Resilience and outage time and date

[NLaws]

See #59 for a discussion on Resilience scenarios, the resilience_check_flag, and outage_start_time_step

[NLaws]

A summary:

Resilience scenarios in the web app are the same as adding an outage to the model. When an outage is included in the model the critical load must be met during the outage. (The web app also runs the same scenario without the outage for the "Financial" comparison on the results page.)

The outage_start_hour is an old input that has been kept for backwards compatibility. You can use the outage_start_time_step value for 15 minute interval load data.

Our wiki has a link to all of the API inputs:

• the wiki: https://github.com/NREL/REopt-API-Analysis/wiki/Job-Inputs
• API inputs: https://github.com/NREL/REopt_Lite_API/blob/master/reo/nested_inputs.py
• shortcut to outage_start_time_step input: https://github.com/NREL/REopt_API/blob/fbc70f3b0cdeec9ee220266d6b3b0c5d64f257a6/reo/nested_inputs.py#L588

resilience_check_flag is not an input; It is true if the critical load can be met during the outage with the existing generation technologies:
https://github.com/NREL/REopt_API/blob/bb85165ecfad7ff478e80b7746a8a755f658167d/reo/src/load_profile.py#L769
In the next major API version the resilience_check_flag output will be renamed to bau_critical_load_met:
https://github.com/NREL/REopt_API/blob/fb89f2c17fba2aec8d0d5d1eaa901415dfd129b0/job/models.py#L799
(bau = business-as-usual)

The resilience_check_flag only applies to the business-as-usual scenario. For every "Scenario" that you POST to the job endpoint two scenarios are run:

1. The business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, which determines the cost of meeting the (electric and thermal) loads with the grid and any existing technologies; and
2. The optimal scenario, which determines the cost-optimal size and dispatch of considered technologies.

A false resilience_check_flag indicates that the critical load is not entirely met in the BAU scenario (if you have no existing technologies then zero percent of the critical load is met in the BAU scenario). If you want to include an existing Generator for example then you must provide the generator capacity in the existing_kw input field.

One reason for differences in webtool and API scenarios could be that the webtool only runs hourly models (even if 15 minute data is provided). We do this in the webtool because 15 minute scenarios typically take longer to solve than hourly scenarios.

[Janeyyt]

Thank you!