OPERATION_MODES

Confine the device’s power to one of several power ranges at every time step. Each operation mode declares a signed power range (positive is consumption, negative is production). This is useful for devices that cannot modulate their power freely, such as a device that is either off or running at some minimum power (or at one fixed power). Terminology and semantics follow the operation modes of the S2 standard. Declaring operation modes introduces binary decision variables into the optimization problem (making it a mixed-integer linear program), which may increase solve times. Each operation mode may optionally declare a fixed-cost: a no-load / commitment cost (in the flex-context currency) that is incurred at every time step during which that mode is active. This models the running cost of keeping a unit on regardless of its output (e.g. a generator’s full-speed-no-load fuel burn, or a boiler’s standing cost). When omitted, the fixed cost is 0.