Dive in to release version 1.5.0.
We're thrilled to unveil Southern Lights v.1.5.0, marking another step in our journey of continuous improvements, shaped by the valuable feedback from our users. This release brings a major upgrade in our energy system models, designed to further empower your development of green hydrogen projects.
This release will require you to re-simulate any project designs you have previously made in Southern Lights. A notification window will show when you load an old designs.
New Features at a glance:
- Faster simulations, with up to 10x speed, thanks to our optimized calculation algorithms.
- A brand new cost input structure with greater flexibility in assigning costs. For a complete intro of the new cost inputs, please have a look at this tutorial.
- You can now define costs in five cost categories (DevEx, CapEx, OpEx, Capital Replacement Costs and Decommissioning Costs) for both Power Sources and Electrolyzers.
- Costs can now have an unlimited number of cost entries that are grouped together for convenient overview.
- Define costs in three different ways to have full control over the design: “Fixed” costs, “Per unit of” costs, and “% of” costs.some text
- "Fixed" costs: Specify an absolute number.
- "Per unit of" costs: Specify specific costs that are connected to attributes of each component.
- "% of" costs: Make a cost entry that is calculated as a percentage of another cost.
- Create a ‘Subsidy’ for any cost or cost group, to see the effect of grants on your total cost metrics.
- “Fixed” subsidy: Set an absolute number for your subsidy
- “% of Parent”: Sets a percentage of the category, group or entry where the subsidy is applied.
- More detailed graphs for cost: New breakdowns of the costs metrics charts allow you to see the pie charts in a division by groups or by components.some text
- New breakdowns of the costs metrics charts allow you to see the pie charts in a division by groups or by components
- CapEx, OpEx, and Present Values of Costs are now also displayed in the Quick results bar to the right.
- Full results also show tables divided by cost groups or by components with the click of a button.
- Opex time-series are now shown for every cost group created. Using the same group names in your components lets you see them stacked together.
Fixes:
- Cost definition for stack replacements: The stack cost decrease now works as expected in the new cost structure.
- Cost definition for subsidies: Capex subsidy in now applied correctly. Subsidies can be applied to any costs now, and works as expected.
- “Years of Operation” and “Construction time” can now be edited for any design. NB! We recommend updating the financial inputs ‘Debt term’ and ‘Depreciation’ when changing ‘Years of operation’ in a design.
- Design now always loads correctly when opening an old design (some issues previously)
- “Optimization” now runs the simulations with only the ‘Enabled’ Power Sources. Use the Enable toggle to control this
- ‘Location’ is now an optional input field.
- Cost calculations now run regardless of the content of the cost structure. No more mandatory fields for costs.
- ‘Duplicate design’ now runs faster and now quickly presents you with a new design copy.
- ‘Complete design’ is right now disabled. This feature will be rebuilt in a coming update - stay tuned.