Few issues connected with JRC-EU-TIMES under Veda2.0

[jskrzypek]

Dear Veda Developers,

at the beginning I would like to thank you for JRC-EU-TIMES adjustment for the frame of Veda2.0, which is available in GitHub platform (link, December 2021 ver.). Your improvements to the model make it easier to control, especially the SetDefinition with some aggregates and the 3 model scenarios that are specified and ready to run. Fantastic work!

Unfortunately, during the work with JRC-EU-TIMES under Veda2.0 I have encountered some problems:

1) I see that 1 file is missing. This file is titled "RoadTransport_LIFE_Shaping" and is needed to run the "BAU - tu", "NetZero" and "HiCCS" scenarios. Connected alert - see appendix. Are you working on it at the moment? Is that file available somewhere? Does the lack of this file prevent any of the scenarios from being solved?

2) In "NetZero" and "HiCCS" cases do the GDX references should be manually defined by the user? Any special options in "Use Solution", "Elastic Demands" and "IRE prices/bounds" should be selected?

3) No problem with the solution of the basic scenario "BAU", but during the GAMS solution of the "BAU - transport update", after around 200 iterations I received the information that "Solution available but not proven optimal due to numerical difficulties", despite the fact that primal and dual objective reached almost the same value. See the appropriate log in the appendix.

4) Similar to point 3 things happened when I run "NetZero" and "HiCCS" cases. In GAMS window below the line "starting CPLEX", I received an alert that one row is "infeasible". Then algorithm said that "Rerunning with presolve turned off and solving with LPMETHOD=1" (Earlier option was 4) is executed. Optimal solution have not been found. Am I specifying something wrong? See the appropriate log in the appendix.

Thank you in advance for the response. I apologize if I ask about commonplace/obvious things. I am just a beginner of VEDA and TIMES in general.

[Antti-L]

I am not a VEDA developer, but I can give a comment on the solution status issue:

You appear to be using the GAMS version (GAMS 37.1.0), where GAMS incorrectly maps the Cplex solution status "Non-optimal" to "Intermediate infeasible".  That problem was introduced in GAMS v.36.  As a consequence, you cannot get the solution reported from TIMES, because the solution is flagged by GAMS as being bad (infeasible).

The status information provided by GAMS was later restored to the correct status ("feasible solution"). For more info, see
GAMS 38.3.0 Minor release (April 05, 2022)

Therefore, I'd suggest to downgrade your GAMS to v35 or below, or upgrade it to v38.3 or above. That should solve your problem 3).

Concerning your problem about missing "RoadTransport_LIFE_Shaping", to me that sounds like a file not actually a necessary file to include, and so I would think you could just remove it from the Case definition. Shaping the life of road vehicles can of course be useful for more realistic age-profiles of these vehicles, but I would not expect it to be required.