reVeal documentation#

What is reVeal?#

reVeal (the reV Extension for Analyzing Large Loads) is an open-source geospatial software package for modeling the site-suitability and spatial patterns of deployment of large sources of electricity demand under future scenarios. reVeal is part of the reV ecosystem of tools.

How does reVeal work?#

reVeal consists of a library of Python classes and functions which are wrapped in a series of CLI commands. These commands can be run individually or as composed pipelines to enable model execution.

reVeal is typically run on a user-input geospatial (GIS) grid covering the the user’s area of interest. The modeling process typically follows the following workflow:

  1. Characterize each grid cell, according to a number of other GIS datasets. This step overlays the grid with other spatial datasets and attributes each grid cell with values derived from those datasets.

  2. Normalize the vales from the prior step, such that all values are on the same scale from 0 to 1.

  3. Calculate a composite site-suitability score for each grid cell, based on a user-specified weighted-criteria model of normalized characterization values.

  4. Downscale user-input projections of large load growth to grid cells, based on site-suitability and other user-specified settings and constraints.

reVeal is designed to be compatible for use in both a high-performance computing (HPC) environment, or on a local machine. This enables flexibility allows easy set up for users with standard hardware, as well as execution at high-resolution and large spatial scales for users with access to HPC.