CASSANDRA is a software platform that provides end users with the ability to dynamically model and investigate segments of the energy market, according to their specific needs. It is essentially a tool for modeling all market stakeholders, as well as the essential grid components, in such a manner, so that modeling of aggregate structures (such as a suburb or a city, a consumer coalition or a group of commercial buildings) is possible. Through CASSANDRA one may specify consumption habits and patterns, consumer types and behaviors, intermediaries and policy regulations, so that these are diffused in the simulated community, in order to identify behavior drivers or policy makers. Apart from that, CASSANDRA also strives to upgrade the role and market power of small-scale electricity consumers utilizing the concept of consumer social networks (CSN).
CASSANDRA is implemented as a web-service platform, with the back-end providing decision support functionalities related to energy efficiency and demand response through the CASSANDRA front-end web application. However, in order to widen the applicability of the project’s results and in line with one of CASSANDRA’s main objectives, namely to “promote the proposed consumer behavior and load modeling approach, and disseminate the energy and environmental benefit/impact to all actors”, the appropriate modifications in the code and architecture were made to also provide a general-purpose, stand-alone software library based on the CASSANDRA modules. The CASSANDRA software library is an additional important tool that will allow developers to directly use the CASSANDRA functionality for consumer activity modelling, consumption analysis and demand response. Thus, it will greatly facilitate the exploitation of the platform since it will be easier: (i) for different organisations and businesses to integrate the functionalities of CASSANDRA into their own products; (ii) for interested users to explore CASSANDRA, especially in academic and/or research environments; and (iii) for the open source community to uptake and further develop the platform in the future.
A manual to accompany the Cassandra stand-alone software library may be found in Deliverable 2.5 of the CASSANDRA project: http://www.cassandra-fp7.eu/page/deliverables.
The API reference for the CASSANDRA stand-alone software library can be found at: http://cassandra.iti.gr/stand-alone-api/.