Refresh failed due to missing column

This will be considered a model change. You can either download the report and open it in desktop, or if you are an admin in the workspace, you can enable the ability to edit data models in the service. Workspace Settings > Power BI > General > Data Model Settings

I don't understand wy there are restrictions on large transfers. That seems a bit arbitrary. If that is the case you should  move to splitting this report to a thin report that is just a few MB in size pointing to the model in the service you manage by Tabular Editor. You make all changes in the service directly and publish a revised report only. That link would never change.

You could also split to a thin report and model and do this:

• Point the thin report to current semantic model
• update semantic model and do your publish thing, which creates a new semantic model in the service.
• Change the thin report on your PC to point to the new semantic model
• Publish the report

In this case, the report link never changes so your users dont know there has been a change.

But if you continue the current path of a new semantic model and report with each publication, you will have to give a new link every time, a major hassle.