WIP: Make PPL process more memory efficient

[katie-lamb]

After some changes made to the plant part list inputs the plant part list creation process uses too much memory for the RMI CI GitHub runners. This PR makes some changes to the plant part list process so that the RMI CI can pass.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Base: 82.8% // Head: 82.5% // Decreases project coverage by -0.2% ⚠️

Coverage data is based on head (5be4135) compared to base (32caab0).
Patch coverage: 100.0% of modified lines in pull request are covered.

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##             dev   #1951     +/-   ##
=======================================
- Coverage   82.8%   82.5%   -0.3%     
=======================================
  Files         65      64      -1     
  Lines       7436    7087    -349     
=======================================
- Hits        6158    5853    -305     
+ Misses      1278    1234     -44     

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
src/pudl/metadata/fields.py	100.0% <ø> (ø)
src/pudl/metadata/resources/eia.py	100.0% <ø> (ø)
src/pudl/analysis/plant_parts_eia.py	96.6% <100.0%> (+<0.1%)	⬆️
src/pudl/helpers.py

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[zaneselvans]

Did the memory usage increase happen to correspond with using pandas 1.5.0? Or is this just coincidental and independent from #1945 ?

[katie-lamb]

The increase in memory usage was independent of the pandas update. I'm not entirely sure what happened but maybe a change with the MCOE or EIA 860 tables?

[katie-lamb]

This was resolved in the RMI repo. The CI no longer uses too much memory and passes so I'm closing this PR.

[zaneselvans]

@katie-lamb can we also delete the rmi-ppl-mem-fix branch if it's no longer valuable?