EnergyPLAN

EnergyPLAN#

EnergyPLAN is software for the simulation of energy systems operations at a regional, national, and supra-national level. It works on a yearly time span, which means that hourly time series of data and distributions must be provided for one year.

Command line interface#

The EnergyPLAN integration with a MOEA is possible only by calling EnergyPLAN via command line. A complete guide to use EnergyPLAN via command line does not exist thogh. In the following, we try to sketch a guide for the syntax used to call EnergyPLAN from the command line.

<path-to-energyplan-folder>/EnergyPLAN.exe [OPTIONS] -i <input-file-path>

The options include:

  • -ascii allows the user to provide the output file path.

  • -m to provide a modification file that will overwrite some of the options in a complete input file. It works only in combination with the -i options.

Warning

EnergyPLAN seems not to accept file names containing _ or -.

EnergyPLAN runs on a single case by default, and it opens and close the graphical user interface at every call. This is a clear bottleneck to multiple sequential executions. Although it is not mentioned in the official guide, EnergyPLAN provides the possibility to solve multiple instances within the same session. This is the so-called spool mode.

Spool mode#

The spool mode can solve an array of models during the same session, i.e. opening the graphical user interface only once.

To run EnergyPLAN using the spool mode, the following folder structure must be respected.

EnergyPLAN/
    EnergyPLAN Data/
        ...
    EnergyPLAN Distributions/
        ...
    EnergyPLAN Tools/
        ...
    spool/
        input1.txt
        input2.txt
        ...
        inputN.txt
        results/

Warning

EnergyPLAN will not work if there is no spool folder and results folder within it.

The syntax of the command is only partly known and it works as follows.

<path-to-energyplan-folder>/EnergyPLAN.exe [OPTIONS] -spool N -i
<input-file-path1> [<input-file-path2> ...] -ascii run

where

  • -spool is a mandatory argument and must be followed by the number of input files N.

  • -i must be followed by at least one file and at most many files as your OS’s max path length allows you to prompt.

  • ascii is mandatory and must be followed by the command run.

As far as the author of this documents knows, it is not possible to provide modification files when using the spool mode. This means that input files must be written from scratch during an iteration.

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