Flexible start year option & tech classes addition

[atpham88]

Summary

This PR:

• Adds an option to specify a flexible start year, instead of 2010
• Removes startyear switch and instead establishes startyear based on yearset
• Adds algorithm to assign pv, wind, and geothermal tech classes to NEMS units

Technical details

These changes are made in this PR:

• process_unitdata.py: Read unitdata.csv from inputs_case and process it to assign sc_point_pids, capacity factors/mean temps to pv, wind, and geothermal units. This file is run immediately after copy_files.py. This allows us to remove all the mapping of NEMS units to sc_point_pids in the ReEDS_input_processing repo.
• WriteHintage.py: Allow start year to be flexible instead of 2010.
• writecapdat.py: Add mappings to solar, wind, geothermal resource class are based on the resource quality (capacity factors for wind and solar and temperature for geothermal) of the technology as it comes from reV.
• c_supplymodel.gms
  • pcat set is removed from the model: The equations eq_force_prescription_power and eq_force_prescription_energy, along with the variables EXTRA_PRESCRIP and EXTRA_PRESCRIP_ENERGY, are currently indexed by pcat. Since the prescribed generator classes and vintages are now defined in writecap.py, the pcat index is no longer needed in these equations or variables. Accordingly, the equations are revised so that the investment (INV) of prescribed generators—indexed by (i, newv, r, t)—is equal to the sum of the prescribed build values and the additional prescribed investments (EXTRA_PRESCRIP) for those same (i, newv, r, t) combinations.
  • Integrate prescribed retirements when the prescribed facilities retires before their life time: In the NEMS database, the retirement year of some facilities occurs before the end of their expected lifetimes. To accurately capture these early retirements for prescribed facilities, the prescribed retirement values are subtracted from total investments when calculating facility capacities in eq_cap_new_noret and eq_cap_energy_new_noret. Although this implementation follows the same logic as m_capacity_exog, it explicitly captures prescribed generator builds in the INV variables in the current version of the model.
• hourlize:
  • Remove scripts that generate exog_cap_{tech}.csv files as they are no longer needed.
• geothermal_classification.csv is not generated in hourlize but taken from https://pages.github.nrel.gov/ReEDS/ReEDS-2.0/model_documentation.html#technical-resource-potential.
• @wesleyjcole Do you want to add some description of what you did to resolve the geothermal prescribed build issue?

Issues resolved

Known incompatibilities

Relevant sources or documentation

Validation, testing, and comparison report(s)

Pending

Checklist for author

Details to double-check

• Charge code provided for review
• Included comparison reports for appropriate test cases
• Documentation updated if necessary
• If input data added/modified:
  • Dollar year recorded and converted to 2004$ for GAMS
  • Timeseries are in Central Time
  • Units are specified
  • Preprocessing steps have been documented and committed to ReEDS_Input_Processing
  • New large data files handled with .h5 instead of .csv
  • If spatially resolved inputs are modified, the following visualizations for each file are included in the PR description (time-averaged if the inputs are time-resolved):
    • Map of absolute values before
    • Map of absolute values after
    • Map of differences: (after - before) or (after / before)
  • If entries are added/removed/changed in the EIA-NEMS unit database:
    • Changes have been committed to ReEDS_Input_Processing
    • hourlize/resource.py was rerun to regenerate the existing/prescribed VRE capacity data
• Code formatting standardized
• Reusable functions used where possible instead of copy/pasted code

General information to guide review

• Zero impact on results of default case
• No large data file(s) added/modified
• No substantive impact on runtime for full-US reference case
• No substantive impact on folder size for full-US reference case
• No change to process flow (runbatch.py, d_solve_iterate.py)
• No change to code organization
• No change to package requirements (environment.yml or Project.toml)

Did you use LLM tools (chatbot or copilot) in the preparation of this PR? If so, describe how

No

Tag points of contact here if you would like additional review of the relevant parts of the model

[patrickbrown4]

I haven't gone through the whole thing yet and will take a closer look next week, but some initial thoughts in the meantime. Happy to discuss if helpful (including whether to try some of the suggested changes here or in a followup PR). Thanks!

[atpham88]

@Yunzhi-Chen I ran into an issue with geothermal prescribed build in this PR so this PR includes a geothermal fix here as well. Do you think your PR (#94) fixes this/does something similar?

[bsergi]

Given that we are moving existing site processing downstream into ReEDS, do we still need the related logic in get_supply_curve_and_preprocess (line 410, starting with if existing_sites is not None:)? It seems like this could also be removed, at which would we could drop all existing_sites flags throughout the code and the config jsons. I'm not sure if this is still being used somewhere else though, and if we do drop we should probably move the longitude check introduced in PR #120 (#120) into ReEDS.