Can least cost function be turned off for the BAU model

[rinahaiges]

Hi....happy to join this forum today.
As a start in building my model, I wanted to gather all stock count of the existing power plants available up to the base year 2013, in which I wanted to let the model give me the results for emission, electricity generation, capacity and demand. I know that TIMES will automatically give the least cost solution, however, I was wondering is there a way for the software to just calculate the emissions based on all the technology inputted without the least cost solution? I’ve tried to do it,  but after running it through VEDA results for coal and small hydro wasn’t there for energy generated by fuel and emissions. I guessed this was because of the least cost technology selection. I know how to calculate the emissions manually, but still, I wanted to see if TIMES could do it, would make life so much easier. I think this feature is helpful for modelling the base year stock count and the BAU model,  whereby the least cost function needs to be off.

 Please help advise appropriately. Thank you.


Best regards,
Rina

[AKanudia]

You just need to ensure that the model doesn't have much freedom in the base year. For example, impose the observed utilization factors as Max availability for most (or all) power plants in the base year. Also, don't allow investment in new technologies in this year.

You should be careful to no let the low AF values of base year carry over in future periods, unless there is a good reason.

[rinahaiges]

You just need to ensure that the model doesn't have much freedom in the base year. For example, impose the observed utilization factors as Max availability for most (or all) power plants in the base year. Also, don't allow investment in new technologies in this year.

You should be careful to no let the low AF values of base year carry over in future periods, unless there is a good reason.

Noted, will try this out and see how it turns out. Thanks

[rinahaiges]

You just need to ensure that the model doesn't have much freedom in the base year. For example, impose the observed utilization factors as Max availability for most (or all) power plants in the base year. Also, don't allow investment in new technologies in this year.

You should be careful to no let the low AF values of base year carry over in future periods, unless there is a good reason.

Dear Amit ,
I tried as per your suggestion by changing the AFA  to maximum 1.00 value, but it didn't work, after running it in VEDA BE the results still seems to still show the least cost selection because a few technologies didn't appear. I tested this just for base year technologies and the pdef was fixed at 1. Meaning no carrying forward to future periods. Should I change the efficiency to a maximum value as well? Please advice. I was wondering if there is a user constraint where we can fix the share of technology by time slice. ie. solar 10%, hydro 20%, wind 5%. If you have an example can you share it with me? Or anyone can you please share it with me.
Thank you.

Kind regards,
Rina

[Antti-L]

Dear Rina

I think you are being unfair towards Amit's suggestion.

Amit suggested that you would impose the observed utilization factors as availability factors for the power plants.  But you say that you tried that by changing the AFA to maximum 1.00 value!  In other words you did not try Amit's suggestion at all, and still you unjustly claim that "it didn't work". Setting AFA to 1.00 would not make sense, as imposing such AFA factors would not have any impact on the model results (the maximum availabilities are 100% already by default).

It should be obvious that some technologies may not appear in the solution, if you are not giving the model any information about the desired production levels. How do you suppose that the model should know that the amount of coal power production should be X TWh in the Base year, if you are not giving that information to the model, in some form or another? Defining utilization factors is one way of giving that information to the model.

Imposing the observed utilization factors means that if, for example, the wind power capacity was 4 GW in the Base year (e.g. 2015) and the production was 10 TWh, you would set NCAP_AFA(2015)=0.2854. It is straightforward to verify by simple mathematics that imposing such availability factors for all supply options will calibrate the system exactly according to the Base year statistics, as desired. And of course in VEDA/TIMES it works equally well.

I just verified this myself by testing it with the DEMO model.  The resulting production levels were exactly as expected, according to the utilization factors. See example in the attached Figure below, on the left hand side. Defining user constraints fixing the share of technology by time slice is equally straightforward, see example in the Figure below, on the right hand side.  Defining such user constraints on the SEASON or DAYNITE level would be equally easy, just requiring much more equations.

Both methods worked well and produced the same solutions, disproving any claims that "it didn't work".

[rinahaiges]

Dear Antti-L,
Thank you for your feedback, really appreciate it. No doubt since I'm still striving  to learn VEDA and building my model, I admit that I may not have fully understood Amit's  advice due to my own poor understanding of this software. If you don't mind, is it possible for you to share with me the demo file that you had tested and the scenario file with user constraint that you mentioned .  I think this would be very helpful for me. I  attached the file  which contains data of all committed power plants  and the Sys setting file that I'm currently working on for your reference. I want to turn this file into the BAU file, therefore the least cost function needs to be off. As for developing the least cost scenario, as far as I  understand, I need to i include all potential technology and identify the primary fuel resource potential (upper bound), is this correct?
I really appreciate all your inputs and feedback. I don't mean to offend anyone. Please understand and no hard feelings.



Kind regards,
Rina


Dear Rina

I think you are being unfair towards Amit's suggestion.

Amit suggested that you would impose the observed utilization factors as availability factors for the power plants.  But you say that you tried that by changing the AFA to maximum 1.00 value!  In other words you did not try Amit's suggestion at all, and still you unjustly claim that "it didn't work". Setting AFA to 1.00 would not make sense, as imposing such AFA factors would not have any impact on the model results (the maximum availabilities are 100% already by default).

It should be obvious that some technologies may not appear in the solution, if you are not giving the model any information about the desired production levels. How do you suppose that the model should know that the amount of coal power production should be X TWh in the Base year, if you are not giving that information to the model, in some form or another? Defining utilization factors is one way of giving that information to the model.

Imposing the observed utilization factors means that if, for example, the wind power capacity was 4 GW in the Base year (e.g. 2015) and the production was 10 TWh, you would set NCAP_AFA(2015)=0.2854. It is straightforward to verify by simple mathematics that imposing such availability factors for all supply options will calibrate the system exactly according to the Base year statistics, as desired. And of course in VEDA/TIMES it works equally well.

I just verified this myself by testing it with the DEMO model.  The resulting production levels were exactly as expected, according to the utilization factors. See example in the attached Figure below, on the left hand side. Defining user constraints fixing the share of technology by time slice is equally straightforward, see example in the Figure below, on the right hand side.  Defining such user constraints on the SEASON or DAYNITE level would be equally easy, just requiring much more equations.

Both methods worked well and produced the same solutions, disproving any claims that "it didn't work".

[Antti-L]

Dear Rina,

Thanks for the template file containing the data of all committed power plants, and the Syssettings file.
But I don't understand what you mean by "I want to turn this file into the BAU file, therefore the least cost function needs to be off." Can you explain what is the BAU file you are referring to, and why the "least cost function needs to be off"?  The objective function does not prevent you from calibrating the model in any way. It can of course be turned off, but I am not sure it would make sense.

I was able to run your model for the Base year 2013. I can see the model is at the ANNUAL level only, which is OK for first experiments with the model.

From your earlier posts, I have understood that you would like to fix the electricity generation in the Base year by technology, or their production shares, according to the statistics. Is that correct? If you have the data for the generation by technology in 2013, I could do that for you, and post the file back here. As far as I can see, the file you posted only seems to give the total generation (487 PJ), but not by technology.

(My scenario file for DEMO is attached; note that the AFA table is deactivated now (no ~ in the tag).)

[rinahaiges]

Dear Antti-L,
Thanks for your reply, sorry for the delay in my reply, I was down with fever and flue these past few days and took some time off from work to rest. Now, I’m back on my toes again.
Anyway, thanks so much for helping me out, back to your questions:

Antti-L: Can you explain what is the BAU file you are referring to, and why the "least cost function needs to be off"?
My definition of the  BAU scenario is basically:

Business as usual (BAU) - This scenario will incorporate the Government’s plan of new committed power plants as planned until 2035. The generation mix up to 2050 would maintain the percentage share achieved in 2035. Under this scenario, it is assumed that no aggressive policy impetus is advocated on the use of alternative or renewable energy sources, therefore fossil fuels is still expected to be the dominant fuel in the mix. This scenario will be used to contrast other scenarios that has applied some policy interventions or constraints. 
( therefore wouldn’t need least cost function here)  



Antti-L: From your earlier posts, I have understood that you would like to fix the electricity generation in the Base year by technology, or their production shares, according to the statistics. Is that correct? If you have the data for the generation by technology in 2013, I could do that for you, and post the file back here. As far as I can see, the file you posted only seems to give the total generation (487 PJ), but not by technology.
Yes, I would like to do that  for the BAU scenario and for the Base year 2013. Info for capacity and electricity generation reported by milestone years is attached in the BAU info excel file. I hope you can show me how it is done for the BAU scenario on how to fix electricity output generation based on percentage share or based on the information given for BAU throughout each of the milestone years.

I tried to run the files but I was startled to see that solar appeared in the base year 2013, which it should by right only appear after  it is introduced in 2017 (refer CON_ELEC sheet).

Thank you.

Kind regards,
Rina



Dear Rina,

Thanks for the template file containing the data of all committed power plants, and the Syssettings file.
But I don't understand what you mean by "I want to turn this file into the BAU file, therefore the least cost function needs to be off." Can you explain what is the BAU file you are referring to, and why the "least cost function needs to be off"?  The objective function does not prevent you from calibrating the model in any way. It can of course be turned off, but I am not sure it would make sense.

I was able to run your model for the Base year 2013. I can see the model is at the ANNUAL level only, which is OK for first experiments with the model.

From your earlier posts, I have understood that you would like to fix the electricity generation in the Base year by technology, or their production shares, according to the statistics. Is that correct? If you have the data for the generation by technology in 2013, I could do that for you, and post the file back here. As far as I can see, the file you posted only seems to give the total generation (487 PJ), but not by technology.

(My scenario file for DEMO is attached; note that the AFA table is deactivated now (no ~ in the tag).)

[Antti-L]

Yes, you have defined existing capacity for solar power (ELCRNSOL00) on the sheet Con_ELC, and therefore it is generating already in the Base year, because you have not given the model any information that it shouldn't generate.  But this modelling error is easy to correct.

However, the bigger problem in your model is the mismatch between the (proposed) supply and demand of electricity.  In the model, the final demand for electricity (TFCELCD) is 443 PJ in 2013, which is close to correct, assuming the region is Malaysia. (According to the IEA energy balances, the final demand for electricity was 458.6 PJ in 2013.) However, your BAU & Base year info.xlsx says that you would like the total generation to be calibrated at 703.71 PJ. Could you thus please first confirm that this is really what you want?  In other words, do you really want to calibrate the model in such a way that the total electricity generation should be 703.71 PJ in 2013, but the final demand for electricity is only 443 PJ?  

Note also that the demands for RSDELCD, COMELCD, INDELCD and AGRELCD are ineffective due to modelling errors, but as the demand TFCELCD is very close to the IEA value, that would not cause any problem. However, I will wait for your answer about the large demand mismatch before looking at the calibration.

[Antti-L]

Ok, as you didn't answer my question, I decided to calibrate the model as you suggested.

The calibration is attached. The results reproduce exactly the desired generation levels you provided, from 2013 to 2050. I had to add rather large distribution losses to match your generation levels with the demand projection.

Nonetheless, I strongly suspect that your generation levels are incorrect.  I checked the data from the Malaysian National Energy Balance 2013, which stated the final consumption of electricity as 443 PJ (just like in your model), and the total gross generation as 516.6 PJ (while you suggested to calibrate the total generation at 703.7). The problem is also indicated by the dummy imports of coal from 2020 onwards, due to your import bounds being too low to satisfy your BAU generation projection.

Anyway, I hope the example can be of some help.

[rinahaiges]

Ok, as you didn't answer my question, I decided to calibrate the model as you suggested.

The calibration is attached. The results reproduce exactly the desired generation levels you provided, from 2013 to 2050. I had to add rather large distribution losses to match your generation levels with the demand projection.

Nonetheless, I strongly suspect that your generation levels are incorrect.  I checked the data from the Malaysian National Energy Balance 2013, which stated the final consumption of electricity as 443 PJ (just like in your model), and the total gross generation as 516.6 PJ (while you suggested to calibrate the total generation at 703.7). The problem is also indicated by the dummy imports of coal from 2020 onwards, due to your import bounds being too low to satisfy your BAU generation projection.

Anyway, I hope the example can be of some help.

Dear Antti-L,
How are you? Pardon me for the late reply, I had to go back to my home country for a couple weeks to attend to family matters. Thank you so much for your assistance on this and also pointing out to me about the generation mismatch issue,   you are correct about it and I have calibrated the figures to 516.6PJ (refer attached files). When I ran it through VEDA FE and BE the results are included in the word doc. 
Which leads me to new following questions:
1. Why is the total values for electricity generation by fuel group by year much higher? Is it because the model takes into account the total primary fuel consumption figures as well besides the electricity generation? If this is the case , then it makes sense.

2. I noticed the capacity value reported are lower after analysed in veda-be, if I wanted to assume that the capacity will be maintained until 2050, usually I would just add a stock ~2050 column. But in this case how should I approached it? The figures for capacity and energy generation is included in the excel doc.
Appreciate your feedback on this.
Thank you.

Kind regards,
Rina