Capacity factor (%)#
indexed by: asset, energy, node, technology and test case
Description#
This KPI shows the utilisation rate of a production asset, i.e. the extent to which its production capacity is used over the entire period.
In more concrete terms, this KPI computes the capacity factor, i.e., the mean usage of a given asset relative to its installed capacity. This KPI is not dedicated to both CO2 and CO2 captured assets and assets that consume and produce the same energy.
This KPI can be used to identify the utilisation rate of thermal power plants, for instance, and whether they are used in base load (high load factor) or peak load (low load factor). This is also useful for v-RES in that it can be used to identify the regions in which it is most attractive to install renewables: in fact, the regions with the highest load factors can be more attractive because, for the same given capacity, there is more renewable production.
Warning
This KPI is designed to look solely at asset-by-asset results. Aggregations need to be handled with a careful attention as the sum and the average of the capacity factor are not dynamically computed. For instance, the average of the capacity factor of assets of the same technology is the mean of the asset-by-asset value, which is different from the mean of the capacity factor of these assets weighted depending on their installed capacities.
Calculation#
The equation below is valid for any realization and is therefore implicitly indexed by test case.
KPI values are obtained by dividing the mean hourly production over the period per the installed capacity of each asset. Let be \(x_{a, e, n}\) the capacity factor for a given asset \(a\), energy \(e\) and node \(n\). Technology is directly deduced from the asset. We can then express \(x_{a, e, n}\) as:
Global variables and parameters notations definitions can be consulted here.
Indexing#
The asset index refers to the name of the asset
The energy index is the energy produced by the asset
The node index of this KPI refers to the node in which the asset produces
The technology index refers to the technology type of the asset
The test case index corresponds the test case of the realization variables and parameters are taken from