Author: Patrik Schönfeldt

Thank you for joining the oemof spring meeting 2022

We want to thank all participants of this year’s oemof spring meeting. It’s always a joy to have a few days reserved for concentrated discussions around the things you create and investigate using oemof. Some of you already provided their slides, these are now available in the collection of oemof publications.

Presentation held at the first afternoon of the meeting which took place in the meeting hall of the meeting hall of the Danish minority living in Flensburg.

This year’s spring meeting wasn’t only the biggest in-person meeting but also probably the most international one. It was located almost in sight of the Danish/German border. Some of the almost 40 participants arrived from Italy and Spain just for the meeting. Not to speak about contributions from people who stay in Germany for longer. This confirmed us in our decision to also keep the organisation of the oemof association in English. (Side node: It was in the middle of the association’s general assembly that we realised that the about ten persons joining that particular session were able to understand German.)

Special thanks also go to Simon and Uwe for the organisation, and to the Department Energy and Environmental Management for hosting the meeting at the Europa Universität Flensburg.

oemof general assembly 2022/05

We invite you to a general assembly (GA) of the oemof association that will take place on the 19th of May as part of the oemof user/dev meeting in Flensburg. The assembly will be located at the meetings venue (European University Flensburg Building VIL1, Auf dem Campus 1, Flensburg) and start at 14:00.

Agenda:

  1. Opening and welcome
  2. Agreement on the agenda
  3. Acceptance of the minutes of the last GA
  4. Changed statute
  5. Bylaws and membership fee regulations
  6. Miscellaneous

The changed statute can be found at GitHub (binding German version, informative English translation). The changes are marginal and probably required by the German authorities. We decided to let the GA decide before the authorities file a formal complaint. Formally, the decision will be on the full (changed) statute rather than the changes, as it makes live easier to have everything in one protocol. According to our statute, all members can already vote on the changed statute. To do so, you can leave a review (approve/object) at the PR at GitHub. Alternatively, you can write an email to patrik.schoenfeldt@dlr.de to get instructions how to vote by (paper) mail.

2021-12: dev meeting retrospective

This years developer meeting was a hybrid format with a local and a virtual participation possibility. On the first day, the founding meeting of omoef the association was held. In addition, the statutes were voted and a board was elected. We are happy to announce that Patrik Schönfeldt, Caroline Möller and Johannes Röder represent the association and congratulate them warmly. This year we can’t provide presentations since it was a 100 % hands-on meeting. The next meeting is expected to take place in Flensburg on May 18-20. It should have a focus on application and feature development. The next winter meeting will take place from November 9-11 in Magdeburg. There the focus will be again on Maintainance and Developing.

Group photo of the hybrid session. About half of the participants are sitting in a meeting room, others are shown on individual images.
Group photo of the hybrid session

Solph 0.4.4: Capable Custom Components

Earlier this month, we released solph 0.4.4. It focuses on two new “custom components” (This is how we call in-developments components that are not yet part of the stable API.) There are:

  • PiecewiseLinearTransformer. A transformer model with one input and one output and an arbitrary piecewise linear conversion function.
  • Enhanced SinkDSM (sink allowing for demand side management)
    • Renamed keyword argument method to approach
    • Renamed approaches interval to oemof and delay to DIW
    • Added modelling approach DLR (PhD thesis of Hans Christian Gils 2015)
    • Included load shedding
    • Introduced recovery_time in DIW approach
    • Introduced shift_time and other parameters for DLR approach
    • Included investments in DSM
    • Normalized keyword arguments demand, capapcity_up and capacity_down

Further, some smaller changes made it into the release:

  • Check number of Flow s in GenericStorage
  • Allow conversion factor of zero for GenericTransformer
  • Split code into submodules
  • Move CI-Tests from Travis to github

2021-05 user meeting: retrospective

"Group photo" mosaic of individual photos

In 2021 the third oemof meeting was held… online. Again 🙁 But we broke two records this meeting! First: 51 participants joined the sessions this meeting. Second record: This meeting was set up within 1 1/2 weeks (phew).  Our speed-‘dating’ presentations included 11 upcoming projects and models from our community. Our this years social event contained Powerpoint-Karaoke where the future strategy of oemof was presented. Including: CryptoKitties, the generic formula for PROFIT! and our first oemof space project proposal! To have a peek on those, contact us 😉

New web page online

We are about to move oemof.org to a new web space. To allow for a smooth transition, the new page (this one) is already on-line. So, hopefully, the posts announcing the transitions here and there (at the old site) will be the mayor signs of the relocations. But there is more:

  • Improved control: By doing more on our own, we have more flexibility on what we do. Several times already, we came to the point that we wanted to implement something for the page but were not able to because of our web page plan. This will be different from now on.
  • Improved data protection: The first thing we use our newly gained power for, is sniping of the trail of your data to third parties. Also, hosting has moved from the US to Europe.
  • More to come: This is not planned to be a relaunch but a smooth transition. Honestly, I would not even write this if I did not have to test the post notification mailer.

2020-12 dev meeting retrospective

2020 – what a year  – the second digital meeting was held in the internet 😉 We had more than 20 participants. The establishment of the oemof foundation is nearing completion. In this year’s social event a neighbourhood board game App was played in the Alpha. Due to the many bugs the challenge became a last-man-standing (winner: Patrik).

group photo of the virtual meeting as a mosaic of individual photos

oemof developer meeting December 2020

The next oemof developer meeting will be held from Wednesday the 2nd to Friday the 4th of December 2020. It will be an online event full of virtual workshops and discussions about technical and organisational aspects of oemof. One topic will be the current status of the “oemof foundation” (working title), which is planned be incorporated at the next in-person meeting.

Anyone who is interested is cordially invited to participate and to contribute topics. All topics including additional information will be collected at the oemof organisation wiki page for the 2020 December Meeting. If you want to register, please contact us in the according ticket at GitHub. You can also suggest additional topics at the same place, we will continue shaping the agenda based on your input at least until the 23rd of November.

oemof.solph v0.4 – Unique Unbundling

After oemof v0.3.2, we decided to make oemof’s structure more clear: Both, the framework (including e.g. TESPy) and the Package for energy system optimisation (using solph) were called the same – oemof. With the release of v0.4.0, there are now split packages for oemof.solph, oemof.network, and oemof.tools.

Continue reading “oemof.solph v0.4 – Unique Unbundling”

2020-05 user meeting retrospective

In 2020 the first digital oemof meeting was held. Unfortunately, we failed to take a video conference screenshot to keep up the tradition of taking photos together. Maybe next time…On the oemof map, Bremen has now been populated as a new location. Despite the digital meeting, 26 participants from 13 different organizations came together. Bremen proclaims its right to the next analog meeting. Whenever that may be…