Levelised costs

[alechiodi]

Dear Antti, dear all,

I just noticed that when I activate the reporting routine for 'Levelised costs' (using Veda-FE), the system cost of my scenario increases.
I tested it with two different models, and I got the same effect in both.

Is there a rationale behind this?

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Alessandro

[Antti-L]

Do you mean the option  RPT_OPT('NCAP','1') = -1/1/2 ?

http://iea-etsap.org/docs/TIMES-Levelized-Cost.pdf

If so, there should be no rationale behind any system cost increase (i.e. value of objective function).  I have not seen such myself, and I cannot imagine how such would happen, because the option only affects the reporting routines. Could you perhaps provide a reproducible example demonstrating the issue?  

Or could you at least post your RUN file to see your switches (with and without the levelized option), and the listing file to see some more information?

[alechiodi]

Do you mean the option  RPT_OPT('NCAP','1') = -1/1/2 ?

http://iea-etsap.org/docs/TIMES-Levelized-Cost.pdf

If so, there should be no rationale behind any system cost increase (i.e. value of objective function).  I have not seen such myself, and I cannot imagine how such would happen, because the option only affects the reporting routines. Could you perhaps provide a reproducible example demonstrating the issue?  

Or could you at least post your RUN file to see your switches (with and without the levelized option), and the listing file to see some more information?

Dear Antti,

Following on your answer I did a couple of additional checks and discovered that Veda-FE activates 'Mid-year discounting' when 'Levelised Costs' reporting is active.
As I see from the user note ("The exponent t–0.5 in the formula indicates the good practice of using mid-year discounting for continuous streams of annual expenditures.") this seems considered a good practice. Do you suggest to use this option, instead of the default?

Once aligned these assumptions, the two runs gave me the same objective function values, as expected.

Best regards,

Alessandro

[Antti-L]

Thanks for the follow-up.

I didn't know VEDA-FE would be activating other options at the same time.
But yes, I think mid-year discounting is good practice, and would be inclined to suggest using it.

[alechiodi]

Thank you for support Antti.
One last thing: do you think this good practice (mid-year discounting) shall be adopted in all models? Or limited only to the ones where we use levelized costs reporting routine?