EcoDynElec: Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment of electricity for ENTSO-E countries

EcoDynElec software tracks the origin of electricity accross european countries based on generation and cross-border exchanges and allows the dynamic evaluation of environmental impacts of electricity.

ecodynelec is a free software under MIT licence. It was developped in a collaboration between the EMPA, HEIG-VD, the SUPSI.

Getting started

ecodynelec must first be cloned from its Git repository, by using prompt (example below) or any other method:

>> cd path/to/where/to/download/elecodyn

>> git clone https://github.com/LESBAT-HEIG-VD/EcoDynElec.git

After cloning the repository, the package can be used and installed in different ways, as explained below.

Conventional install

Typical python installation softwares such as pip or conda can be used to install ecodynelec from your local copy of the git. To do so, use a prompt or a terminal and move inside the ecodynelec/ directory. From there, use pip (example) or conda to install.

>> cd /path-to-ecodynelec-copy/EcoDynElec/

>> python -m pip install ./

An alternative is to use python to trigger the setup.py file within the ecodynelec/ directory. More on this in the official Python documentation.

>> cd /path-to-ecodynelec-copy/EcoDynElec/

>> python setup.py install

Now ecodynelec can be imported and used as any other python package.

If experiencing issues using ecodynelec in notebooks, the guaranteed install below may be a good and cheap alternative.

Guaranteed install

To make sure the package can be used in every python environment, the absolute path to the ecodynelec package must be temporarily added to the python records. This method simply tells python where to find the source information. Actually, “installing python packages” just means “telling python where to find packages on a machine to execute them”. Enter the following in your Python script or Python Notebook:

import sys, os # Required python libraries

sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath("path/to/ecodynelec/package")) # Adds the path to the package in the python records, but only in this script

Now ecodynelec can be imported and used as any other python package, only in the current script or Notebook.

import ecodynelec

Documentation

An online documentation was written and is available on the dedicated ReadTheDocs

Contributions

EcoDynElec did contribute to the project EcoDynBat - Ecobilan Dynamique des Bâtiments.

P.Padey et al., 2020, 'Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment of the building electricity demand', Erneuern! Sanierungsstrategien für den Gebäudepark, Status Seminar brenet (Building and Renewable Energies Network of Technology), Aarau Schweiz, doi. https://arodes.hes-so.ch/record/6718?ln=fr