Simulation time management

Optisim manages the temporal aspects of a simulation taking into account the following three parameters, configurable in the simulation section of main configuration file (see section Configuration file structure for details):

  • startDateTime: it indicates the initial timestamp of the simulation in format YYYY-mm-DD HH:MM.

  • endDateTime: it specifies the final timestamp of the simulation in format YYYY-mm-DD HH:MM.

  • step: it defines the duration (seconds) of each simulation step (e.g. step=300, then there is a step every 5 minutes).

It is important to take care that, before launching a simulation, all the required input data sets are already stored in the InfluxDB database (see sections External interfaces and Inputs for details) for the interval [startDateTime-startDateTime].

Regarding the simulation time, it is complicated to be able to give reasonable answer. Under a general point of view, the time strongly depends on the following aspects:

  • The number of meters.

  • The maximum number of components grouped by meters.

  • The type of the simulated components, i.e. some components are described by models much more complicated than others.

  • The hardware resources of the machine where Optisim runs.