Water Energy Simulation Toolset (WEST)

The Water-Energy Simulation Toolset (WEST) is an interactive simulation model that helps visualize impacts of different stakeholders on water quantity and quality of a watershed. The case study is applied for the Snake River Basin with the fictional name Cutthroat River Basin. There are four groups of stakeholders of interest: hydropower, agriculture, flood control, and environmental protection. Currently, the quality component depicts nitrogen-nitrate contaminant. Users can easily interact with the model by changing certain inputs (climate change, fertilizer inputs, etc.) to observe the change over the entire system. Users can also change certain parameters to test their management policy for both water quantity and quality.

The model is implemented using an object-oriented system dynamics computer-aided modeling methodology, creating a backbone for future analysis of energy-water interdependency. The software is Powersim Studio. The model also uses input from an Excel sheet (included) for historical temperatures and precipitation. The model is simulated from 1967 to 2057. The first 20 years are used for model initialization.

There are 6 main components in WEST: reservoir, agriculture, hydropower, groundwater, nitrogen and phosphorous as shown in the diagram below.

The model package includes a Powersim Studio file with the extension .sip and an input Excel file. In order to run the model, these files should be put in the same folder. The Powersim Studio file is about 290 MB. The model is enabled in Studio Cockpit; meaning that anyone with a free Studio Cockpit license of Powersim can interact with the model via the user interface as described in Section 2. The cockpit license can be downloaded from this link.
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Users can also change the temperature and precipitation in the Excel file for each sub-region in the Cutthroat Basin.
In order to see and/or change the model structure, users need other modeling licenses such as Studio Professional, Expert, or Premium. More information on the software licenses can be viewed here.

Due to a large number of variables and components in WEST, Expert or Premium level might be needed to maintain reasonable simulation speed and avoiding system crashes.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This project was funded by INL’s lab-directed R&D funding source, supplemented by funding from the Environmental Protection Agency.

This project is not currently supported by Idaho National Laboratory as production grade software but is being made available to the public. Please use at your own risk.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.