Introduction

This guide provides a guide to using CLOVER following the initial download. CLOVER is free and open-source for all to use, and the latest version of CLOVER is available on GitHub. Periodic updates to the code are also posted on Github to increase its functionality and fix bugs. This document provides examples of how to run the code, how the different modules and functions operate, and the kinds of outputs that can be obtained.

About CLOVER

CLOVER was developed at Imperial College London as a means of investigating how to support rural electrification strategies in developing countries. Under continuous development since 2015, CLOVER has been used for studies of electricity systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South America to explore the potential to provide reliable, affordable and sustainable power to rural and displaced communities.

CLOVER has the capabilities to model electricity systems of any size, from those serving individual households to large communities with diverse uses of energy and beyond, but has most commonly been used for village-scale minigrids serving hundreds of users. Its core functionality is to simulate and optimise systems supplied by any combination of solar, battery storage, diesel generation and a national grid connection to supply energy under specified performance parameters. CLOVER has been used to investigate technical case studies of specific systems, as well as broader analyses of the effects of rural electrification policies, for both academic and practitioner-focused audiences.

Some open-source examples of how CLOVER has been used include:

  • Using solar and battery storage minigrids to support an unreliable grid network in rural India (available here)
  • Investigating how to support rural electrification policies in Rwanda and Nepal (available here)
  • Exploring the opportunities for solar energy to offset diesel generation in refugee camps (available here)

CLOVER has also been used for investigations in several PhD theses (one example here) and Master’s theses. The latter has included investigations into:

  • Using minigrids to provide power to rural entrepreneurs in Rwanda
  • Using solar power to provide electricity to health centres in remote areas of Kenya
  • The opportunities for using health centres as anchor load clients in rural India
  • Options for supporting electricity for educational purposes at a women’s education centre in Senegal
  • The benefits of providing electricity for açaí processing in rural Brazil
  • System design options for minigrids in refugee camps in Djibouti

What is CLOVER for?

CLOVER is a software tool for simulating and optimising community-scale electricity systems, typically minigrids to support rural electrification in developing countries. CLOVER allows users to model electricity demand and supply in locations and communities at an hourly resolution, for example allowing them to investigate how a specific electricity system might perform or to find the generation and storage capacity required to meet the needs of the community at the lowest cost. CLOVER can provide an insight into the technical performance, costs, and environmental impact of a system, and allow the user to evaluate many different scenarios to decide on the best way to provide sustainable, affordable and reliable electricity to the community.

What is CLOVER not for?

Fundamentally, CLOVER is an energy balance model which accounts for the generation and usage of electricity at an hourly resolution. The model is only as good as its data inputs and so the user should be aware of the many caveats that are attached to energy system modelling. CLOVER does not account for technical considerations such as power balancing in real systems, the compatibility of specific electronic components, or the many other practical considerations that would be relevant when designing the exact specifications of a system being deployed in the field. CLOVER can recommend the sizing, design and performance of a potential system, but the user should use this as a guide when using these results to inform real-life systems.

Getting CLOVER on your computer

Downloading CLOVER

Go to https://github.com/phil-sandwell/CLOVER to download the latest version of CLOVER by clicking the “Clone or download” button and selecting “Download ZIP”. This will download a zipped folder containing all of the files you need to get started.

CLOVER file structure

The file structure from the download has two branches:

  • a Scripts branch which contains Python files that the user runs and uses to generate outputs and perform simulations and optimisations,
  • a Locations branch that describes individual locations and the specifics of a given scenario being investigated.

An example location, Bahraich in India, is included in the initial download for reference. New locations can be set up using the generic New_Location folder structure. It is recommended that the user makes a copy of the entire New_Location folder and renames it as their location to ensure that all of the necessary files are included.

CLOVER modules

CLOVER is designed to be modular, with each module or script performing a specific function (e.g. calculating the load of a community, getting the solar generation, or simulating the performance of a system). Each module can be run independently and some modules use (import) others to use as an input, for example the Optimisation module uses the Energy_System, which in turn uses the Solar module.

Running CLOVER

The recommended integrated development environment (IDE) for running CLOVER is Spyder although many others are available. This IDE is software which allows the user to view and edit scripts, run the code, run individual functions, and view the outputs easily. The easiest way to get Spyder is to download Anaconda which includes Spyder as a default package. CLOVER is written using Python 3 so the user should make sure that their Python environment uses this version; the packages that CLOVER uses are all included in the Anaconda distribution.

About this guide

This document is designed to guide a new user from the point of downloading CLOVER to being able to run their own simulations and optimisations. It contains worked examples of using the code and, owing to the format of the document, several pieces of code are included in this document which will not be necessary when running CLOVER using Spyder. These include viewing the input CSV files (which can be done in your file browser) and executing the code (which can be done by clicking the green arrow in Spyder) but are necessary to compile the code here. These will be highlighted as they come up.

Throughout this guide the text in bold highlights the steps you need to take to set up CLOVER, text in italics refers to the names of modules or other parts of the model structure, and text in code refers to variables or functions.