While debugging or exploring a model in general, sometimes one needs to trace some flows through the RES, or examine the behavior of a particular process.
· Commodity xyz is dummy imported in a new run, but was OK in previous ones. You would like to know which process was producing it earlier. Will you make a new table with commodity=xyz and attribute=VAR_FOUT?
· You suddenly realize you have never checked the shadow price of the peaking constraint of commodity ELC. Will you make a table with commodity=ELC and attribute=EQ_PeakM?
· You just introduced a new car TCAR_PIHyb and the first thing you want to see in the run is if and when this car came into the solution. Will you make a table with process= TCAR_PIHyb and attribute=VAR_NCAP, VAR_FOUT etc.?
· You want to check the overall operation of all CHP plants in your model. Will you make a table with ProcessSet=CHP and select various attributes?
On the main screen, where you create tables, if you highlight any of the elements/sets mentioned above and right-click, you will see an option ExRES near the bottom of the pop-up menu. This will create a cube with a single click that will show this element along with all the attributes which are related to this element. Respecting the global filter, of course. Sometimes this may be too much information and you might be interested only in flows in and out. There is a toggle button on the cube form menu (to the right of decimal control buttons) that will switch between showing all attributes and only FIN/FOUT.
If you see that xyz was produced by process abc in the previous run... you want to know more about abc now... what was it consuming and what else was it producing? Simply click (left-click) abc, a new cube will pop up that is focused on abc. And you can go on jumping from commodity to process to commodity to.... till you reach the end of your RES. The titles of these cube forms mention the item they are based on.
If you started with a set, like CHP (or a user-defined set) ,then the first cube will have all the processes of the set with all attributes. But subsequent clicks will be at a single element level.
Notes:
· The ExRES option is also available on right-click menu of processes/commodities while viewing tables.
· Any changes in process/commodity view of ExRES will be retained till you change them again.
· Any formatting changes (forecolor, backcolor etc.) will also be retained and they are independent of the format you set for regular tables. I usually like to change the backcolor of data area of my ExRES to yellow so that these cubes are clearly distinguished from the regular ones.
· I have found this to be a very efficient way of introducing new users to an existing model. It reveals only the active part of the RES, but it is a good place to start.
PS: This functionality was inspired by a request from Wouter who wanted some enhancements in the graphical RES feature of VEDA BE.