Electricity mix in ecoinvent 3.3. (zolca version)

Question

Hello openLCA community,

ecoinvent 3.3 cut-off comes with hundreds of process descriptions for electricity generation (production mixes, import mixes, and individual technologies). However, in the imported zolca version they all have the same reference product `electricity, high voltage`, UUID 66c93e71-f32b-4591-901c-55395db5c132
As a consequence, when adding an electricity input flow to a new process one can only select this single flow (next to a few other industry-specific electricities)
How can I `tell` my foreground system which of the many generation processes or mixes it should draw the electricity from? Is this a bug or a feature?
I checked with ecoinvent 3.2 (zolca), and there is a strict 1:1 correspondence between processes and flows.

Best regards,

Stefan Pauliuk

Answer 1

Hi Stefan,
good question, this is indeed a feature in openLCA 1.5 which we used in ecoinvent 3.3 - you specify the provider in the process, which makes the link clear. The intent was to avoid several hundreds flows for in principle the same product, and the need to create a new product only because you have a new production process.
Best wishes,
Andreas

Comments

Dear Andreas,

thanks four your reply, that makes the problem clear!
I think for teaching purposes I will stick to ecoinvent 3.2. The reason is that I put lots of emphasis on having one unique reference product for each process, and the provider option might confuse the students, even though it is technically identical. For practitioners it seems to be a convenient feature!

Best regards,

Stefan