Introduction

The oemof.solph package is part of the Open energy modelling framework (oemof). This is an organisational framework to bundle tools for energy (system) modelling. oemof-solph is a model generator for energy system modelling and optimisation.

The package oemof.solph is very often called just oemof. This is because installing the oemof meta package was once the best way to get oemof.solph. Notice that you should prefeably install oemof.solph instead of oemof if you want to use solph.

Everybody is welcome to use and/or develop oemof.solph. Read our contribution section.

Contribution is already possible on a low level by simply fixing typos in oemof’s documentation or rephrasing sections which are unclear. If you want to support us that way please fork the oemof-solph repository to your own GitHub account and make changes as described in the github guidelines

If you have questions regarding the use of oemof including oemof.solph you can visit the openmod forum (tag oemof or tag oemof-solph) and open a new thread if your questions hasn’t been already answered.

Keep in touch! - You can become a watcher at our github site, but this will bring you quite a few mails and might be more interesting for developers. If you just want to get the latest news, like when is the next oemof meeting, you can follow our news-blog at oemof.org.

Documentation

The oemof.solph documentation is powered by readthedocs. Use the project site of oemof.solph to choose the version of the documentation. Go to the download page to download different versions and formats (pdf, html, epub) of the documentation.

Installation

If you have a working Python installation, use pypi to install the latest version of oemof.solph. Python >= 3.11 is recommended. Lower versions may work but are not tested.

We highly recommend to use virtual environments. Please refer to the documentation of your Python distribution (e.g. Anaconda, Micromamba, or the version of Python that came with your Linux installation) to learn how to set up and use virtual environments.

(venv) pip install oemof.solph

If you want to use the latest features, you might want to install the developer version. The developer version is not recommended for productive use:

(venv) pip install https://github.com/oemof/oemof-solph/archive/dev.zip

For running an oemof-solph optimisation model, you need to install a solver. Following you will find guidelines for the installation process for different operating systems.

(venv) conda install -c conda-forge coincbc
(venv) pip install oemof.solph

(venv) oemof_installation_test

*********
Solver installed with oemof:
glpk: working
cplex: not working
cbc: working
gurobi: not working
*********
oemof.solph successfully installed.

Contributing

A warm welcome to all who want to join the developers and contribute to oemof.solph.

Information on the details and how to approach us can be found in the oemof documentation .

Citing

For explicitly citing solph, you might want to refer to DOI:10.1016/j.simpa.2020.100028, which gives an overview over the capabilities of solph. The core ideas of oemof as a whole are described in DOI:10.1016/j.esr.2018.07.001 (preprint at arXiv:1808.0807). To allow citing specific versions, we use the zenodo project to get a DOI for each version.

Example Applications

The combination of specific modules (often including other packages) is called an application (app). For example, it can depict a concrete energy system model. You can find a large variety of helpful examples in the documentation. The examples show the optimisation of different energy systems and are supposed to help new users to understand the framework’s structure. Please make sure the example you are looking at is created for the version of solph you have installed.

You are welcome to contribute your own examples via a pull request or by e-mailing us (see here for contact information).