Welcome to the Communities of Practice Nigeria gui repository

This graphical user interface allow its users to simulate a simple energy system by selecting components (components are diesel generator, solar pv panels and battery) and to generate an implementation plan that includes information about the mini-grid system, as well as a preliminary financial analysis along the project lifetime. This document can then be used to aid in approaching stakeholders and asking local energy agencies for funding for a mini-grid project. The demand of the community can be built manually by the user based on the typical demand profiles published in the scope of the PeopleSun project.

It is currently hosted at https://community-minigrid.ng/en/.

Learn more about the CP Nigeria project on its project page.

Credits

This code is directly forked from previous open-source work open-plan-tool.

Basic structure

This repository contains the code for the user interface. The simulations are performed by multi-vector-simulator on a dedicated server (see the open-plan-tool/simulation-server repository). Once a simulation is over the results are sent back to the user interface were one can analyse them.

(The structure is the same as the one of the open-plan-tool, this is why this graphic is still used as-is)

Getting Started

Deploy locally using the open plan MVS server

Prior to be able to develop locally, you might need to install postgres and create a local database, simply google install postgres followed by your os name (linux/mac/windows)

1. Create a virtual environment using python=3.10
2. Activate your virtual environment
3. Move to the app folder with cd app
4. Install the dependencies with pip install -r requirements/postgres.txt
5. Install extra local development dependencies with pip install -r dev_requirements.txt
6. Create environment variables for communication with the database (only replace content surrounded by <>)

SQL_ENGINE=django.db.backends.postgresql
SQL_DATABASE=<your db name>
SQL_USER=<your user name>
SQL_PASSWORD=<your password>
SQL_HOST=localhost
SQL_PORT=5432
DEBUG=(True|False)

7. Add an environment variable MVS_API_HOST and set the url of the simulation server you wish to use for your models (to use the MVS server, it should be https://mvs-open-plan.rl-institut.de)
8. To automatically download PV potential based on coordinates, add an environment variable RN_API_TOKEN containing your API token from https://www.renewables.ninja/
9. To automatically fetch currency exchange rates, add an environment variable EXCHANGE_RATES_API_TOKEN containing your API token from https://www.exchangerate-api.com/
10. Execute the local_setup.sh file (. local_setup.sh on linux/mac bash local_setup.sh on windows). Answer yes if prompted
11. Start the local server with python manage.py runserver
12. You can then login with testUser and ASas12,. or create your own account

Deploy using Docker Compose

The following commands should get everything up and running, using the web based version of the MVS API.

You need to be able to run docker-compose inside your terminal. If you can't you should install Docker desktop first.

• Clone the repository locally git clone --single-branch --branch dev https://github.com/rl-institut/cp_nigeria_app.git cp_gui
• Move inside the created folder (cd cp_gui)
• Edit the .envs/epa.postgres and .envs/db.postgres environment files

  • Change the value assigned to EPA_SECRET_KEY with a randomly generated one

  • Make sure to replace dummy names with you preferred names

  • The value assigned to the variables POSTGRES_DB, POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PASSWORD in .envs/db.postgres should match the ones of the variables SQL_DATABASE, SQL_USER, SQL_PASSWORD in .envs/epa.postgres, respectively

  • Define an environment variable MVS_HOST_API in .envs/epa.postgres and set the url of the simulation server you wish to use for your models (for example MVS_API_HOST="<url to your favorite simulation server>"), you can deploy your own simulation server locally if you need

  • To automatically download PV potential based on coordinates, add an environment variable RN_API_TOKEN containing your API token from https://www.renewables.ninja/

  • To automatically fetch currency exchange rates, add an environment variable EXCHANGE_RATES_API_TOKEN containing your API token from https://www.exchangerate-api.com/

  • Assign the domain of your website (without http:// or https://) to TRUSTED_HOST , see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/settings/#csrf-trusted-origins for more information

Next you can either provide the following commands inside a terminal (with ubuntu you might have to prepend sudo)

• docker-compose --file=docker-compose-postgres.yml up -d --build (you can replace postgres by mysql if you want to use mysql)
• docker-compose --file=docker-compose-postgres.yml exec -u root app_pg sh initial_setup.sh (this will also load a default testUser account with sample scenario).

Or you can run a python script with the following command

• python deploy.py -db postgres

Finally

• Open browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080 (or to http://localhost:8090 if you chose to use mysql instead of postgres): you should see the login page of the cp_nigeria app
• You can then login with testUser and ASas12,. or create your own account

Proxy settings (optional)

If you use a proxy you will need to set USE_PROXY=True and edit PROXY_ADDRESS=http://proxy_address:port with your proxy settings in .envs/epa.postgres.

NOTE: If you wish to use mysql instead of postgres, simply replace postgres by mysql and app_pg by app in the above commands or filenames

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NOTE: Grab a cup of coffee or tea for this...

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NOTE: Grab a cup of coffee or tea for this...

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Test Account

You can access a preconfigured project using the following login credentials: testUser:ASas12,.

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Tear down (uninstall) docker containers

To remove the application (including relevant images, volumes etc.), one can use the following commands in terminal:

docker-compose down --file=docker-compose-postgres.yml -v

you can add --rmi local if you wish to also remove the images (this will take you a long time to rebuild the docker containers from scratch if you want to redeploy the app later then)

Or you can run a python script with the following command

python deploy.py -db postgres --down