PyPSA
Missing investment cost data for `geothermal` technology
Checklist
Describe the Bug
The output cost files are not reporting investment cost data for the geothermal technology despite being present in input files (e.g. costs_pypsa.py). I noticed that for geothermal but may be a more widespread issue.
maybe @LukasFrankenQ remembers for geothermal, did we agree that it is better to remove the add_egs_data function from here and calculate all within PyPSA-Eur or is this a bug?
Hey all,
I've encountered this bug as well using PyPSA-Earth (PyPSA-Earth Issue #1482). It seems like Commit 30c0af1 by @LukasFrankenQ as part of the 0.6.1 version update removed the investment costs from the output files. I assume this was done as part of the vast improvements to geothermal energy in PyPSA-Eur (such as PyPSA-Eur PR #733).
However, to the current situation is misleading for everyone who is not using the advanced geothermal calculations (for example non-PyPSA-Eur users or people using there own implementations). Since other parameters such as CO2 intensity and FOM are still listed under the technology geothermal, it is quite easy to overlook that investment is missing. Additionally, it isn't that obvious which of the other technologies should be used instead for the investment costs.
To me it would be better, if the technology database would provide its data in a more uniform way, either by still providing a default investment cost for geothermal (even if it is not used in PyPSA-Eur) or by fully switching to the new technologies and maybe adding a comment to it that it is the default geothermal technology.
Hello everyone! 🙂
@danielelerede-oet great that you have opened the issue!
@Eric-Nitschke Thank you so much for the detailed investigation! Completely agree that the technology database must be model-agnostic. Otherwise, it creates significant reliability risks for the modeling workflows which relay on the database. You have just given a great illustration in PyPSA-Earth#1482 on what effects can it have on the modeling outputs which can get basically random.
@lisazeyen many thanks for checking this issue! If you may be willing to take the contribution on getting investment back for geothermal we are happy to open a PR. Just let is know 🙂
