0.14.0

[birnbaum]

This release introduces a major architectural overhaul of the DES simulation core, generalized dispatchable resources, a new browser-based experiment viewer, and a full rewrite of the documentation.

🚀 New Features

Generalized Dispatchables

• Introduced vs.Dispatchable: abstract base class for any controllable energy resource (batteries, diesel generators, gas turbines, etc.)
• vs.Storage, vs.SimpleBattery, and vs.ClcBattery are now subclasses of Dispatchable, replacing the old Storage hierarchy
• vs.DispatchPolicy replaces vs.Policy. It now receives grid_signals so policies can react to carbon intensity, pricing, or curtailment data
• vs.DefaultDispatchPolicy replaces vs.DefaultPolicy

Simulation Architecture

• Fully refactored DES pipeline: Actors → Microgrid → Controller (previously Actors → Grid → Storage → Controller)
• Internal simulator _StorageSim got removed.
• Internal simulator renamed from _GridSim to _MicrogridSim. This simulator is now also responsible for aggregating the actor's power output, applying the dispatch policy, and updating storage state.

Logging Improvements

• CsvLogger writes a metadata.yaml (renamed from experiment.yaml) containing static run information including grid signals
• MemoryLogger now stores a config dict alongside timeseries data, consistent with CsvLogger

Alpha: Vessim Viewer

• New browser-based experiment viewer accessible via vessim view <results-dir> (CLI)
• Visualizes simulation results from metadata.yaml and timeseries.csv (no running simulation required)
• Panels include power balance, actor breakdown, dispatch, state-of-charge, grid signals, and microgrid info; Supports single-experiment and multi-experiment result directories.

Documentation

• Documentation rewritten from scratch with new concept pages for Controllers, Dispatchables, Signals, and Software-in-the-Loop
• Getting Started guide replaces the old tutorial notebooks
• API reference reorganized to match new module structure
• New overview figure and updated logos

Minor Improvements

• Improved error messages in Trace signal for out-of-range data access
• Improved error message in PrometheusSignal on connection failure
• Improved SiL error messages and related unit tests

🔧 Breaking Changes

• Dispatchables: vs.Policy → vs.DispatchPolicy; vs.DefaultPolicy → vs.DefaultDispatchPolicy; the old policy modules are removed
• consumer flag: Moved from Signal to Actor (previously Signal had signal_type/consumer logic; now Actor(consumer=True/False) controls sign convention; default changed to False)
• environment.microgrids: changed from list[Microgrid] to dict[str, Microgrid] for easier lookups by name
• Plotly removed: Plotly-based utilities removed in favor of new vessim view

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Full Changelog: 0.13.1...0.14.0

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This discussion was created from the release 0.14.0.