HOMER Front 1.5 introduces a new optimization engine that builds on the proven foundation of version 1.4, delivering significant improvements in performance, optimality, and transparency while preserving simplicity and control users value.
The new engine directly identifies the globally optimal dispatch strategy across all available markets, evaluating all relevant actions and state-of-charge levels at each timestep. This deterministic approach ensures fast, stable simulations without relying on gradients, convex approximations, or intricate numerical techniques.
As a result, HOMER Front now provides more robust and consistent dispatch decisions, always converging to the best available solution with fully traceable logic.
Key enhancements in v1.5 include:
- Joint optimization of energy and ancillary services, including capacity reservation for regulation markets.
- Imperfect foresight rules to reduce unrealistic merchant-market arbitrage.
- Improved Time-of-Delivery (TOD) compliance and contracted delivery enforcement.
- Support for bi-directional regulation markets with mileage parametrization.
- Enhanced equivalent cycle counting using rainflow methods.
- Renewable-energy charging prioritization.
- Yearly cycling limits.
Additional usability improvements:
- Dedicated energy markets for regulation services.
- Improved project library organization.
From a bankability perspective, HOMER Front 1.5 represents a major step forward. Its combination of deterministic global optimization, transparent decision-making, and stable numerical behavior produces results that are easier to validate, explain, and defend.
The result is not just better optimization performance, but more trustworthy, auditable, and investment-grade project valuations.
- More robust BESS dispatch behavior, including fixes for irregular dispatch during zero pricing periods.
- Zero cost / opportunity cost for BESS charging from otherwise curtailed PV or wind, ensuring charging decisions correctly reflect no market or opportunity cost when energy would otherwise be spilled.
- Improved handling of imports/exports, with near zero values correctly treated as zero and better alignment of reported export/import hours.
- Fixes for multi year TOD obligations, ensuring correct results when using single file, multi year inputs.
- Resolution of issues causing infeasible results under some specific project characteristics.
- Improve interconnection limit handling and related configuration issues.
- Timestamp alignment fixes for TOD time series after engine processing.
- Unit and labeling corrections (e.g., storage throughput units, resource labeling).
- Updated documentation links, redirecting all in app references to the new manual.
- Improved release visibility and UI polish, including cache management and changelog display updates.
This release focuses on correctness and modeling fidelity, providing a more solid foundation for upcoming feature enhancements.
- Richer reporting options: Excel exports now include a clearer Revenue Breakdown by Technology, making post processing and analysis easier.
- Improved navigation: We’ve added the version link in the navigation bar and a link to Windnavigator to help streamlining wind resource import workflows.
- Consistent units and formatting: Several UI elements and Excel outputs have been standardized, providing a more coherent experience across the platform.
This release also includes a number of refinements that improve real world modeling accuracy and reduce friction in daily use. Highlights include:
- More intuitive inputs for market allocations.
- Clearer messaging and behavior for expired licenses.
- Improved alignment between time series charts and their corresponding exported results.
- More consistent handling and persistence of grid import/export limits, including explicit unit display.
- Correct grid-import behavior to ensure charge settings follow the configuration selected by the user.
- Reviewed Excel exports for projects that include sensitivities.
- Greater stability in scenarios that use multiple files or multi timeseries grid limit configurations.
- Improved tooltips and visual clarity in charts related to grid import and export constraints