I created an electricity model where I'm trying to optimize electricity generation activities. In my results view, for endogenous added capacity, LEAP adds too much capacity in 2015 (figure 1), and that doesn't make sense, as I would like to match LEAP Optimization results for the first 3 years with actual investments in real-world data. Is it added to maintain the reserve margin? If so, can I limit the added capacities and fuel type?

Yes, LEAP is adding new capacity to meet your specified Planning Reserve Margin. If you use the optimization constraints to prevent LEAP from building capacity in these years, you will likely encounter a situation where no solution can be found (LEAP will warn you of this if it cannot find a solution that satisfies all optimization constraints, one of which is to meet reserve needs).

One idea would be to set the Planning Reserve Margin to zero, or even a negative number if necessary - anything to force LEAP not to add any additional capacity by itself - and add the "actual" capacity additions manually using either the Exogenous Capacity or Minimum Capacity Additino variables.

Taylor

I am still having the same problem even when I set the reserve margin to zero or negative values. I have sent you an email if you could please look at my model and please send me some guidance and the flaws in it, I would be very grateful. Thanks.

I should have been clearer in my earlier response. When using optimization, LEAP adds capacity to satisfy the reserve margin, but also to ensure that the module's energy requirements can be met. So even if the reserve condition is satisfied (which you'd been experimenting with, by setting it to zero or negative values), the energy condition was not satisfied, and so LEAP adds capacity to be able to meet it.

Your model seems to be working as expected. If you want to prohibit LEAP from installing new capacity until some year (say 2018, for example), try entering something like this into the Maximum Capacity Addition variable:

Hope this helps,

Taylor

I want to ask if it's possible to input specific availability load shapes for each resource especially for renewable resources such as solar and hydro. I tried to add some availability load shapes in basic parameters >yearly shapes and tried to call the load shapes in the maximum availability module but it crashes and gives an error. What should I do??

It looks like you are following the right steps to specify the availability for renewable resources. However, I am unable to replicate the error you are seeing. Just to confirm, are you referencing the yearly shape correctly in your expression (i.e. using YearlyShape(ShapeName))? If yes, what kind of error are you seeing? If you could provide a screenshot of the error, that would be great.

Thanks,
Emily

I have encountered another problem, my model is an optimization model and my results do not make sense to me especially in capacity added and therefore it affects the whole electricity generation mix.

1. I have tried to limit the maximum capacity additions parameter but still, I face problems capacity added especially endogenous capacity. From what I understand, LEAP adds endogenous capacity to maintain the reserve margin but I already set my reserve margin to 0, why does LEAP add the capacities?

I used functions such as "If(year<2023, 0, 100)" or "Step(2018,0,2023, Unlimited)" but as it can be seen in my attachments SC76, either there's a huge jump in capacity added when I use the unlimited function or just constant values added that are given in the if function. How do I solve this? And do capacity credit values affect the overall results in optimization models especially if I'm using availability shapes.

Thank you in advance.