Node Types
This table introduces the most commonly used Pywr node types:
Input Node
![]()
Input nodes represent water inputs into the system.
Catchment Node
![]()
Catchment nodes are often used to represent river or other type of inflow into the system.
Proportional Input Node

Proportional input node is intended for a simple case of where fixed ratio of flow is required to be distributed to multiple downstream routes.
Link Node
![]()
Link node represents a link in the water system or other point of interest where a maximum or minimum flow constraint or an allocation priority are assigned.
River Node
![]()
River node is a node in the river network, which may have multiple upstream nodes (i.e. a confluence) but only one downstream node.
Delay Node

These delay flow for a given number of timesteps or days. This is used when flow propagation time cannot be ignored, for example because time-steps are relatively short.
Storage Node
![]()
Storage node is a general node that can store water (like dams or aquifers), which have a minimum and maximum volume restrictions.
Reservoir Node

Reservoir node is a type of storage node with additional functionality to represent evaporation and precipitation.
Output Node
![]()
Output nodes are locations where water leaves the system.
Loss Link Node
![]()
Loss link allows for the definition of a fixed proportional loss of flow that goes through this node.
Turbine Node

Turbine node can represent a turbine of a hydropower station. It calculates the flow required to generate a particular hydropower production target in each time step.
Pywr Node types can also be further sub-divided into 6 categories: Water Input, Water Transport, Water Storage, Water Output, Hydropower, and Others. You can find more details about these groupings of nodes and nodes types in the sub-sections of the 'Node Types' section.
More details
An overview of nodes in Pywr can be found here. The full list of built-in nodes in Pywr can be found here.
Last updated
Was this helpful?