automatically reconcile units

[hunteke]

Currently, Temoa does no reconciliation of units. That is, if the modeler supplies the input and output parameters for two different technologies in two different units, and the processes at all overlap in the energy system map, Temoa does not throw an error.

Unfortunately, given that the current input is in data file format, it is very easy to mix up units. Further, there's no way to tell, other than data checking, or if the modeler has supplied comments in the file, what the units are.

This seems like something Temoa could do, if the user specified units for the inputs, allowing Temoa to automatically convert as necessary to requested outputs, and providing another form of documentation for the data file.

[hunteke]

One thought is to not implement this in the model and data file, but rather to let a higher-level tool take care of unit munging. Such as a GUI+DB combination.

[hunteke]

Update: I am in the midst of developing a GUI (graphical user interface) -- well, WUI (web user interface) -- for users to enter data. While this will not fix this issue at the modeling level, it will address it at a level much more natural for most modelers. I will not close this bug until I have the WUI in a usable state.