Glossary¶
Here's a few terms for platform and functionality you may want to look up in these docs as you move along.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Communities | The top-level REC entity. Contains all members, meters, resources, and configuration. |
| Members | Participants in a community — Anchor/Host, Promoter, or Consumer/OffTaker/NonHost. Or simply just a basic "Member". Each member owns one or more resources. |
| CPE | Código de Ponto de Entrega (Point of Delivery Code) — the unique code identifying an electricity supply point in Portugal, assigned by the DSO (E-REDES). Found on the electricity bill or grid connection notice. In RECreation, it identifies DSO-registered meters. |
| Meters | Measurement points in the community hierarchy: CPEs (DSO-registered meters), Internal meters (behind a CPE), and Aggregator CPEs (entire community measurements aggregated by the DSO and with a specific contract). Define the structure tree used for energy allocation. |
| Contracts | Retailer contract parameters attached to a CPE meter — buy/sell tariff structures, voltage level, and tariff cycle. Buy and Sell tariffs are optional but voltage level, tariff cycles and contracted power are not. |
| Resources | Energy assets attached to meters: consumption units (IC/IU), production units (SCPU/IPR), storage, EVs, and heat pumps. The atomic unit for ownership and trading in the local energy market. |
| Sessions | One 15-minute ISP (Interval Settlement Period). It's our model for a 15 minute interval that joins meters, resources, members and their data, as well as the results of operations and their status (are they finalized, pending action etc...). |
| Market | The local energy market (LEM) clearing algorithm that runs within a session, matching producers and consumers and generating transactions at a price and energy. |
| Settlement | Financial computation of revenues and costs for each member after market clearing. Produces billing data per ISP. |
| Loads | User made meter measurements(consumption/generation), uploaded per 15-minute interval. Can be used for CPEs in Simulation mode. Otherwise, only for INTERNAL meters. |
| DSO Loads | Measurement data received from the Distribution System Operator for each CPE — consumption, injection, surplus allocation, and imputed energy — in 15-minute intervals. |
| Forecast | Predicted generation and consumption profiles used in pre-delivery phases for energy management optimization and simulation scenarios. |
| Opportunity Costs | Per-CPE, per-interval cost values representing the buy and sell price of each CPE with their retailer. |
| Bilateral Prices | Agreed energy prices between a specific provider–receiver member pair, either per interval (dynamic) or static. Used with BILATERAL_PRICE or TREE_DNAC market rates and their FIXED counterparts. |
| Bilateral Energy Allocations | Dynamic allocation coefficients computed per provider–receiver CPE pair per 15-minute interval. Submitted to the DSO for validation before final settlement in DYNAMIC allocation communities. |
| Fixed Coefficients | Static energy allocation coefficients submitted to the DSO for communities using the FIXED allocation method. |
| RESP | Rede Elétrica de Serviço Público — the Portuguese public electricity grid. CPE pairs connected only through RESP are subject to self-consumption grid-access tariffs on traded energy. By default, most CPEs are. |
| ERSE Files | Regulatory data files published by ERSE (Entidade Reguladora dos Serviços Energéticos) — network access tariffs, loss factors and tariff cycles. Mandatory to compute opportunity costs and thus calculate potential savings. |
| OMIE | The Iberian electricity market operator. Provides day-ahead spot prices used as a pricing reference in indexed contracts. |
| Energy Management | Pre-delivery optimization and flexibility modules (OSTEC, GDBN) that generate setpoints for controllable assets such as batteries, EVs, and heat pumps. |
| Sizing | Pre-delivery module for large-scale simulations to evaluate optimal asset sizing (e.g. PV capacity, battery size) for a community before deployment. |
| Simulator | Community operation mode that emulates DSO energy allocation from internal meter data, enabling testing and historical re-runs without real DSO data feeds. |
| Billing Guides | PDF/Excel financial summary reports generated per date range, showing each member's revenues, costs, and energy data. Settlement outputs can be retrieved by API. |
| Business Validity | The dated history of a community's structure. Members, meters, resources, ownerships, contracts, RESP, fixed bilateral prices, EMS and community configuration each apply between an inclusive start_date and an optional inclusive end_date (Europe/Lisbon days). See Business Validity. |
| Version | One dated state of an entity, identified by version_id. An entity keeps the same id across all its versions. |
effective_at |
Query parameter that selects the day whose versions are returned or acted on. Defaults to today (Europe/Lisbon) on reads; required when ending an entity with DELETE. |
| Context Window | A run of consecutive sessions with an unchanged community structure. Market clearing and settlement run once per window. |