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PVWatts annual output without losses missing from results #987

@cpaulgilman

Description

@cpaulgilman

Describe the bug

In SAM 2020.11.29 and earlier, for a PVWatts case with system availability losses specified (adjust) on System Design page, "Annual AC output" in the results shows AC output before losses are applied, and "Annual Energy AC (year 1)" shows AC output after losses are applied. In SAM 2021.12.02, both variables show the same value:

SAM 2020.11.29:

image

SAM 2021.12.02:

image

For some applications, users are using adjust to create time series graphs that show output for a single day by setting the time series loss value to 100% for all other days, but they also want to see the total annual output before this loss is applied.

"Annual AC output" is the cmod_pvwattsv8 SSC_OUTPUT ac_output, and "Annual Energy AC (year 1)" is the cmod_grid SSC_INOUT variable annual_energy.

One proposed solution is to add a new PVWatts output variable ac_output_pre_adjust "Annual AC output before system availability".

Note that this behavior is a result of the changes made to resolve #727.

To Reproduce

system-availability-adjust-loss-test-2020-11-29.zip

  1. Start SAM 2020.11.29 and open the attached .sam file. It contains three cases to test adjust as constant, hourly and custom period.
  2. Start SAM 2021.12.02 and open the same file.
  3. Run a simulation in each file and compare Annual AC output and Annual Energy AC (year 1) in the two SAM versions.

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