HOMER Knowledge Base
Homer and investment timing
Do you think it's possible to move the results to the future in a way that considers the future value of money correctly?
HOMER does account for the time value of money, if that's what you mean, it just doesn't allow the system to change over time.
It would be hard work, but you could perform separate HOMER runs for each five-year segment of time, for example. In each segment, you could vary the system in some way, such as adding a battery bank or a second or third generator, or adding PV array capacity. You could even change the load or the cost of fuel in each segment, if you wanted to account for load growth or unequal price inflation.
You would have to optimize manually because HOMER could not calculate the total net present cost over the entire project lifetime. You would have to do that yourself, and find the progression of construction steps that leads to the lowest total NPC.