bus names are set to lower case: can this be prevented?

[nlaws-camus]

Support Question

I am programmatically defining all circuit elements based on data that can have mixed string cases, and later I need to align the bus names (and many other things in the dss model) with the data. Is there a way to stop dss from changing the capitalization of the bus names?

dss(f"""
Clear
new circuit.dummy Bus=CapsBUS
solve
""")
dss.CktElement.BusNames()

['capsbus', 'capsbus.0.0.0']

[PMeira]

Currently, no. Nearly everything in OpenDSS/AltDSS is case-independent, so keeping the original names would either require maintaining copies or applying a upper/lowercase conversion in a lot of places. That is, currently not worth the effort of considering.

We can keep this open as a feature request though. We might be able to handle it cleanly in a few months (after the full C++ transition on the engine).

[nlaws-camus]

Any tips on how to deal with indexing into the dss.Circuit.YNodeOrder, which does not change the node names, using dss.CktElement.BusNames(), which are lower case?

For example, to get the source nodes one can

  source_busses: list[str] = []
  source_bus_phases: list[list[int]] = []
  dss.Circuit.SetActiveClass("VSource")

  dss.Vsources.First()

  def _update_output():
      if dss.CktElement.Enabled():
          # BusNames is like ['source', 'source.0.0.0'] for a single 3 phase
          # source, and can look like ['newbus.1', 'newbus.0.0.0'] for a
          # single 1 phase source. 
          bus_name = dss.CktElement.BusNames()[0]
          # NOTE dss.Bus.Name() does not update with the VSource
          if "." in bus_name:
              bus_name = bus_name.split(".")[0]
          source_busses.append(bus_name)
          nodes = set(dss.CktElement.NodeOrder())
          nodes.discard(0)  # drop ground connections
          source_bus_phases.append(list(nodes))

  _update_output()
  while dss.Vsources.Next() > 0:
      _update_output()

  source_nodes = [
      bus + "." + str(phase)
      for bus, phases in zip(source_busses, source_bus_phases)
      for phase in phases
  ]

But the YNodeOrder will have the capitalization that was used in the New commands, while BusNames has lower case names.

[PMeira]

But the YNodeOrder will have the capitalization that was used in the New commands, while BusNames has lower case names.

Maybe we could at least add an option to return lowercase strings from YNodeOrder.

Related to your sample, in the upcoming release, to avoid this common pattern...

if "." in bus_name:
              bus_name = bus_name.split(".")[0]

...BusNames now has an argument (keyword argument in ODD.py) to suppress the nodes.

I personally don't like that the bus connections are kept as strings, even in the internal code, but I haven't had the time to try alternatives yet.