Welcome to SAInt Docs

1. What is SAInt?

The Scenario Analysis Interface for Energy Systems (SAInt) is a software platform designed to model integrated energy networks and markets. SAInt allows modeling energy markets, electricity networks, gas networks, coupled electric and gas networks, and thermal networks.

2. Components of SAInt Docs

A key component of SAInt is its continuously expanding documentation ecosystem. The user is guided in the learning process of energy systems model development with an in-depth description of SAInt functionalities and practical and concise how-to guides. Tutorials and learning more cases further support the user in realizing detailed studies and answering cutting-edge questions. SAInt documentation takes advantage of the more modern web publishing frameworks to create a dynamic and modern experience aimed to answer your modeling questions quickly and efficiently.

The documentation ecosystem of SAInt is built around four main components.

Component What’s Inside What You Get

Reference

Descriptions of the software components

Shows all the information there is to know about SAInt: capabilities, settings, dependencies, etc.

How-To Guides

Step-by-step instructions

Instructions on completing common tasks and solving common problems.

Tutorials

Learning by doing

Guides in the creation and execution of a project. Shows real examples of applications using the software.

Learn More

Discussions on particular topics

Explains and discusses particular topics. It broaden the knowledge and dives into the mathematical equations.

3. What’s New

SAInt release 3.5 introduces some major changes. Please take some time to get acquainted with such changes. You can find a summary in the table below. Some of the changes may have an impact on your models. We also advise you to check the full release notes. See link at the end.

Components, Tools, Support

  • SAInt Command Line Interface (CLI) has been removed and will no longer be supported.

  • DCPF and DCOPF simulation capabilities have been removed from SAInt.

  • CEM is integrated as a permanent part of SAInt and will no longer be supported as a Beta version.

  • Xpress and COIN solvers are removed from SAInt.

  • Exception logging is added in the SAInt API. SAInt users can now report the issues in the API by sharing the generated log files with encoord support.

Objects & Simulation

  • Added support for Electric Storage (3-Phase) in UACPF.

  • Pipe Efficiency property is added to the thermal pipeline object.

  • Minimum Uptime properties are added for modeling the consecutive charging/discharging behavior of Electric Storage (ESTR) and Pumped Hydro Storage (PHSTR) objects similar to the corresponding minimum down time properties.

  • Definition of more than one electric variable (EVAR) for a specific object in an electric constraint (ECNSTR) is now supported.

  • When a scenario fails due to infeasibility or user intervention, instead of repeating the last successful value, the results after the last successful step are now filled with NaN.

  • Property filtering in the SAInt expression parsing has been implemented based on scenario type.

  • PFB property of container objects is made available for DCUCOPF scenarios.

  • The Current-Voltage formulation from the UACPF scenario is extended to ACPF to align the solution methods and provide robust treatment of zero-impedance branches in both scenario types.

UX/UI & Performance

  • Overall performance for importing and loading networks has been enhanced and optimized for big networks.

  • Overall performance for loading scenarios has been enhanced and optimized for big scenarios.

  • Overall performance for simulating scenarios has been enhanced. Memory and CPU usage during simulation are optimized.

  • Google Maps and Bing Maps are now supported in SAInt together with existing OpenStreetMap. Users can obtain an API key from Google Maps and Bing Maps and enter the keys in the SAInt settings dialogue. Map provider selection has been extended to the base map layer editor. This feature allows SAInt users to override the default map provider from the Miscellaneous settings per map, enabling the display of networks in different map providers in different map windows.

  • CRS Conversion capability is added to the GUI and the API. Users can now convert their cartesian networks to the geographic network (using WGS84) by providing the source CRS (EPSG ID) of their network.

  • Coordinate properties (X,Y) are moved from the GUI Model (.*MAP files) to the Core Model (.*NET) in order to support interaction with the coordinates within the SAInt API.

  • Vertices are moved from the GUI Model (.*MAP files) to the Core Model (.*NET) files in order to support interaction with the coordinates in the API. SAInt will no longer generate .vtc (vertex) files.

  • Validation is added for import document headers before starting the Import process. Logging for import validation has been enhanced. Custom columns are permitted in column header validation during import. SAInt will now import files by considering known columns and logging unknown columns.

  • The "Include" functionality for networks has been expanded. With significantly enhanced performance, it now supports including networks that are not loaded in memory and it offers flexibility to preserve containers with the same Name/ID while including.

  • Synergi Gas Importer Wizard has been extended with options to support adding X/Y coordinate offsets and applying direct conversion fromof the original coordinate reference system to the geographic coordinate system used by SAInt ( EPSG:4326 or WGS84).

  • Network properties that are irrelevant in multi-edit are removed from the property editor when selecting multiple objects and the performance of multi-edit has been increased.

  • Scenario Event charts are extended to be displayed based on the Scenario Event Type. Scenario and Profile Start and End times are now annotated on the charts.

  • Error handling and logging for stack overflow exceptions caused by recursive expression definitions are added.

  • SAInt exceptions and IronPython exceptions are separated.

  • Progress bar update issues while importing and loading networks/scenarios, and running the simulation are resolved.

  • The issue causing SAInt to freeze/crash when editing/deselecting multi-selected objects in the model explorer has been resolved.

  • "Save as Project" option is deleted.

  • "Save As" functionality for network and scenarios has been changed to "Save Copy", which takes a snapshot of the network or scenario loaded in memory and saves it to a selected location without changing the loaded project or original network/scenarios.

  • The "Export Polygons" button is moved from the ribbon menu to the Model Explorer to enable exporting polygons without loading a network.

  • File Dialog is replaced with the Folder Dialog to choose the target folder for importing a network from SAInt templates.

Security & Licensing

  • Extended validation code signing certificate is applied in SAInt for increased security.

  • SAInt installation failure issue due to the failure of the CodeMeter installation has been resolved. CodeMeter Runtime installation failure will not fail the SAInt installation.

  • Auto-update feature for CodeMeter License Containers has been added. This enables the retrieval of certain information in SAInt, such as Gurobi License updates, without the need to upgrade the SAInt version.

Please check full list of the release notes at download.encoord.com.

4. How to Search Titles and Text

To search titles and text in SAInt Docs, type the words in the top-right search box. The section titles containing any of those word are found at first, then the search is performed on the text. By default, the search only applies to the current component. Uncheck the box in this component, to enable searching on all the components. Use any of these five advanced searching techniques to customize your search:

(1) Any word will be reduced to its stem. For example, to search "objects" is the same as to search "object".

(2) To find sections whose titles contain "network", type:

title:network

(3) To perform a logical AND search, like "foo AND bar", prefix both words with +:

+foo +bar

This can also be combined with the second technique:

+title:network +gas

(4) Similarly, to exclude a word, prefix it with -:

+foo bar -baz

(5) The wildcard (*) is supported. For example, to search any word with an "oo"-ending:

*oo