How to Use the ReEDS India Online Tool

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Hi, everyone. This is Ilya Chernyakhovskiy  from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory,   and we're here to provide a tutorial  on the ReEDS-India user interface.   So I'll start with some introduction. ReEDS stands for the Regional  Energy Deployment System   model, or ReEDS for short. And today we're  focusing on ReEDS-India. So ReEDS is a capacity  

expansion tool for building a pathway to a  reliable and least-cost electricity system.   A few key points about capacity expansion  modeling. First is that we want to ensure   that the system has adequate generation and  transmission infrastructure to meet future demand,   and we're co-optimizing the generation  and transmission investments. So the focus is on identifying  the least cost portfolio   of generation transmission and I  also want to mention storage as well.  

We are looking across a  different set of scenarios,   so we're not creating a single point in  the future, but the focus is on looking   at a number of different pathways  and identifying trends across them. And finally, a large focus of capacity  expansion modeling is I'm looking at   the impacts of policies and regulations  in the power sector and how those would   change the least cost or cost  optimal portfolio in the future. So this slide has a few important links. The ReEDS  homepage, where you can get the documentation   and read some background information on the  structure of the model. Second link is a link  

to our India-focused publications over the past  several years that have used the ReEDS model.   And finally the ReEDS user interface, and  that's what we'll be focusing in this tutorial. So this tutorial will cover these four  pieces. First navigating the user interface,  

then we'll create the scenarios,  we'll learn how to run the model,   and then we'll look at how to analyze the results. This is part one. We'll learn how to navigate  the user interface for the ReEDS-India model.   Okay, so here we've navigated to the  ReEDS-India homepage, and the first   thing you need to do is log in. So here I'm  logging in using my demo username and password. So the first thing you'll want to do is to do the  new user signup request, which you can see at the   link here. And that should take you through the  instructions to create a username and password.   But we'll go ahead and sign in.

Okay, so here is the homepage for ReEDS-India.  Let's start by navigating the user interface.   So the left-hand menu in the blue bar  has all of your navigation options.   First option is your user profile;  you can change your password,   you can update your profile by adding  the profile picture, or you can log out. The landing page is where you manage scenarios,   and we'll come back to this in  the next section of the tutorial. The next page is where you run scenarios. This  is where you can actually kick off model runs.

The next page is where you view scenario outputs.   Right now it's blank because  we don't have any outputs. The next page is where we'll create scenarios,  and this will be the next step of the tutorial. And then the final page is to create  labels, and labels are useful for   managing our scenarios. So let's do that here.  I'll create a tag name called "demonstration"   and in my description let's just call it a demo.   Now I have created the tag and in the next section  of the tutorial we'll see how to use these tags.  

But for now let's go back to the landing  page, which is to manage scenarios. And we'll move on to the next section. So now we're on part two. We'll  learn how to create scenarios.   So let's click this button in the top-right  that says "create a scenario" and this takes   us to the scenario creation landing page. There  are one of seven steps for creating a scenario.   First one is to create a scenario name. I'm  going to call it a demo for this demonstration.  

And you also have a field to create a  description; this is for you to remember later   what the scenario is about and what it's for.   I'm going to call it a demo  scenario. That's the first step. If you ever have a question about what the  field is for you can hover over this I icon   and a little _____ box will  show up in the bottom right.

Make sure that in your scenario name  you don't have any special characters   and only letters in the name. Okay, we can go to the next page. So step two is to provide some model settings.  

The first is the modeled years.  By default we run three years.   You can add additional years to look  at results for intervening years.   For this demo we'll run the years 2020, 2025, and  2030. The number of iterations by default is four.   This tells the model how many times to iterate  between the optimization of generation and   transmission investment and the hourly 8760  optimization of curtailment and capacity value   of renewable energy and storage technologies.   So again, by default we do this four time,  you can set it up to 12 in your scenario.

Let's go to the next page. Here we select the technologies that are  candidates for our capacity expansion plan.   By default all of the technologies are selected.  

If you want to, for example, not allow  wind to be built, you can unselect the box   and wind will not be an option in the capacity  expansion plan. But we'll turn it on for our demo. Okay, let's go to the next page. Next we have some custom inputs.  The first one is the technology   cost. So this tells the model what is  the cost of technologies for each year.   By default we have a standard technology  cost set of data that we provide. You can  

download that by clicking this orange default  button and your technology cost assumptions   will show up in the Downloads folder,  which you can open in a spreadsheet.   You can also select other prepopulated  technology cost files that we've provided.   There's a low solar cost option  and a low battery cost option.   Or you can manipulate these with the file that  you download to create your own technology   cost assumptions. And you can upload your  custom file by choosing the Custom Upload   option in the dropdown and then  choosing the file from your computer.

For this demo we'll go with the default.   Now we have several additional options.  We can change the fuel supply constraint,   so we can turn it on. On means one – on is  one, off is zero. We'll keep it on for now.   And then we can also change the fuel limit. So  the fuel supply constraint uses the fuel limit  

data in order to dictate how much  fuel is available for each technology.   You can go with the default or use a  custom upload, like I mentioned before. The next option is the  minimum generation constraint.   This is the minimum generation fraction  for conventional technologies. And again,   associated with this constraint is the minimum  load fraction or the minimum generation fraction   that is in the format of a CSV. You can download  the default or upload your own testing file. Okay, let's go to the next page.

So step five has several  settings for generation capacity.   And let's walk through each of them  briefly. The first one is whether or   not we want to enable prescribed capacity  additions. One means yes, zero means no.

The second option is whether we want to  allow the model to endogenously retire   generation when it is no longer cost effective.   The third option is whether we want to allow  the model to refurbish technologies when   they've reached the end of their financial  life. So refurbishment would mean that the   model is reinvesting in that power plant  or that technology in a certain location   to allow it to continue operating. The next option is whether or not we want to  allow investments in energy storage technologies.   And then the final two are growth constraints.   The relative growth constraint is a limit on  year-over-year growth of any specific technology.  

And the absolute growth constraint is an  upper limit on the number of megawatts that   are available to be built. The data here  is based on the national electricity plan,   which is published by the Central  Electricity Authority in India, or CEA. Okay, let's go to the next page.

So we have some additional settings in step six.   First we have the capacity target;  by default it is turned off.   If you turn it on you'll see that you have  several additional options for input data.   So capacity target is a national target  for the total number of megawatts,   and the number of megawatts and the year  of your target is based on the file that's   input as the capacity target data. It's  this first dropdown here. And again,   like with other files, you can  upload your own custom data. The next option is the capacity  target technologies. So these are  

the group of technologies that would  count towards that capacity target.   We can turn that off to run our default model. The next option is the fractional capacity target.   And this is the fraction of total capacity. So  your first option is to upload the fractional   capacity target data. This will be the fraction  in a certain year. And then the next option is  

the group of technologies that will count  towards that fractional capacity target. Next we have a fractional generation  target. So similar to the capacity target,   this is a constraint or a target that  we're telling the model it must meet   a fraction of the total generation from  our specified group of technologies.  

If we turn it on we can see similarly that  we can change the data for the target.   That means changing the percentage or the  fraction of the generation that must be met   and the year in which we must meet that  target. And then the next option, as before,   it's the group of technologies  that qualify to meet that target.   So we'll turn this off for our demonstration  run to run the default scenario. Now the next two options are related to the  geographic diversity of renewable energy.   By default we turn on the  geographic diversity constraint.  

That means that the model must diversity where  it invests in renewable energy in each year.   And the amount of diversification  is dictated by this next option,   which is the DRE diversity factor. By default  it is 15-percent, which means that no single   resource region can have more than 15-percent  of renewable energy investment in any year. Okay, let's go to the next page. So our final page of settings  is really to reserves.  

The first option is whether or not we want  to turn on the operating reserve constraint,   which is on by default. The next option  is the planning reserve margin constraint.   This is also on by default and you do have  the option of changing the reserve margin.   Finally we have the constraint on reserve margin  trading. By default the model does allow regions   to trade reserve margin up to the transmission  capacity available between those regions.

Okay, so let's keep all of those defaults   and submit our demo model run.  I'll do that by pressing submit. Now I can see that back on my landing  page under my custom scenarios   I have my demo scenario available.   So before we go ahead and run the scenario let's  take a look at how we can manage this scenario   by using labels. Earlier I created  this label called "demonstration."   If I hover over these three dots on  the right side of my scenario, though,   my first option is to add a  label. I'll go ahead and do that.   And then I'll select the label in this  dropdown, and the label is called Demonstration.  

Next I'll click Submit and you can see  that the demonstration label has been   added to my demo scenario. This is useful for  managing scenarios when you have a lot of them,   because then you'll be able to filter your  scenarios by the labels that you've created. Now we'll move to the next section. Okay, so part three of the  tutorial is running the model.   So we've created our scenario,  now we want to run the model.  

So on the left-hand navigation  we'll go to this Run Scenarios link.   And on this page the first thing that we'll  do is we'll create a name for our model run.   I like to use the date as the name for the model  run, but feel free to use your own convention.   Today is December 23rd, so I'm using  December 23rd as the name of my model run.   Make sure you don't have any spaces or special  characters in the name of your model run. The next option is to choose which scenarios will  be part of my model run. For this demonstration  

I'll just choose my demo scenario, the one that we  created in the previous section of the tutorial.   I'll choose Next and then the next question  is do I want to run the model. Yes, I do,   and so I'll submit by clicking the Submit  button at the bottom of the screen. When I click that Submit button I'm taken  to the next page, which is where I can view   my scenario outputs. And you can see my first  scenario output card is called December 23rd.  

Right now my status for this run is in queue.   That means that I'm waiting for server resources  to be available for this run to be complete.   So let's pause here and we'll  come back when the run completes. Okay, now we're on the last part of this  tutorial, which is analyzing the results.   Now we have a complete scenario and you can see  that the output card has the status completed.  

If I hover over it there are two options, you can  download the results or you can delete the card.   Let's go ahead and click Download Results. Now I have a ZIP file that's  downloaded to my Downloads   folder. I'm going to open that as a  ZIP file and the first thing I want   to do is to extract all of the files.  So I am going to click on Extract All.   And this extracts the files to my Downloads  folder. Let's go ahead and do that.

Great. Now I have this folder and it has a  file called Excel Outputs. Let's go in there.   The first thing we can do is view the Excel file  that's provided. I'll go ahead and open that up.   This Excel file has five sheets. The  first sheet are the annual results,   the second sheet is the firm capacity by season  and year. Sheet three are the time slice results.   Sheet four are the results  of transmission investments.   And then sheet five are the costs, and  these costs are broken down by category.

Okay, let's close the Excel file and  let's see another way to view the results.   We provide a tool called Visit and Visit  is opened by clicking on this Visit.HTML.   Now you can see that another page opened  in my browser; this is the Visit tool that   we've provided as a way to analyze the  results from the ReEDS user interface. So I'll start by choosing the files up in  this Data Sources section of the screen.   I'll click on Choose Files and I'll navigate  to where I have these files downloaded.  

Here they are; this is the file that I  extracted when I downloaded my outputs   from the user interface. And what I want  to select is this folder called Visit.   And then I can select all of the files, so  you can press CTRL+ALT or you and drag and   select all of them. Either way, you want to  select all of the files and then click Open. Now everything will load into this HTML  file and you'll see the results. The   results are organized into dashboards, and  I'll talk through a couple of these figures   and how you can interpret them. The first  dashboard is called Annual Capacity Results.   The legend shows you which colors  correspond to which technologies.  

We can see that from this demo we have  results for the years 2020 and 2030.   And using this analysis you can  interactively manipulate the data;   you can select a single technology by clicking  on it. For remove it you can double-click on it   to hide all other technologies and then  double-click on the legend again to bring   them back. That's just one example of  the way you can interact with this data.   You can also hover over it to  see the exact numbers here. Let's move on and look at what other results  we can see. So the first one was the national   capacity additions. Then we have the annual  capacity additions, so what is added in a year.  

Then we have the firm capacity and the  planning reserve margin requirement.   This next figure is blank because it is a  difference plot, but because we only ran   one scenario for our demo run there's  no difference available to display. Next we have the fraction of  non-fossil generation and capacity.  

The next dashboard is costs, so these  are costs broken down by category.   Then we have the annual  generation results for each year.   We also have the operating reserves and the  technologies that are providing operating   reserves. Next we have the annual curtailment as  a fraction of available generation for wind and   solar technologies. The next dashboard  is the time slice generation results,   where the time slices are in the  columns and the seasons are in the rows.

And then finally we have several maps.  We have the capacity maps for wind,   the capacity map for solar, and the capacity  map for coal. The map on the right is the map of   transmission additions. For more demo scenario  we don't really see transmission additions,   but you can use this tool to add new data if  you wanted to analyze additional scenarios. Now let's look at these links  at the bottom of the tool.  

You can add charts and you can add dashboards  and you can configure your charts using the   data provided through the user interface or  you can upload your own CSVs to this tool. And finally we have several options of how  to share this data. You can download the HTML   with all of the figures included and the data  embedded. You can download it with only the global   filters, which means that people that you share  this with won't be able to manipulate the data.   You can download it without controls, so that  will mean that people who you share this tool   with will not be able to add new dashboards or  manipulate the data by changing the input data. Then there is this option to download the  visit.config. The visit.config is what  

dictates how all of these dashboards and charts  are arranged and what data is included in them.   So if you make changes here you can download  your new config file and share it with others   so that they will be able to pull up  the same dashboards that you have,   potentially with different data. There is  also an option to download all of the data,   and this will download the files in CSV format,  so the same files that we uploaded into the tool.

And then finally there is an option  to open the URL to the config file,   which is another way of  viewing the JSON.config file. And that's it for this tutorial. We've  gone through using the user interface,   to create scenarios, we've learned how to submit  a run, and we've learned how to download the   results and analyze them using the Visit tool.  So thanks, everyone, for listening, and goodbye.

2023-01-28

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