Unable to accurately account for less production over time #475
Description
Unable to accurately account for less production over time
H2I has two considered timescales the simulation length, which is an 8760 timeseries, and the plant life, which is used to multiply the simulation length by the plant life to given the performance over that time period.
The issue that arises is that to appropriately model degradation or a technology that declines over time (i.e., natural geologic hydrogen) we are unable to account for the decrease in available "commodity" over time.
Proposed solution
To be able to better account for the decrease in production @elenya-grant has proposed updating the financial modeling to use an annual capacity factor over the lifetime of the plant and the plant capacity to more appropriately account for the decrease/fluctuation over time.
This solves one issue of appropriately accounting for it within the financials IF that is the end technology. A subsequent issue arises if the technology is connected to something downstream (e.g., the hydrogen from the geologic hydrogen well is used to reduce iron) and you need to understand how much hydrogen is available as a feedstock for the downstream technology. This begs a more comprehensive solution such as potentially multi-year simulation lengths.