ROADMAP.txt

This file describes the development roadmap leading from Antares_Simulator 6.0.0
(released: Summer 2018) to Antares_Simulator 7.0.0 (expected: winter 2018/2019).
 
a) Enhancement of the perimeter of binding constraints:

Since from their first apparition in Antares_Simulator, so-called
binding constraints have been defined as arbitrary linear constraints
on flow variables. Since Antares_Simulator makes it possible to define
completely artificial flow variables, the binding constraint editor is
quite versatile and this property has for long been intensively and 
successfully used to build up handy auxiliary sub-problems
(e.g reservoir level equations of PSP)

However, a significant improvement will be brought by extending the 
binding constraint domain to the output from dispatchable plants. 
Alike flow variables, generation variables will include physical
ones as well as completely artificial ones, should the need for
them arise in the course of setting up a specific power system model. 

b) Automation of the definition of "DC approximation" load flow
constraints:

Using conventional binding constraints defined on a cycle basis of the
graph formed by the AC components of the power system is, in 
Antares_Simulator, a well established practice for enforcing Kirchhoff's
second law on power flows in the classical "DC approximation". A 
suitable tuning of the RHS of these constraints already gives, in 
addition, the ability to model the operation of PSTs or to reproduce 
the "natural" loop flows that may be have to be taken into account on
a grid whose geography has been simplified.   

However, the manual edition of all of these constraints may represent 
a heavy task, even with the assistance of partially automated scripts.
For this reason the roadmap to Antares_Simulator 7.0.0 includes the 
development of a new integrated "binding constraints generator" that
will automatically set up the desired constraints, on the basis of the
impedances and PST settings provided by the user in the 
Antares_Simulator dataset.

c) Extension of the hydro storage model

As compared to Antares 6.0.0, the next Open Source version shall 
introduce much more flexibility in the way hydro resources (or any 
other storable forms of energy) can be managed at the different stages
of the optimization problems definition and resolution.