Maha Alsabbagh 2/16/2014

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Hi there - I'm doing future models for transport sector in Bahrain using the stock turnover option.

I was wondering I if can enter the costs of different items (e.g. fuel, device, maintenance..) because what I found was to select one of the followings only: activity cost, device cost, cost saved energy and total cost.

One more question please, any idea how to model different registration fees options (also known as vehicle excise duty or vehicle road tax)?

Thanks a lot.

Taylor Binnington 2/18/2014
 

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Hi Maha,

LEAP's Demand Cost variable certainly allows you to enter these costs, but you might have to perform a calculation before you can enter them directly into LEAP. For example, you indicated that you would like to be able to enter fuel or maintenance costs. I would expect that these are expressed as 'per year', or 'per distance', for example, which are activity costs - they are the cost per unit of activity. Just be sure that you represent these costs using the same unit of activity as you are using in LEAP for your demand analysis. Similarly, I'm not sure why you need to treat a vehicle registration cost any differently from the cost of the vehicle itself, which LEAP allows you to enter using the 'Device Cost' method. Have a look here for more information:

http://www.energycommunity.org/WebHelpPro/Demand/Demand_Cost_Analysis.htm

Hope this helps,

Taylor

Maha Alsabbagh 2/19/2014
 

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Thank you Taylor for your reply.

This means that I cannot use LEAP to enter the fuel, maintenance and device costs all together directly, correct?

Regarding the registration fees, I was hoping to enter the fees / taxes imposed on each vehicle class (based on their fuel economy) directly into LEAP, but again it looks like that I have to perform the calculations using Excel first.

Thanks a lot Taylor.

Taylor Binnington 2/19/2014
 

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Hi Maha,

If I understand your first sentence correctly, then no, there are no separate variables at the Demand branches that are specifically intended for fuel, maintenance and device purchase cost separately. This would all be rolled into the single Device Cost variable.

If you're looking to explicitly treat these components of the cost separately, you can create User Variables as holders (http://www.energycommunity.org/WebHelpPro/Supporting_Screens/User_Variables.htm), and then combine each of your user variables into the Demand Cost afterwards - but this is just a matter of preference.

Without making your model too complex, though, you could simply separate each of the terms in your Demand Cost variable explicitly, by writing an expression that looked like this:

(Cost per vehicle) + (Registration fee per unit of fuel economy) * (Demand\...\Fuel:Fuel Economy[units for fuel economy]) + (other terms)

where "..." indicates the full path to your demand device, and 'Fuel' is the fuel type that it consumes. In this way, it would be clear to you (or anyone else using your model) what comprises each of the pieces of your Demand Cost.

Hope this helps,

Taylor