Getting started¶

This package simplifies analysing investments into energy infrastructure when the costs of energy are variable and uncertain. With technoeconomics-app, you can optimise the energy supply for an application, explore how optimal solutions change under various scenarios, and make smart decisions for your energy future.

We implement:

dynamic grid electricity tariffs
onsite renewables
batteries (electrical and heat)
heat pumps
electric boilers
district heating

We calculate:

a mix of investment that will provide lowest total cost during the lifetime of the asset
project economics

Currently, we support the following use-cases:

low temperature industrial process heat

Support is also planned for:

electrified households with heat pumps, EV's, solar panels, battery storage

Tip

Why is this useful?¶

Energy costs, and energy availability, are on everyone's mind these days.

Oil and gas are expensive, and emit massive amounts of \(CO_2\). It's often cheaper to replace them with equipment running on electricity, ideally powered by renewables. But how do you know when that makes sense?

Calculating how much it costs to run something on fossil fuels is simple:

Equipment is cheap
You mostly pay for fuel, at a (outside of energy crises) constant price

However, for electrotech:

Electricity prices are dynamic - they change throughout the day and throughout the year
The cheapest way to get electricity is to generate it yourself with solar PV, but the output of that also varies
Equipment is expensive. To save money, you have to size it right for the application and think about how you're going to finance it

To make smart decisions, you have to figure out the optimal mix of energy sources and conversion equipment. This is not an easy problem. You need to calculate how much solar you should build, how big a battery, when use gas and when to use storage. You need data on electricity tariffs, solar irradiation, temperature throughout the year, equipment costs etc. technoeconomics-app handles that for you.

Installation and usage¶

Web UI¶

The simplest way to use technoeconomics-app is through the Web UI at https://technoeconomics.app

CLI/API¶

We also offer a command line interface.

Prerequisites¶

Python 3.12 or newer

uv for dependency management. Install it with:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Installation¶

Clone the repository and sync the dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/mrmorawski/technoeconomics.git
cd technoeconomics
uv sync

uv sync creates a virtual environment in .venv and installs all required dependencies.

You can then run commands inside the environment with uv run, for example:

uv run technoeconomics-app --help

Alternatively, activate the environment directly:

source .venv/bin/activate