[NEMO-devel] Questions regarding NEMO & thesis

[Ben Elliston]

Hi Jonathan,

Answers to your questions below.

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 11:27:15PM +0000, Jonathan Rispler wrote:

> In the user guide the 'replacement' supply scenario is defined as "
> The current NEM fleet, more or less." , My questions regarding this
> are the following:

> * Is it possible to see /print out what this supply situation is so
>       that it can be compared to the current NEM fleet?

The easiest way is to run an evolution using that supply scenario
("replacement") and then look at the output. It runs quickly. Note
that this scenario is just existing hydro, some capacity of black
coal-fired generation and some capacity of gas-fired generation. It is
not highly spatially resolved.

There are some people who dream of the replacement scenario :-), but
10 years on, the replacement scenario I used is not a realistic
replacement at all. All of the existing wind and solar capacity would
be replaced. You might be better off thinking up your own reference
scenario.

>   * Is it possible to adjust the 'replacement' supply situation ? (
> for example, adding Snowy 2.0 to hydropower supply or removing the
> equivalent of hazelwood from generation in the relevant polygon )

You can modify the function 'replacement' in scenarios.py. For Snowy
2.0, it may make sense to modify the function '_hydro' instead, as
this is used as a helper function to construct the hydro-related
generators.

> It was recommended to me by supervisors to use a recent source of
> data due to reasons such as increased rooftop PV.  A suggested data
> source was AEMO's 2018 ISP.

Right.

> Is there documentation on how to go from an excel file to the
> appropriate "URL of demand trace data" ? (or other types of traces)

It's pretty straightforward. There are 43 columns and 8760 rows in
each trace file. The values are output normalised to 1 MW. You should
be able to just save the Excel data out to a CSV file -- some editing
of the CSV file might be needed.

> As I have not found many papers utilizing the replacement setting, I
> will most likely have to create my own reference scenario for the
> replacement case.

Agreed (see above).

>   * Would it be appropriate to use one of your previous results as
> my refence scenario ?  (e.g. replacement of the current
> fossil-fuelled NEM generation fleet with modern, thermally efficient
> plants) - or would I need to recreate one of your previous results
> with the new 2018 data source?

I think you really need to use the most recent data, particularly the
cost data. If you look in costs.py, you will see that there is a class
for each class of technology costs. New classes need to be written
that use the AEMO ISP cost data. It will transform the results!

Cheers,
Ben