A sneak preview of the mid-summer release

Things are hotting up for the 2026.1 BID3 release, so we thought we'd give you a sneak preview: there's a lot of new functionality, but we've also been looking at speed. Oh, and before we forget, memory usage too!

Avoiding curses through better hydro modelling. We're going to release our next update of the SDDP algorithm. This improves hydro modelling by allowing better representation of lots of different reservoirs, all with different water value curves. And without suffering from the curve of dimensionality, which is lucky. Nobody wants to suffer from the curse of dimensionality.

Small (hydro) is beautiful. We're also improving our cascade modelling by improving how small hydro plants are grouped together, and improving the water values for small hydro plant.

GPU solving is catching CPUs. The release of Xpress 9.8 is improving the range of GPU solving algorithms available. CPU is still generally better, but GPUs are catching up fast.

Azure SQL support. For those that don't like MS SQL, we're now offering an alternative cloud option to avoid managing a pesky database.

Suffering from frustrating end-of-year jumps in renewable capacities? Our renewable interpolation automatically spreads out your renewables growth across the year.

Comparing apples and Price Quantity pairs. Even more options, including applying PQ pairs to renewables.

... and don't forget memory usage. Given sky-high RAM costs, we've looked at how to bring the requirements down, and optimise runtime too.