How far are we from an open source PLEXOS?

Modelling
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1

I know of some good open source models to perform power system planning in the long term. But my question is, how far are the open source tools from the comercial ones?

From the top of my head some desired functionalities used in consultancy are:

  • Generation dispatch / Unit commitment (not the same since the latter uses a MIP formulation)
  • Transmission + Generation planning: Chose which assets to build on techno-economical basis.
  • These 2 combined.
  • Stochastic scenarios.
  • Electrochemical storage management.
  • Hydro power plant, and river system management.
  • Multi-energy conversions (Gas, Water, Fuel, etc…)
  • AC / HVDC lines.
  • Power flow.
  • N-1 (N-k ideally)
  • Of course, all of the latter within the time domain (with variable time step length ideally)
  • Graphical user interface.
  • Data consistency checking.
2

Hello,

I think hat PowerModels.jl (https://github.com/lanl-ansi/PowerModels.jl) already provides most functionalities that you have listed, such as optimal power flow UC, GD, full network representation, a storage model, multi energy (together with GasModels.jl, https://github.com/lanl-ansi/GasModels.jl ), AC and DC lines (together with PowerModelsACDC.jl, https://github.com/hakanergun/PowerModelsACDC.jl ) and N-1 (together with PowerModelsReliability.jl, https://github.com/frederikgeth/PowerModelsReliability.jl ). There is for sure some work to be done wrt a GUI and data consistency checks. As a contributor I can tell that model extensions are quite easy and that the main developers are very open to suggestions for improvement.