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IAMconsortium / nomenclature

A package to work with IAMC-style variable templates
https://nomenclature-iamc.readthedocs.io/
Apache License 2.0
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Allow wildcard variables #294

Open danielhuppmann opened 9 months ago

danielhuppmann commented 9 months ago

Per a discussion with @volker-krey and @phackstock:

Previous projects added a "counter" to capacity- and capital-cost variables to allow reporting of different types of plants, e.g., "Capacity|Electricity|Biomass|1", with a mapping of the number to a particular type given in a comments sheet.

This is a not very elegant approach and not user-friendly when viewing the data via the Scenario Explorer.

It would be preferable to explicitly allow wildcards in a variable name, e.g., Capacity|Electricity|Biomass|* - and the nomenclature-validation would allow all variables starting with Capacity|Electricity|Biomass. This way, each modelling team could define the types individually, using either numbering or more useful description like "CCGT" directly in the variable name.

phackstock commented 9 months ago

I see the application but I'm a little bit worried that this defeats the purpose of having a defined variable list in the first place. If it's all custom to the model should it be part of a comparison study anyway?