I am trying to constraint the monetary investment costs (CAPEX) per annum for a process set of natural gas wells technologies. According to the ETSAP Document "Specifying Cost Bounds in TIMES" http://www.iea-etsap.org/docs/TIMES-Cost-Bounding.pdf, this can be achieved with a User Constraint using the attribute INVCOST (investment cost annuities). I tested this method and it worked (see xls attached).
However, in real world the data that we have to constraint investments costs are usually given in nominal values per year. For instance, I have the capital investment costs (CAPEX) to be invested by the Oil and Gas companies for the next years in nominal values for each year. In this sense, to model this it would be wishful to use LUMPINV (which is an attribute reported in VEDA-BE but not in VEDA-FE), which express the nominal investment of a new capacity given in specific year: LUMPINV=NCAP_COSTx VAR_Ncap . However when I replace INVCOST by LUMPINV in User Constraints in VEDA-FE it does not work (it runs as there were no constraints).
Is there a way to specify LUMPINV in VEDA-FE?, otherwise, How we can specify the nominal investment costs per year without using annuities (such as INVCOST)?. I really would appreciate your support. I have asked this issue to other TIMES users in my network, however they don´t know either.
Table 1.
User constraint modifier attributes available in TIMES.
Attribute
Description
Applicable UC components
COST
Multiple by primary cost attribute
(sum with other cost attributes)
NCAP,ACT,
FLO,COMPRD,
COMCON
TAX
Multiple by tax attribute (sum with
other cost attributes)
NCAP,FLO
SUB
Multiple by subsidy attribute (sum
with other cost attributes)
NCAP,FLO
DELIV
Multiple by delivery cost attribute
(sum with other cost attributes)
FLO
CAPACT
Multiply by PRC_CAPACT
CAP
INVCOST
Multiply by investment cost annuities;
Implies CUMSUM
NCAP
INVTAX
Multiply by investment tax annuities;
Implies CUMSUM
NCAP
INVSUB
Multiply by investment subsidy annuities;
Implies CUMSUM
NCAP
EFF
Multiply by COM_IE (UC_COMPRD), divide
by COM_IE (UC_COMCON)
COMPRD,
COMCON
NET
Apply to net production
(UC_COMPRD) or consumption UC_COMCON)
COMPRD,
COMCON
GROWTH
Interpret coefficients as annual
change coefficients (DYN only)
All
PERIOD
Multiply by period length (all but
NCAP) or COEF_RPTI (NCAP)
All but CAP
CUMSUM
Sum over all periods up to current or
previous period (DYN only)
All
CAPFLO
Apply coefficients also to any
capacity-related flows
FLO
NEWFLO
Apply coefficient to the flows of the
new vintage only
ACT, FLO, IRE
SYNC
Synchronize LHS and RHS sides to refer
to the same period
All (RHS only)
See the table above. Try using the attribute "COST" for NCAP, which multiplies the VAR_NCAP variable by the primary cost attribute, NCAP_COST. You will then get terms UC_NCAP ×
NCAP_COST × VAR_NCAP in the constraint.
