Installation

Getting Python

If it is your first time with Python, we recommend conda, mamba or pip as easy-to-use package managers. They are available for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux.

It is always helpful to use dedicated conda/mamba environments or virtual environments.

Getting a solver for optimisation

PyPSA passes optimisation problems for Power System Optimization to an external solver. PyPSA is known to work with the free software

• Cbc

• GLPK (WinGLKP)

• HiGHS

and the non-free software, commercial software (for which free academic licenses are available)

• Gurobi

• CPLEX

• FICO Xpress

For installation instructions of these solvers for your operating system, follow the links above.

Depending on your operating system, you can also install some of the open-source solvers in a conda environment.

For GLPK on all operating systems:

conda install -c conda-forge glpk

For CBC on all operating systems except for Windows:

conda install -c conda-forge coincbc

Note

Commercial solvers such as Gurobi, CPLEX, and Xpress currently significantly outperform open-source solvers for large-scale problems. It might be the case that you can only retrieve solutions by using a commercial solver.

Installing PyPSA with conda

If you are using conda you can install PyPSA with:

conda install -c conda-forge pypsa

or by adding the conda-forge channel to your conda installation with:

conda config --add channels conda-forge

and then installing simply with:

conda install pypsa

In all of the above commands you can replace conda with mamba if you use this alternative.

Installing PyPSA with pip

If you have the Python package installer pip then just run:

pip install pypsa

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also install the latest master branch from github with:

pip install git+https://github.com/PyPSA/PyPSA.git

Conservative installation

If you’re very conservative and don’t like package managers, you can just download the code from the PyPSA github repository and add the directory of PyPSA to your python path with e.g.:

import sys

sys.path.append("path/to/PyPSA")

import pypsa

Upgrading dependencies

PyPSA is only tested with the latest stable versions of all the dependent packages for the respective Python versions. Therefore it is very important that you upgrade these packages; otherwise PyPSA may not work.

To upgrade a package such as pandas with pip, do at the command line:

pip install -U pandas

With conda/mamba upgrade packages with:

conda update pandas

Upgrading PyPSA

We recommend always keeping your PyPSA installation up-to-date, since bugs get fixed and new features are added.

To upgrade PyPSA with pip, do at the command line:

pip install -U pypsa

To upgrade PyPSA with conda, do at the command line:

conda update pypsa

Don’t forget to read the Release Notes regarding API changes that might require you to update your code.