Preamble
The first major release of Scout marks nearly a decade of development on the tool, going back to late January 2015. Scout has grown from its origins as a spreadsheet-based tool with a limited focus on prioritizing across energy-efficient technologies to an extensive Python-based framework for rapidly exploring multiple scenarios of U.S. building energy, emissions, and costs under many different types of technical, market, and policy interventions. Scout’s growth and flexibility has ensured that the tool continues to address the most pressing issues for program managers and policy analysts both within DOE and beyond—from building R&D prioritization to building-grid interactions and decarbonization pathways, among many others.
This release reflects the broad capabilities that are required to tackle such diverse analysis needs and sets a robust foundation for the tool’s future development. With this release, we introduce significant updates to enhance user functionality, increase code extensibility, and expand analysis capabilities.
What's New
- Restructure the Scout project
- Create Scout python package for easy and consistent installation of software dependencies.
- Reorganize file structure of Scout directory.
- Refactor assignment of file paths for consistency across the codebase.
- Integrate the configuration file schema with the argument parser and documentation to maintain consistency when updating arguments.
- Add integration testing that executes a full Scout run and checks results against reference data.
- Add new execution capabilities
- Introduce scenario configuration files (.yml) as inputs for Scout workflow steps.
- Add batch run capability to run multiple scenarios in succession.
- Facilitate user selection of subsets of measures/packages for a given scenario.
- Enable measure definition shorthands for warm/cold regions and add new regional breakout options to performance/cost/market scaling inputs.
- Refactor argument handling so that all inputs are passed via the command line or with a scenario configuration file, eliminating user prompts.
- Pre-screen all measure inputs before preparation and continue processing measure set even when individual measure preparation errors.
- Add new analysis and reporting capabilities
- Assess sensitivity cases for fugitive emissions estimates.
- Define specific pairs of heating/cooling segments in relevant measure definitions and restrict competition to other measures with the same pairing.
- Link stock turnover calculations across multiple end uses within the same measure (e.g., heating/cooling/ventilation).
- Report portion of efficient-case energy results that is attributable to measure (vs. remaining baseline technology).
- Update input data
- Grid emissions factors updated to Cambium 2023, state resolution added.
- Baseline hourly load shapes updated to latest BuildStock EULP releases, state resolution added.
- Updated mapping datasets for translation between different region settings.
- Update to latest Social Cost of Carbon and Consumer Price Index estimates.
- Corrections to commercial other/unspecified estimates.
- Add scripts to pull state-level estimates from EIA API and update Cambium data.
- Update documentation to reflect new capabilities.
- Minor bug fixes and code refactoring throughout.