Using energy units as metadata for default variables may limit applicability to non-energy sectors

[FLomb]

Problem description

Model variables in the math/base.yaml file have been assigned units to populate the metadata. These units are currently energy specific, such as: energy or power. Nonetheless, Calliope is generally applicable, and has been applied in the past, also to non-energy flows and amounts, for instance, CO2 or water flows and stored amounts. Energy-specific units would conflict with this liberty.

One solution to have similar units but not energy specific might be to modify (i) power into rate and (ii) energy into amount, or something along these lines.

Calliope version

0.6.11-dev

[brynpickering]

Possibilities for units from offline discussions:

• energy_cap: carrier_unit_per_hour
• carrier_prod/con: carrier_unit
• storage: carrier_unit

This is very generic but tries to deal with the fact that each carrier can have different units (e.g., energy: kWh, water: m3, ...), but does lose the info on the scale of things, i.e. all carriers should be of the same scale. Otherwise the system energy balance will be wrong.

[brynpickering]

Moving out of beta and int oa discussion thread since it is not critical to anything in particular and could do with more dicussing with a wider audience.