Problem: ERIN doesn't have the ability to model aggregations of components

[michael-okeefe]

Further Problem Description

ERIN, by design, only uses simple components. However, users of the ERIN tool often would like to think in terms of "component systems" such as a "PV Array and Battery". Thus, there is a need to be able to build up such abstractions from primitives.

Proposed Solution: Templates and Groups

The proposed solution is to add a template engine (written in C#). This would allow input to be written according to component systems and expanded out to the simple components. The output would then be aggregated using a new concept added to the engine called a "group".

The solution needs to be able to:

• expand a single template
• expand multiples of the same template without introducing name clashes (propose adding T<some-number>- prefix to expanded names)
• expand templates recursively so that templates can include other templates

Update 2024-08-09

Work was committed that partially fixes this issue. However, the following issues remain but are not pressing so they will be deferred until a later time.

• work with failure modes and fragility modes such that all components in a template would be properly affected by failures
• the engine needs to be able to incorporate the group concept to properly aggregate output to conform to the template