Design

Design#

Networks#

The pypsa.Network is an overall container for all network components. Components cannot exist without a network.

It also holds functions to run compute power flows, optimal power flow and capacity expansion planning problems, as well as functions to retrieve statistics and plot the network.

Buses#

The bus is the fundamental node to which all loads, generators, storage units, lines, transformers and links attach. You can have as many components attached to a bus as you want. The bus’s role is to enforce energy conservation for all elements feeding in and out of it (i.e. like Kirchhoff’s Current Law).

../_images/buses.png

Energy flows#

Energy enters the model in generators, storage units or stores with higher energy before than after the simulation, and any components with efficiency greater than 1 (e.g. heat pumps).

Energy leaves the model in loads, storage units or stores with higher energy after than before the simulation, and in lines, links or storage units with efficiency less than 1.

Data storage#

To enable efficient calculations on the different dimensions of the data, data is stored in memory using pandas.DataFrame objects.

To see which data is stored for each component, see Components.

Static data#

For each component type (line, transformer, generator, etc.), which must be uniquely named for each network, its basic static data is stored in a pandas.DataFrame, which is an attribute of the pypsa.Network, with names that follow the component names:

  • n.buses

  • n.generators

  • n.loads

  • n.lines

  • n.links

  • n.storage_units

  • n.stores

  • n.transformers

The columns contain data such as impedance, capacity, costs, efficiencies and the buses to which components are attached. All attributes for each component type are listed with their properties (defaults, etc.) in Components and are accessible from the network object, e.g. in n.components["Bus"]["attrs"].

Time-varying data#

Some quantities, such as generator p_max_pu (generator availability), generator p (generator calculated active power), line p0 (line active power at bus0) and line p1 (line active power at bus1) may vary over time, so different values of these attributes for the different snapshots (n.snapshots) are stored in the following attributes of the network object:

  • n.buses_t

  • n.generators_t

  • n.loads_t

  • n.lines_t

  • n.links_t

  • n.storage_units_t

  • n.stores_t

  • n.transformers_t

These are dictionaries of pandas.DataFrame objects, so that for example n.generators_t["p_set"] is a pandas.DataFrame with columns corresponding to generator names and index corresponding to n.snapshots. You can also access the dictionary like an attribute n.generators_t.p_set.

Time-varying data are marked as series in the listings in Components.

For input data such as p_max_pu of a generator you can store the value statically in n.generators if the value does not change over n.snapshots or you can define it to be time-varying by adding a column to n.generators_t.p_max_pu. If the name of the generator is in the columns of n.generators_t.p_max_pu, then the static value in n.generators will be ignored. Some example definitions of input data:

import pypsa

n = pypsa.Network()

#four snapshots are defined by integers
n.set_snapshots(range(4))

n.add("Bus", "my bus")

#add a generator whose output does not change over time
n.add("Generator", "Coal", bus="my bus", p_set=100)

#add a generator whose output does change over time
n.add("Generator", "Wind", bus="my bus", p_set=[10,50,20,30])

In this case only the generator “Wind” will appear in the columns of n.generators_t.p_set.

For output data, all time-varying data affecting generators is stored in the n.generators_t dictionaries, but it is only defined once a computation has been run.

Unit Conventions#

The units for physical quantities are chosen for easy user input.

The units follow the general rules:

Title#

Quantity

Units

Power

MW/MVA/MVar (unless per unit of nominal power, e.g. generator.p_max_pu for variable generators is per unit of generator.p_nom)

Time

h

Energy

MWh

Voltage

kV phase-phase for bus.v_nom; per unit for v_mag_pu, v_mag_pu_set, v_mag_pu_min etc.

Angles

radians, except transformer.phase_shift which is in degrees for easy input

Impedance

Ohm, except transformers which are pu, using transformer.s_nom for the base power

CO2-equivalent emissions

tonnes of CO2-equivalent per MWh_thermal of energy carrier

Per unit values of voltage and impedance are used internally for network calculations. It is assumed internally that the base power is 1 MVA. The base voltage depends on the component.

Sign Conventions#

The sign convention in PyPSA follows other major software packages, such as MATPOWER, PYPOWER and DIgSILENT PowerFactory.

  • The power (p,q) of generators or storage units is positive if the asset is injecting power into the bus, negative if withdrawing power from bus.

  • The power (p,q) of loads is positive if withdrawing power from bus, negative if injecting power into bus.

  • The power (p0,q0) at bus0 of a branch (line, link, or transformer) is positive if the branch is withdrawing power from bus0, i.e. bus0 is injecting into branch

  • Similarly the power (p1,q1) at bus1 of a branch is positive if the branch is withdrawing power from bus1, negative if the branch is injecting into bus1

  • If p0 > 0 and p1 < 0 for a branch then active power flows from bus0 to bus1; p0+p1 > 0 is the active power losses for this direction of power flow.

Input and output data#

Input and output data is strictly separated in PyPSA, such that inputs are not overwritten by outputs from computations. Therefore, set points are stored separately from actual dispatch points.

For instance, dispatchable generators have a p_set series which is separate from the calculated active power series p, since the operators’s intention may be different from what is calculated (e.g. when using distributed slack for the active power).

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