Regulatory Requirements

Austrian energy law imposes binding obligations on the energy system that go beyond generic European targets. PyPSA-AT models these obligations as optimization constraints so that solved scenarios are not just cost-optimal but also legally compliant.

Overview

Requirement	Legal basis	Constraint in PyPSA-AT	Active from
Net-zero electricity balance	EAG §4(2)	add_national_net_zero_electricity_constraints	2030

Design principle

Each regulatory constraint is implemented as a linear inequality over the linopy model variables and registered in n.global_constraints for post-solve verification. Constraints are activated per country and planning horizon via config.at.yaml, so they can be enabled or disabled without touching the model code.

All constraints use structural bus-carrier identification — links are selected by the carrier of the bus they connect to, not by hardcoded technology names. This makes the constraints robust to additions of new carrier names in upstream PyPSA-Eur updates.