Other Unique Capabilities

Logic Capabilities

Bidding Logic

Based on market participants there are non-fundamental conditions that function concurrent with fundamentals in the marketplace. Aurora's bidding logic provides the capability to analyze the non-fundamental strategies. Or use the Reliability Must Run (RMR) to apply rules to designate conditional rules under which resources must operate.

Additional Portfolio Options

Added Market Value Pool and Market Pool Limit columns to the Portfolio Info table offers more flexibility in defining the pricing of sales and purchases in the portfolio. Added Partial Build Group column in Portfolio Optimization input table to group resources together such that for all resources in the group, at most one of the resources will be allowed to build at a partial level.

Nodal Modeling Options

When running a nodal case with Solve Representation = Region, three new optional columns are available in the Aggregate Areas table to simplify the commitment solve for faster run times: Ignore Losses in Commitment, Commitment Violation Threshold, and Ignore Lookahead in Commitment. These are especially useful for speeding up the commitment solve for non‐focus regions.

Link Constraints

Added two new Constraint Types in the Constraint table, Link Flow Max and Link Flow Min, used to limit the total flow across a set of links over an annual or monthly time horizon.

Maintenance Scheduling Options

Added the new Use Resource Capability in Scheduling option to schedule maintenance based on resource capability instead of reliable capacity, particularly useful for scheduling maintenance under high renewable scenarios.

Hydro Modeling Enhancements

Added Daily Maximum column to Hydro Vectors input table to set the maximum average capacity factor over each day in the hydro scheduling logic.

Long-Term Optimization

The integrated Long-Term Optimization capability can be used to forecast capacity expansion resources and retirements, based on either reserve margin targets and economics of capacity additions.

New Builds in Portfolio

Add new build resource options to portfolios by using the prefix nr_id_ followed by an ID from the New Resource input table. For example, nr_id_664 would reference the record with ID=664 and any resources built from this record in the New Resources table automatically flow into the portfolio. The Portfolio Resource table itself does not change, but the resulting new build resources are counted and reported with the portfolio as seen in the output.

Capacity Pricing Function Offset

Use this new optional column, in both the Zone and Pool input tables, to adjust how the Capacity Pricing Function input works. The original column references the Time Series Weekly table, utilizing the 1‐168 columns to represent a reserve margin of 1% through 168%. This new setting specifies values outside that range by shifting the range itself, i.e., the entered value is added to the column labels to change how the data is interpreted. For example, if Capacity Pricing Function Offset column = ‐10, then columns 1‐168 shift to represent reserve margins ‐9% through 158%.

Include Shadow Resource

This enhancement offers improved asset valuation, particularly for storage units, during an LT study by including a small shadow resource in each iteration using a new column in the New Resources table – Include In System. When set to True, Aurora keeps at least one resource from each available start year “in‐system” at a very small capacity during each LT iteration to get a better valuation of the resources performance. This is particularly useful for storage resources because their value can be difficult to estimate when not in the system.

Aurora Features

Other Unique Capabilities