Topic: How to use 'region' in area? Subscribe | Previous | Next
Suhono Suhono 4/3/2013
2440 Views Dear Charlie,
I try to develop electricity model for an island. This island consists of two electricity grid system. Can i develop this model using 'region' and more than one area? What should i do?
Thanks for your help.
Best regards,
Ahmad Suhono
Ralf Dyllick 11/26/2013
2095 Views Dear LEAP-team,
I have a similar question to the one of Ahmad.
I am dealing with three separate (that is not interconnected) electricity systems. I model every system as a separate region in one area.
I was wondering: Is there a way to merge two or more regions to one (or have LEAP treat the separate regions as one) in order to analyze the effect of interconnections?
If this is not possible, do you have a work-around? How would you proceed?
Looking forward to your comment!
Best regards,
Ralf
Taylor Binnington 11/26/2013
2094 Views Hi Ralf,
I'm not sure I understand your question completely - if you were to merge two different regions in LEAP, then what would happen to the different expressions that you've entered for each region? This leads me to think that what you would really like to do is to display results for more than one region, at the same time. As long as you have more than two regions defined in your area, you should see a drop-down menu at the top of each chart in Results view. If you choose 'Selected Regions', you will be given the opportunity to choose which of your regions you want to display simultaneously.
To help you further organize your regions, LEAP provides a Region Grouping facility:
http://www.energycommunity.org/WebHelpPro/Supporting_Screens/Regions.htm
but I think that what you're asking can be accomplished without having to define groups.
Hope this helps,
Taylor
Ralf Dyllick 11/26/2013
2081 Views Hi Taylor,
thanks for your reply. I am sorry, I should have been a little more specific.
My problem is the following: As I am looking at separate electricity systems, the capacity in region 1 can only serve load in region 1. The same goes for region 2 and 3. As a consequence, the need for additional generation capacity may arise in one region all the while there is plenty of (excess) capacity in any one of the other regions. (I should mention that the load shapes of the three regions in question are not identical. One is "peaky" due to a large chunk of residential electricity demand with a distinct seasonal pattern (A/C's!) whereas the other two exhibit a "flatter" industry-driven load profile.)
From an economic point of view, an interconnection between any of the three regions could be beneficial as it may reduce total capacity requirements. It is this impact of an interconnection on capacity requirements and thus on required investments that I would like to analyze. (Obviously, an interconnection may also lead to more efficient dispatch which I disregard in these explanations.)
An example scenario to be investigated might be: Effective 2020, region 1 and region 2 get interconnected which essentially folds the two systems into one single electricity system. In other words, generation capacity of the former region 1 can serve load in the former region 2 and and vice versa. Certainly, I could exogenously specify electricity imports out of region 1 into region 2 and vice versa. But this is something I would like to avoid. Ideally, LEAP would simply treat region 1 and region 2 as a common power pool for dispatch purposes.
I see your comment with the conflict of the expressions. I was simply hoping that LEAP could create a kind of overlay region (a super-region) which maintains all expressions of the underlying regions but for which LEAP would calculate sepaate results. The idea would be that the demand of the super-region would simply be the sum of the demand of the underlying regions. Loads would stack up. And the plant dispatch draws on the capacity pool of all interconnected regions.
I hope these elaborations have made the questions clearer. This said, when I formulated the requirements, I also came to realize that is probably not as easy as it sounds. Still, do you have an idea how this could be handled?
Regards,
Ralf
Taylor Binnington 11/26/2013
2080 Views Hi,
Good question. I think there might be a may to do this using the variables 'In Area Export Fraction' and 'In Area Import Fraction', which you'll find attached to each Primary and Secondary fuel under the Resources branch.
These variables are described here:
http://www.energycommunity.org/WebHelpPro/Resources/In-Area_Export_Fraction.htm
http://www.energycommunity.org/WebHelpPro/Resources/In-Area_Import_Fraction.htm
I recognize that they're a bit complicated, and that maybe the help files don't do them justice. The In Area Export Fraction for electricity is the fraction of all trade that occurs within the whole Area (Regions A and B) in a given fuel, the is supplied by a given region. The In Area Import Fraction describes the fraction of imports for each fuel that are to be supplied by other regions within the same area.
I'll try to clarify with an example. Suppose we have two Regions, A and B. Region A has enough electricity generation capacity to meet the demands of both regions, while Region B has no capacity. If we allow electricity from Region A to be responsible for all of the in-area trade in electricity (by setting the In Area Export Fraction to 100), while enforcing that all of the electricity imports into Region B come from other regions within the same area (by setting the In Area Import Fraction to 100 for Region B), then we change the electricity requirements for the electricity generation module in Region A, which must now meet demand from both Regions A and B.
If you want to model the sudden interconnection of Regions A and B in the year 2020, you could use the expression
Step(2020,100)
in the In Area Import Fraction for B. I'm sure your situation will be more complex, but I think this simple example illustrates that you can probably accomplish your goal using these two variables.
Hope this helps!
Taylor