Different behaviour between conversion and conversion_plus about calliope HOT 4 CLOSED

The reason for this is that, for the conversion_plus technology, power and electricity are forced to produce at the same time. The conversion_plus technology might like to produce as much heat as possible to export, but then it would be exceeding its power supply limits. A conversion_plus tech cannot export more than the assigned 'primary_carrier'. I'm not sure there is much cause to want to export more than one carrier for a technology.

from calliope.

Hi, thanks for your answer.
I don't know if it is difficult to implement such possibility, but it is a useful one.

I take the example of a CHP unit at a location with heat and electricity demands and connected to a gas supply, electrical grid and heat network.
In that situation, if the CHP unit is the cheapest option, it should be able to feed the heat and electricity network with excess heat and electricity. But because it is not able to export one of the two, it could not even cover the totality of the demand of the one which could be exported.

On the following image, heat is carrier_out, power is carrier_out_2. The CHP is also way cheaper that the electrical and heating supply.

from calliope.

Previously we allowed heat to be 'dumped' (i.e. you can set a non-zero balance for system heat in vs. heat out). This might be worth reintroducing, but there would need to be a large overhaul to allow multiple export carriers from a system. Instead, I would just make them separate technologies, as they are moving more and more in that direction anyway.
For the time being, an easy way to create an artificial export is to create a demand technology with a very large negative resource and force_r: false. This will mean that it is happy to consume energy, but it isn't necessary to meet the entire demand of that node.

from calliope.

Thanks for your answer!
I will see how I will do it then.
The demand with force_r: false is interesting, I have never thought of it.

from calliope.