Tutorial for graphical user interface

In this tutorial the usage of the graphical user interface (GUI) of urbs will be exlained in detail. The graphical user interface allows for the same functionality as the excel sheet based input for the program urbs and result excel-sheets and images will be identical. As an example a business park next to a city will be considered. Apart from the menu File, where you can save or load configurations all information is edited on the tab level.

Basic tabs

The GUI has three types of tabs:

  • Overview
  • Transmission
  • Reference energy systems

The latter type occurs for each location modeled. The other two exist always just once.

In the Overview tab you can set the basic layout of the model to be optimized. Here you specify on the one hand the modeled locations and years and give, on the other hand, global paramters for the modeling as, e.g., the modeled time steps or some scenarios.

In the Transmission tab connections between different modeled locations are specified.

The tabs for Reference energy systems (RES) are where the main technological and economical parameters of the units that comprise the energy supply infrastructure are specified. Thus, most model parameters are set here. There is one tab for each modeled location which is automatically generated once the location is specified in the overview tab.

In the following the three types of tabs are presented in more detail and the individual buttons are explained.