Dear Team,

I am currently working on a project using the optimization feature in LEAP. I would like to see that by 2050, Natural gas followed hydro and coal power plants will dominate the electricity generation mix based on PDP. As seen in the attachment (figure 1), the result shows that coal will dominate and natural gas only shares very little even though its capacity is higher set in exogenous capacity. And Fuel Oil does not even dispatch. What do you suggest that I should do? and how should I define the renewable qualified when setting renewable target?

Another problem is in the energy balance as seen in figure 2. Why are energy generation process shown in the import? Shouldn't they be shown in production?

I am looking forward to your assistance on this.

Best regards,

Song

Dear Song,

If you're optimizing dispatch, the dispatch will be cost-minimizing. This can lead to unexpected results depending on the input parameters. In your case, I suspect coal is cheaper than natural gas and oil (all cost and technical parameters considered), so the optimizer is using as much coal as possible.

You can override the cost-minimizing behavior in an optimized scenario using the Minimum Utilization variable. This lets you specify a certain level of dispatch for each process.

As for setting Renewable Qualified, that depends on what counts toward the renewable target you're modeling. Generally, certain technologies count (e.g., solar, wind), and these are given a Renewable Qualified value of 100 (i.e., 100% of production from the technology counts toward the target).

Imports in the energy balance view account for all imports entering the model in the Resources branch or in particular transformation modules. In the example you gave, it looks like primary fuels (such as solar, wind, biomass) are being imported because there are no yields (for renewables) or reserves (for non-renewables) defined in the Resources branch. So do check on that.

Regards,

Jason

Dear Jason,

Thank you so much for your response. I have solved all of the problems.

Best regards,

Song