification
  • This changes the project file syntax for custom output definitions. Please check the documentation for how the new format works.
  • Update default Sankey colours and improve handling of incomplete custom colour specifications. Unknown media are now assigned random colours, but these colours are consistent between runs.
• Change handling of unmet demands and surplus supplies so they are assigned to sinks and sources and no longer to busses
  • Improve handling of unmet energies in single and connected busses
  • Change output of balance warnings to a new format: Balance warnings are now separated into interface balance warnings and component balance errors; proxy busses no longer create duplicate balance warnings
  • Update Sankey plotting to display unmet energies more reliably and consistently
• Remove legacy component type GridConnection
  • Please use GridInput and GridOutput instead, which function the same, except they do not require setting the parameter is_source.

Minor changes / fixes

• Fix multiple issues in profile repetition, profile trimming, output paths, line plot ordering, optional parameter validation and unit descriptions
• Add IO setting fixed_output_precision to make CSV, plot, Sankey, economic and emissions outputs perfectly reproducible. This is mostly used for testing.

Internal changes

• Refactor simulation parameters, IO settings, economic parameters, emissions parameters, control parameters and control modules to use SSOT parameter definitions
• Improve scenario tooling and update scenario reference files
  • The scenario command compare_ooo is replaced by compare, which compares all relevant output files. This includes automatically ignoring expected differences in execution time and timestamps.
  • The new compare tool can be used to quickly check all scenarios for any difference at all.